Let there be rock - back on the road with AC/DC
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The hornet’s buzz of a tattoo needle echoes down a ground-floor corridor in Kaue, a venue-come-arts centre perched on the edge of a roundabout in a quiet suburb of the modest-sized German city of Gelsenkirchen. Usually this place is home to a mix of comedy and music – recent international names to play here include Walter Trout and Ten Years After. Today it’s being used for something different.
Later this evening, the nearby Veltins-Arena stadium will host the opening night of AC/DC’s first tour in eight years, and Kaue has been repurposed for the occasion. For the next few days this Tardis-like brick building, with its warren of passageways, performance rooms, bars and outdoor drinking spaces, has been transformed into the High Voltage Dive Bar.
Inside it’s an AC/DC fan’s fever dream. A giant display of classic AC/DC posters greets punters as they walk in. Upstairs the darkened main room is lit by the red glow of the massive AC/DC logo from the Shot In The Dark video, its outline reflected in the glossy black floor as people pose for photos with Angus Young-style Gibson SG or Malcolm Young signature Gretsch guitars.
There are merch stands where fans can buy AC/DC vinyl, T-shirts, caps, baby grows, bath robes, shot glasses and pretty much anything else their name can be printed on, before hitting the food stall for a burger that has the AC/DC logo stamped on the bun. And for those brave souls who want to prove their love of the band is more than skin-deep, there are a pair of tattooists inking era-specific variations of that same logo on the bodies of devoted fans.
Dominik is one of them. He has a raw-looking Razors Edge-era logo on his arm. It looks like it hurt. “The pain was okay,” he says casually, as the tattooists behind him clean their needles in readiness for their next victim. “I can tolerate pain.” Dominik was introduced to the band via the mix tapes his dad made for him, although he gets bonus hipster points for having 1975’s Aussie-only TNT as his favourite album. He’s attending the second of the two shows AC/DC are playing here in Gelsenkirchen in a couple of nights, and it will be the first time he’s seen them.
“The last time they played in Germany was the exact week I was doing my last exams in school, so I had to decide between the exams and the concert,” he says. “I was not expecting another tour, especially now that not all the long-time members are in the band. There was no way I was missing them this time. Does anyone know if they’ll be back?”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Hansi, an early 50-something currently drinking a beer under one of the canopies in the beer garden. He’s one of several people who have gone full Angus cosplay: schoolboy cap, white shirt, shorts. It’s a release from the suit he has to wear as the boss of his own small business. “Which other band can you dress up as a schoolboy for?” he says with faultless German logic.
Hansi first saw AC/DC as a kid in the mid-80s, and hasn’t missed them on any of their tours here since. “I considered flying to see them in the desert,” he says, referring to their comeback appearance at last year’s Power Trip festival in the US, “but my wife said it was too expensive.”
He’s excited for tonight, even if German reserve prevents him from duck-walking in circles at the prospect. “I hoped they would return, but I didn’t expect them to,” he says. “It might be the last chance I have to see them.” He takes a gulp of his beer and adjusts his schoolboy cap. “So I am going to enjoy them.”
Guten abend, then, and welcome to the show no one expected but everyone wanted. When AC/DC bowed out at the end of their Rock Or Bust tour eight years ago they were battered, bruised and depleted.
Malcolm Young, their founding rhythm guitarist and steel-hearted commander-in-chief, was at home, stricken by the dementia that would claim his life the following year. Phil Rudd, AC/DC’s all-time greatest drummer, was on the naughty step after being caught fag-deep in some ill-advised drug-and-death-threat-related shenanigans. Singer Brian Johnson retired injured halfway through the tour, his hearing in danger of failing completely (last-minute sub Axl Rose famously stepped in to save the day, although even he did it while sitting on a giant throne with his leg in a cast).
When bassist Cliff Williams announced he was retiring at the end of the Rock Or Bust tour, that seemed to be that. So long, and thanks for all the riffs. Except AC/DC are the world’s least sentimental band, and there was no way retirement, potential hearing loss, legal trouble, death or any combination of the above was going to stop them.
While 2020’s Power Up album might have been a surprise, it wasn’t actually that much of a surprise to long-time ’DC watchers (although just how good it sounded compared with the pedestrian Rock Or Bust was unexpected). Even last year’s Power Trip appearance, along with Metallica, Judas Priest, Tool and more made sense, although all but the most optimistic devotee saw that more as a valedictory one-off than the start of a new chapter for this venerable band.
Yet here we are, at the Veltins-Arena, a vast covered stadium that usually plays home to football team FC Schalke O4 (currently in the German equivalent of the Championship, but sleeping giants according to locals).
Tonight, 70,000 people – at least a third of whom are wearing light-up devil horns in grand modern AC/DC fashion – are here for a moment many of them doubted would happen. The fact that it’s being trumpeted as the band’s 50th anniversary is cause for double celebration, even if pedants will point out the band played their very first gig on New Year’s Eve 1973.
The lights dim at 8.30 on the nose, and the giant screens that span the stage pop into life with an animated intro video featuring a flame-red hot rod with lightning-bolt furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror and an Angus Young hood ornament, screeching down the local autobahn and into some virtual backstage area. There’s a roar from the crowd as the band appear, not exactly erupting on to the massive stage as ambling unassumingly into view, and crack straight into steamrolling version of If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It).
“It’s wonderful to see ya all again,” Johnson mutters cheerfully at the end of tonight’s opening number, like he’s walked into an afternoon session at his local boozer rather than kicking off his band’s first tour in eight years. “Enjoy yourselves, okay?”
If his voice isn’t the force of nature it once was, he’s still a top-level showman – the Andy Capp of rock’n’roll, complete with between-song patter that seems to consist of a series of unintelligible mumbles, phlegmy coughs, random noise and what at one point sounds like a Tarzan impression.
The AC/DC on stage tonight are a different band to the one that crossed the finish line on the Rock Or Bust tour. Malcolm is gone for ever, and so, seemingly, is Phil Rudd. Stevie Young is back for his third tour of duty, 36 years after first deputising for Malcolm on the Blow Up Your Video tour while the guitarist dried out off the road.
Then there’s the new boys: 54-year-old American drummer Matt Haug, who played his first show with AC/DC at Power Trip, and 53-year-old Chris Chaney on bass, who is making his AC/DC debut. The former goes for hard-hitting power over Rudd’s effortless, fag-in-the-gob snap, but it suits a venue this big. Chaney, meanwhile, has clearly been briefed on the job of AC/DC bass player, which is to hold things down in front of the wall of amps and speakers cabs at the back of the stage, venturing to the microphone twice per song to sing a backing vocal in time with Stevie Young then back-pedalling straight to the back to where he started. It hasn’t been broke for the past 50 years, so why fix it now?
Yet those changes are purely cosmetic when it comes down to it. As long as there’s a man in a school uniform up on stage, AC/DC remains AC/DC. Angus Young may be a silver-topped 69-year-old who isn’t quite as limber as he used to be, but he’s still the absolute blueprint of what a rock’n’roll guitarist should be, duckwalking through Riff Raff and spinning on his back like a silver-haired turtle at the climax of the extended, ever-electrifying Let There Be Rock. And if his mid-solo striptease is now a thing of the past, well, maybe that’s one concession to age we can grant him.
Tonight’s set-list is a lightly remixed version of the one they played at Power Trip, with the same songs played mostly in the same order. If You Want Blood and Shot Down In Flames aside, the first half of the 24-song set is loaded with post-Back In Black songs: Hells Bells, You Shook Me All Night Long, Back In Black itself (which sees the band rendered in black-and-white on the screens), Thunderstruck, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock And Roll Train. The new album is represented by Shot In The Dark and Demon Eyes, but sadly there’s no place for Through The Mists Of Time, one of the best songs they’ve written since Back In Black.
The second half reverses things, focusing on the Bon Scott years (which, amazingly, ended 24 years ago): Sin City, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, High Voltage, Whole Lotta Rosie, TNT and so on. There’s nothing that anyone who has seen AC/DC previously hasn’t heard them play before, but then no one’s complaining, given that most people never expected to hear them again.
It’s a steamrolling experience, and one that’s difficult to criticise in the moment. Looking back, maybe there could have been a few more surprises in the set list – there are people here who’d pay good money to hear Nervous Shakedown, Shake Your Foundations and Heatseeker again, or even The Jack once more for old time’s sake. And as impressive as those screens are, they’re no substitute for inflatable Rosies or giant wrecking balls.
Thankfully, the enormous bell that descends from the ceiling during Hells Bells has survived, as have the six massive cannons that explode from the back of the stage during the inevitable show closer For Those About To Rock (We Salute You).
As fireworks explode on either side of the stage, threatening to take off the roof with them, there’s a roar of appreciation from the crowd that’s edged with a mix of familiarity and relief.
As the Classic Rock contingent heads back to our hotel, we take the long route past the High Voltage Dive Bar at the Kaue club. The lights are off, the tattooists’ needles have fallen silent, and there’s no sign of what’s inside. But it’ll be open again when AC/DC return to town for their second gig here in a couple of nights. Then it’s onwards to the next venue, and the next one. What happens after this European run ends in the summer is anyone’s guess, but history has proven time and time again that only a fool writes AC/DC off.
