Whole lotta rockin'
Andrew Perry reviews AC/DC at the Hammersmith Apollo
Here, after the odd sneak preview, was the official re-opening of the Hammersmith Apollo, now minus the seats downstairs. Connections were still rife with the venue's distant past as the Odeon, though - the jaw-dropping Art Deco hall, the ghastly pink paint job and, of course, the headliners. AC/DC were just the kind of heavy-metal act which made the venue's name in the late Seventies.
To underline the faintly silly notion of the stadium-filling "Acca-Dacca" playing in such bijou environs, tickets were pegged at the old-school price of £10. Little wonder that they sold out in four minutes, and that an atmosphere of rare jubilation prevailed when the Aussie rockers blasted out the opening chords of Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be.
Although the audience greeted them with the "devil's horns" hand gesture and, in some cases, flashing devil's horns headsets, there was not much diabolical about today's AC/DC, except, in a less positive sense, for their frontman. Brian Johnson became the band's singer in 1980, and yet has never quite filled the shoes of his predecessor, the hard-living, convincingly macho Bon Scott. Johnson, a cuddly, cap-wearing Geordie, screeched like Gazza doing a karaoke Robert Plant.
Fortunately, taking AC/DC seriously was never part of their well-honed equation - which, after all, hinges on a guitarist, now middle-aged, dressed as a schoolboy. As Johnson stepped aside, frequently grimacing at all the work he wasn't putting in, it was abundantly clear that the star of the show was Angus Young.
The crunching simplicity of Young's riffs have made these rockers palatable to successive generations, so it was fitting that he should do all the crowd-pleasing. During The Jack (a blues about VD), he stripped to a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts, and then took centre stage as a gigantic bell descended for Hell's Bells.
And the hits flowed: You Shook Me All Night Long, TNT, Whole Lotta Rosie, Let There Be Rock, Highway to Hell and, finally, For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).
At the last, few present were surprised to see two giant tarpaulins slip away onstage, revealing AC/DC's famous cannons, which duly made an earth-shattering din. Fingers in ears, one had to concede that the house had been truly, and memorably, rocked.
www.telegraph.co.uk
well they moved on down