from the newt’s collection
By Steve Newton
When it comes to starting rumours about AC/DC, I’m the king.
Back in August of 2018 I was the first to report that Phil Rudd and Stevie Young had been spotted in Vancouver, leading to speculation that Rudd has rejoined the band to record another album.
Shortly after I followed that up with photographic proof that Rudd was indeed here–along with Big Bad Brian Johnson–and they were hanging out at Warehouse Studios!
The internet exploded with the news, and two years later my rumour-starting capabilities were validated when AC/DC released its latest album, the Vancouver-made Power Up.
Yesterday another rumour about the Aussie earbusters was circulating madly, but that one wasn’t started by me. Someone had noticed that two huge stadiums in the States were holding press conferences this morning to make big announcements, and all the hardcore AC/DC freaks latched on to the possibility that their elderly heroes were gonna tour again.
I mean it makes sense. Do you realize how many small Caribbean islands the band will be able to purchase outright with the proceeds from tour T-shirt sales alone?
Anyway, turns out it was only stadium concerts by Billy Joel–and Billy Joel & Sting, and Billy Joel & Stevie Nicks–that were announced. So no big whoop. The 28-page “Will AC/DC tour in 2023/2024?” thread on the acdcfans.net website continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
But for those who have never seen AC/DC live–or can’t wait to experience them again–here’s five reviews that I wrote during a 20-year span, from 1988 to 2008.
God bless AC/DC, 2024 stadium tour or not.
June 13, 1988, BC Place Stadium, Vancouver
The would-be gatecrashers throwing rocks and bottles outside B.C. Place last Monday night (June 13) may have thought they were having fun, but if they’d had any sense at all they would have saved those bottles, cashed them in, and collected enough money for a ticket to get inside.
That’s where the real fun was happening–the kind of deafening good time that only rock’s premier boogie-metal band, AC/DC, can deliver.
No, lead guitarist Angus Young was not wearing long pants. And no, he didn’t have a crewcut. He hasn’t been working out at the gym either. The heart and soul of the band was the same scrawny, long-haired demon in schoolboy shorts that his fans idolize and pay $20 for life-size posters of. They wouldn’t have it any other way.
Young opened the show by leaping from a missile-shaped device for “Heatseeker”, one of only two tunes the band played from its latest album, Blow Up Your Video. It was their old hits that the Aussie fivesome relied upon to get the crowd all riled up, and rile them they did.
During the second tune, “Shoot to Thrill”, dozens of fans charged the floor from the bleachers, hoping to get closer to their heroes. Most of them made it past the skimpy security, but the poor unlucky ones who got caught were treated to a headlock or two and dragged kicking and screaming away.
Before long the entire floor was covered with a seething mass of fist-thrusting bodies, and the security guys gave up their posts and took to keeping fans away from the sound- and light-system enclosure on the floor. One thing you don’t want to do is deprive 20,000-plus AC/DC fans of the electricity they’re thriving on by having the power supply disrupted.
Then you’d really be talkin’ trouble.
With steel-throated screamer Brian Johnson roaming the stage like a brawny thug in sleeveless denim jacket and cloth cap, the band belted its way through songs of sex (“You Shook Me All Night Long”, “The Jack”), rock ‘n’ roll (“Let There Be Rock”, “That’s the Way I Wanna Rock and Roll”), and the place you might end up if you have too much of both (“Highway to Hell”, “Hell’s Bells”).
Angus did his obligatory mooning of the crowd on “Jailbreak”–a quick down-and-up of the shorts that you’d have missed if you blinked–before playing a solo on his back while his kicking little legs spun him around in a circle.
For their last song–the 16th in an almost two-hour show–the band brought out two long-barrelled cannons for a 21-gun salute on “For Those About to Rock”.
Talk about going out with a bang.
January 11 and 12, 1991, Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver
So what’s a devoted rock critic to do when one of the genre’s most potent acts hits town for two back-to-back, sold-out shows? Does he pick one night and hope to hell it’s the best one?
Not likely.
He checks ’em both out, of course.
Talk about journalistic integrity! Talk about hard-rock greed!
As it turns out, there were a couple of minor differences between AC/DC’s Friday and Saturday (January 11 and 12) shows at the Pacific Coliseum. The crowd threw more firecrackers and clothing on stage the second night, and sang along more exuberantly to the choruses of “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”.
And the band took a lot longer between tunes on Saturday, which slowed the rhythm of things down a bit.
But the crowd appeared to behave itself both nights—as far as I could see there weren’t any fights among the typically volatile AC/DC fans. Maybe all the trouble-makers who took part in the gatecrashing, bottle-throwing riot that occurred the last time AC/DC played here—at B.C. Place Stadium in ’88—have grown up since then.
The setlists were exactly the same each night: the band started the show off on a high note with the recent “Thunderstruck”, and finished it with several cannon blasts on the metal anthem “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”.
The stage—with ramps on either side for lead guitarist Angus Young to scamper up and roll around on—was outlined with a string of bead-like red lights and backed by a stack of metal cages like the ones occupied by head-banging kids in the “Thunderstruck” vid.
A huge bell with the band’s logo emblazoned on it was rung for the intro to “Hell’s Bells”, and hundreds of phony bills were dropped onto the frenzied floor crowd during the band’s latest single, “Moneytalks”.
An enormous horned head and a hand clutching a pointy tail were inflated behind the drum kit for the tune that garnered the best response both nights, “Highway to Hell”.
Young’s undying energy and guitar prowess were startling, Brian Johnson’s throaty growl hung in there, and the rhythm section was a churning, relentless machine. Former Firm member Chris Slade had the best drum sound I’ve ever heard in the Coliseum, and the guitar onslaught—while loud enough to cause earthquakes—came through clean and clear.
In the metal realm, it doesn’t get any better than that.
February 9, 1996, GM Place, Vancouver
I’ve been going to AC/DC concerts for almost 20 years now—which either gives me bragging rights or is a severe embarrassment, depending on your musical tastes. Actually, at the very first AC/DC gig I went to, I missed the group’s performance—it was opening for Aerosmith and I arrived late—but I still remember the wiped-out look in the eyes of one of my teenage buddies who’d gotten there in time to see the Bon Scott–led quintet blast through tunes from its new Powerage LP.
“They’re better than Aerosmith!” he clamoured, excited and spent after a sweat-soaked visit to the packed Pacific Coliseum floor. I scoffed at that insane idea and headed off to find my seat, mind aglow at the prospect of hearing personal-fave tunes like “Mama Kin” and “Same Old Song and Dance”.
Aerosmith sucked. The “Toxic Twins” were intoxicated and couldn’t play worth beans. Considering Bon Scott’s fatal predilection for booze, maybe he’d been wasted too, but AC/DC’s primitive song structures make its tunes a lot easier to pull off after a dozen or two beers.
At any rate, to this day I still kick myself for not getting to the old rink a half hour earlier and experiencing the godfathers of boogie-metal in their prime. And—as I found out at GM Place on Friday (February 9)—going to an AC/DC concert in ’96 doesn’t help make up for that formidable faux pas in the least.
Not that main man Angus Young and iron-lunged Bon Scott replacement Brian Johnson don’t work hard to give their devoted fans the best in arena-rock showmanship. There was a huge “wrecking ball” that dangled over the stage and “destroyed” a cement-wall facade at the start of the show and that Johnson straddled and rode like a true hooligan later on.
There was the even bigger bell that Johnson swung from during the foreboding intro to “Hell’s Bells”. For his part, Young was his typical bundle of manic energy, slowing down just long enough to pull off a comical striptease that displayed first his Canadian flag–covered undies and then the crack of his pasty-white butt.
In light of AC/DC’s juvenile onstage antics, it helps if you can devolve to a caveman mentality somewhat and just give yourself up to the mind-numbing blast of the raunchy, hook-filled tunes. The problem these days is that AC/DC can’t come up with raunchy, hook-filled tunes any more.
Whenever the band culled tracks from its current Ballbreaker CD, the show got real dull; tunes like “Cover You in Oil” and “Boogieman” are just plain boring, and no amount of instrumental dexterity on Young’s part could help.
Almost as disparaging as the lack of decent new material was the awful sound at GM Place. I don’t know if it was the fault of AC/DC’s technical crew or if the venue’s much-ballyhooed “state-of-the-art” sound system is a piece of crap, but I was thoroughly disgusted with the muddled racket.
The last time AC/DC played here, a few years back at the Coliseum, the sound was just as loud but incredibly crisp and clear. This time around, Johnson’s boisterous claim that “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” was easily argued.
Still, even though they sounded as if they were blaring from a cheapjack boom box with no bass control, raunchy gems like “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” got my jaded old noggin bobbing along to their gritty strains.
And the impressive encore delivered the inevitable classic, “Highway to Hell”, during which Young donned devilish horns and proved himself a naughty little schoolboy by sticking his guitar neck out from between Johnson’s spread legs.
The show ended with a bang—a few, actually—as several cannons were rolled out to accommodate the band’s trusty concert standby, “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”. Strangely enough, the deafening blasts of those cannons featured better tone and resonance than anything else I heard all night.
April 22, 2001, Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver
There are three things that are inevitable in this world: death, taxes, and a ringing in your ears after seeing AC/DC.
As I write this review, it’s been two hours since the Aussie rockers left the Coliseum stage in a flurry of golden confetti, and the sirens inside my head threaten to drown out the hum of my PowerMac. Serves me right for not using the protective earplugs I took along as a precaution.
When the band rolled out six cannons to blast home “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”, it should have been the cue to insert the little foam cylinders left over from my slave-driven days as a cannery worker.
Ah well, it was all worth it. Last Sunday (April 22) I got to see lead guitarist Angus Young lie down inside a rising platform and use his scrabbling little legs to propel himself around in a circle during “Let There Be Rock”.
I got to see lead vocalist Brian Johnson take a running leap at a rope hanging from a huge bell, then ride it over the crowd while the intro to “Hell’s Bells” clanged away.
And I got to see a few females in the crowd flash their breasts on the big video screens while the band rolled out its skanky ode to gonorrhea, “The Jack”.
In other words, I got to see everything that you normally see at an AC/DC show.
There were no surprises at all, which was okay, because just a few nights prior I’d been surprised by another ’70s-rock icon, and not pleasantly. After seeing the once-vital Johnny Winter play the Commodore as if he was on his deathbed, it was encouraging to watch skinny old Angus tear it up with the energy of a rowdy schoolboy.
He even got the crowd of 11,000-plus cheering for a glimpse of his bony butt during the saucy striptease that enlivened “Bad Boy Boogie”.
They didn’t get one, though, because when Young bent over and yanked down his green shorts, all he revealed was a pair of white undies festooned with red maple leaves.
What a fooler!
AC/DC stuck with its practice of offering an equal number of tunes from the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson eras, which meant serious plundering of Highway to Hell and Back in Black, respectively. The band only played two songs from its latest album, Stiff Upper Lip, which was more than enough, and totally ignored its 1978 masterwork Powerage.
After the show, at a meet-and-greet backstage, I pointed that out to rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, who seemed slightly confounded by the oversight himself.
“That’s my favourite album, too,” he claimed while signing the insert from my Powerage CD. “That’s the real deal, right there.”
November 28, 2008, GM Place, Vancouver
Three seconds after I picked up my AC/DC tickets at GM Place on Friday (November 28), some dude waving a huge wad of cash offered me $400 apiece for them, then quickly upped the price to $450 when he saw where the primo seats were.
Since they were reviewer comps, I stood to make a cool $900 out of the deal, which is a tad more than I bring in most nights. Nine hundred smackers could translate to a mortgage payment and change, a nice addition to the kids’ college fund, or-better yet-a cherry Gibson SG, just like Angus Young’s!
I’d seen AC/DC in concert five times before, so how hard would it be to cobble together a fake review? Too easy, actually, since every AC/DC show is basically the same.
Before I could give in to the lure of easy money, though, something made me reject the scalper and walk away. Call it journalistic integrity. Or call it my wife standing there, looking unimpressed at the thought of not seeing the Aussie legends for the first time.
When we made it through the doors and onto the Garage concourse, the first thing that caught my eye was the blinking red devil-horns people had on their heads. They sold for 15 bucks at the AC/DC merch tables, and were everywhere.
I had lots of time to gaze at them, because it took forever to wend our way through the sold-out crowd and get to our seats. If there’s two things AC/DC fans adore, it’s T-shirts and beer, and the spillover from lineups for both resulted in serious human gridlock.
By the time we planted our butts in Section 117, Row 5, Seats 7 and 8, opening band the Answer had finished its half-hour set and people were gearing up for the headliner, gleefully high-fiving each other and hollering “AC-fucking-DC”. Before long, the lights went down and a cartoon of a speeding train flashed on the four huge video screens suspended above and beside the stage.
As it careened along the tracks, cartoon depictions of AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson and a satanic, pointy-tailed Young were shown being serviced and stroked by various animated hotties, who eventually commandeered the choo-choo and caused it to “crash” into the back of the actual stage.
At that point a full-scale replica of the locomotive appeared on the stage, and would remain there as the centrepiece for a 20-song set that started with the recent hit “Rock N Roll Train” and ended with 1981’s “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”.
As is always the case at an AC/DC show, the greatest audience response came for the songs it recorded with singer Bon Scott, who fronted the band from 1974 until his booze-related death in 1980. Sure, Johnson-era gems like “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” never fail to rile fans up, but not to the same degree as “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, “T.N.T.”, or “Highway to Hell”. And Young always puts on his wildest performances while recreating the sleaziest Scott-sung songs from the ’70s.
During the 1976 ode to gonorrhea “The Jack”, Young pulled off his patented striptease act, making one wonder if there’s anything more pathetic than 16,000-plus people clamouring to see the naked butt of a skinny, balding, 53-year-old man.
When the moment came for his traditional mooning of the crowd, though, Young tugged his schoolboy shorts down to reveal only a flashy pair of AC/DC underpants. That’s not the type of thing you’d pay $450 for.
The show’s other props included the huge bell that Johnson swung from during “Hells Bells” and-in a tip of the hat to the Rolling Stones-an enormous inflatable ’ho that straddled the train during “Whole Lotta Rosie”.
I’m guessing that hidden behind the row of Marshall cabinets that spanned the stage were several roadies who simultaneously jiggled the huge rubber skank to make it look like she was tapping her foot.
I’m also guessing that the tingling sensations emanating from the back of my skull while I took in that sight were the death throes of some brain cells I’m in dire need of.
Oh well, it’s only rock ’n’ roll.
To hear the full audio of my interview with AC/DC’s Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson from 1983 subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 400 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with the legends of rock since 1982.
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