AC/DC back in black at Power Trip festival, its first concert in seven years
The collective heart of rock ‘n’ roll fans has begun beating a little faster, for Angus Young is once again duck-walking with his electric guitar out in front of AC/DC at a US music festival.
The collective heart of rock ‘n’ roll fans has begun beating a little faster, for Angus Young is once again duck-walking with his electric guitar out in front of AC/DC, forever young in his blue velvet schoolboy uniform.
On Sunday afternoon, Australian time, the mighty hard rock act gave its first concert in seven years at Power Trip festival in Indio, California before a massive crowd of fans, many of whom sported the band’s distinctive red flashing devil horn headwear.
The show opened with a stylised, blood-red animation played on the big screens featuring familiar iconography: a speeding car whose hood ornament was a guitarist with his fist raised skyward, steered by an unseen driver with police in furious pursuit.
And then the big reveal: five musicians who began playing bone-shaking, life-affirming music while flanked by a wall of Marshall guitar amplifiers.
At once, the quintet turned back the clock and broke new ground by opening with If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It), from the band’s 1979 album Highway to Hell, for the first time in its long live career.
Fan footage taken from the crowd in California shows 68-year-old Young in fine form, strutting out onto the catwalk mid-song to take a ripping guitar solo with his black Gibson SG in hand, while his snowy white hair bobbed beneath the schoolboy cap marked A for Angus.
At song’s end, singer Brian Johnson gave a brief introduction: “How cool is this? Lovely to see ya! Let’s get rockin’ and rollin’, right?”
Then the band swaggered into one of its signature songs, Back in Black, the title track from its mega-selling 1980 album and the first release to feature Johnson on vocals.
All up, the band worked through a two-hour, 24-song setlist covering material from 11 albums, backed by longtime bassist Cliff Williams, rhythm guitarist Stevie Young and Matt Laug, who performed his first concert with AC/DC in place of usual drummer Phil Rudd.
This year marks the band’s 50th anniversary, having formed in Sydney in November 1973. Its impact on popular culture is unmatched among Australian acts, and the global hunger for its hard-driving, machine-like rock sound has not diminished.
Although AC/DC issued its 17th album Power Up in late 2020, mid-pandemic, and recorded several music videos on a sound stage, Young and co had not struck a chord in concert since September 2016, when its previous world tour – titled Rock or Bust – ended in Philadelphia.
That run of 88 concerts was attended by about four million fans and earned US$221m at the box office.
Rock or Bust was unusual, too, because Johnson was forced to step down from the band mid-tour due to hearing issues that prematurely ended his performing career – or so he thought at the time.
When his hearing gave out mid-concert in Vancouver, Johnson later described it as “like driving in fog – all reference points suddenly gone. It was the absolute worst experience that I’d ever had as a singer, made all the more terrifying by the fact that it was happening with several more songs to go … in front of tens of thousands of paying fans. But somehow, I made it through, and if anyone noticed, they were too kind to say.”
In 2016, Johnson was replaced on the remaining 22 shows by Axl Rose, the frontman of US band Guns N’ Roses.
“I’m told that he did a great job,” Johnson wrote in his 2022 memoir, The Lives of Brian. “But I just couldn’t watch … It’s like finding a stranger in your house, sitting in your favourite chair.”
Now 76, and with his hearing since recovered due to medical intervention by US inventor Stephen Ambrose, the Power Trip gig marked Johnson’s successful return to the stage.
Naturally, it has prompted global curiosity as to whether the US show would be a one-off or the potential portent to a world tour.
“It’s hard to see why these guys would opt not to keep playing,” wrote Los Angeles Times pop critic Mikael Wood in his review of the performance. “The band is simply still too good to hang it up; surely, the members — all in their 60s and 70s save for Laug, who’s 55 — recognize that that would constitute some kind of betrayal.”
For now, AC/DC is keeping its counsel; as of Monday morning, the group’s social media accounts had not acknowledged its first live performance in seven years. Its previous message was posted three days prior, wishing Johnson a happy 76th birthday.
Held at the same Californian site as the annual Coachella music festival – which AC/DC headlined in 2015, to kick off its world tour – Power Trip opened on Friday night with performances from Iron Maiden and Guns N’ Roses.
Judas Priest played alongside AC/DC on Saturday, while the final acts booked to play on Sunday were US bands Metallica and Tool.
Produced by concert promoter Goldenvoice, Power Trip was designed as a metal-edged sequel to a 2016 event named Desert Trip, whose enviable line-up featured performances from six veteran rock acts: The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who.
More Coverage
