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AC/DC Rock London
Aussie rockers sound bell at Hammersmith Apollo
Veteran rockers AC/DC played a high-octane performance in front of 5,000 ticket-holders in London to celebrate the opening of the Hammersmith Apollo, formerly known as the Hammersmith Odeon. The band had not played the venue in twenty-three years, and, in recognition, tickets were sold at 1982 prices: ten pounds ($16.00).
The tickets were sold, however, using modern technology, as fans had to log onto the Carling Web site (the brewing company owns the venue) to get them, and all sold in less than four minutes.
"It was the first place we played when we came out of Australia," explained lead guitarist Angus Young before the show. "It was really from here that we were discovered. We were signed out of here, and from here it got us all over Europe and to America."
Though it was the band's smallest U.K. gig in seventeen years, no expense was spared on the stage set: a giant bell was lowered for "Hells Bells" and cannons were wheeled out before "For Those About to Rock," which closed the ninety minute set.
As well as being where David Bowie performed Ziggy Stardust for the last time, the venue has been the launch pad of live albums by Motorhead, Ted Nugent, Twisted Sister, Kate Bush and Rick Wakeman. On this night, members of Primal Scream, Prodigy's Keith Flint and Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor were in attendance.
"The first time we headlined here Bon (late singer Scott) decided to get a tube to the gig rather than a car so he came along with all the fans from the train," said guitarist Malcom Young. "[When] he got here, he couldn't get in! [There] in front of the Hammersmith Odeon is Bon with all his fans trying to get in. He [finally] had to buy a ticket!"
GIANLUCA TRAMONTANA
www.rollingstone.com
Back in black on the Highway to Hell
CRAIG McLEAN
Cannon to the left of me, cannon to the right. Bare boobs over there, bare boobs over here. Gnarly thirtysomething Viking blokes making the devil sign. A man nearly 50, dressed like a schoolboy. It can all mean only one thing - AC/DC are back.
On Tuesday night the Scots/Aussie/Geordie heavy metal stalwarts played the Carling Apollo in Hammersmith, west London. It was their smallest venue in years, their appearance facilitated by the beer brand which runs the theatre.
The 4,000 tickets - cost pegged at ten quid, the price you would have paid the last time AC/DC were in Hammersmith back in 1980 - sold out in a rocktastic four minutes. Roughly four minutes after that, they were going for two grand on eBay.
I was stupidly excited. A cassette copy of the live If You Want Blood You’ve Got It was the first album I bought. For Those About to Rock was in my inaugural batch of vinyl purchases, snagged for the price of four Commando books at the closing-down sale at Dundee’s I&N Records somewhere around 1981. And there was more, classic single after classic single, often concerning themselves with hell, blood and loose wimmin’. What more could a 13-year-old boy want? And talk about tough ... Bon Scott had boozed himself to death, choking on his own vomit. Five - five - months later, AC/DC reappeared, not just with an excellent new singer but also possibly their best album, Back In Black. Match that, The Libertines.
Long before our babysitter popped my gig cherry by taking me to see Saxon at the Caird Hall, the crowd roars on If You Want Blood were a seductive tickle from a dangerous, thrilling, post-adolescent world. They proved that there was life beyond Tayside.
Courtesy of AC/DC’s The Jack, I knew what sexually transmitted diseases were before I knew what sex was. Let There Be Rock proved conclusively that heavy metal was of divine provenance (and not the refuge of hormonal social rejects from the provinces).
"Du-du-dun du-dun du-du - ANGUS! - Du-du-dun du-dun du-du - ANGUS!": Whole Lotta Rosie invested my wee bruv’s teuchter name with a hitherto unimagined heroism. I knew all the words by heart, including the baffling vital statistics section ("42-39-56!"), only later appreciating - and applauding - the sentiments of this ode to the larger lady.
Socially, AC/DC were a friend, too. At Boys Brigade discos, the sheer transporting power of Highway to Hell and Touch Too Much were enough to distract me from the fact that I alone was playing air-guitar left-handed.
My metal compadres on Tuesday - a Daily Mail political journalist and a software programmer - had similar tales to tell. The former, a Northern Irish protestant, had risked the wrath of the minister with his purchase of Highway to Hell, featuring as it did an image of guitarist Angus Young dressed like the devil. The latter had seen AC/DC at Castle Donnington in the good/bad old days of urine showers, and lived to tell the tale. He still had the first copy of Kerrang! in his mum’s loft, with its centrespread of Angus in full schoolboy regalia.
We were gimpy old men now, but we acted like schoolboys ourselves again, giggling and whooping, when the lights dimmed and the band appeared. The two-high wall of 16 Marshall stacks positively throbbed with promise.
Then the familiar riffs started coming: Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be, Back In Black, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Rock’n’Roll Damnation.
Johnson is burlier these days, a Tyneside stevedore crossed with a barrel, baldness-concealing bunnet permanently affixed. But the Young brothers are as reassuringly Dorian Gray-ish as the songs. Little Malcom, on rhythm guitar and sweaty vest, nodded along vigorously like a hairy-arsed Gollum, anchoring the band’s solid-blues boogie with Stakhanovite rigour.
Wee Angus patrolled the stage-front in that peculiar a-rhythmic duck-walk, tie a-flapping, shorts a-billowing, conjuring epic, squealing curlicues from his instrument. Inventor of the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it maxim, he did the striptease to The Jack that he’s been doing for over two decades, finally showing us a Union Jack bloomers-clad bottom. For Hell’s Bells, they lowered a giant metal-effect bell. It bonged, brilliantly, like something from Spinal Tap. Lest we forget, this is the rock of ages. And, like time, it cannot be stopped.
For the closing For Those About to Rock, the tarpaulins at the back of the stage went the way of two lady fans’ bras, whipped off to reveal four cannons. They boomed and boomed again. I can’t imagine The Darkness being so imaginative, or their female fans being so, er, moved.
We might have been dressed like stiffs, flapping hair but a distant memory, sewn-on patches and cut-off denim long gone. But lyrics we hadn’t yelled for 20 years had come flooding back, burned in the memory like the rock times table.
AC/DC: back in black, still not in grey.
www.news.scotsman.com
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well they moved on down