 AC/DC , SECC,
Glasgow Sat 2nd Decemberfrom the Scotland on Sunday
Newspaper www.scotlandonsunday.com
AC/DC :SECC,
Glasgow
UNLIKELY
as it may seem, this hoary Scots-Australian rock band put
as many bums on seats last weekend as Robbie Williams did
about a month or so earlier. They get less than a 10th of
Williams’ publicity, yet over their 27-year career
they have sold more than 100 million albums. That’s
more than the combined sales of Oasis, Robbie Williams,
Take That and the Spice Girls. Somewhere, there are a lot
of heavy metal fans.
For the
benefit of those who didn’t spend their adolescence
in a patched denim jacket, AC/DC are the band who put the
raunch into rock. They also put a great deal of
boneheaded sexism into their lyrics but when they started
out in the Seventies that was par for the course. Not
that there has been much evolution since then.
The
basic components of an AC/DC concert have been the same
for about 20 years. Guitarist Angus Young will dress up
as a schoolboy and fiddle a bit too much with his ‘axe’.
Singer Brian Johnson will growl in a voice just
fractionally less filthy than his lyrics. When the band
play their trademark track, ‘A Whole Lotta Rosie’,
a giant inflatable stripper will rise above the backstage.
When they play any song with the word ‘Hell’ in
the title, and there are a lot, the giant statue of Angus
towering over the stage will snort dry ice and its eyes
will light up in a way supposed to suggest demonic
possession. It’s like a pantomime for kids who never
grew up.
Needless
to say, all the theatrical buffoonery is fantastic but
would be worthless were it not for the fact that the band
still make some of the most raucous music going. A
stripped-down, souped-up, bar-room boogie that has more
in common with primal rock’n’roll bands from
the Fifties than most of the current pretenders, AC/DC
sound like a drunken party falling down a flight of
stairs. Best gig of the year this far in.
By
Jonathan Trew
Pictures of
Glasgow concert
Glasgow Herald
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Stiff Upper Lip Tour Special
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well they moved on down