AC/DC's Angus Young performs on stage as part of their "Power Up Tour" in the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam, on June 5, 2024. (Photo by Marcel Krijgsman / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT (Photo by MARCEL KRIJGSMAN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images) ac/dc
Historic: Blistering gig at Croke Park” Dublin proves Aussie rockers are the greatest” Jones’ Road nightmare…
Despite losing important members in recent years, the AC/DC performance in Dublin demonstrated their continued ability to put on an incredible display.
Imagine yourself a musician at Dublin’s Croke Park, taking in AC/DC. Nobody could ever match, or get within an ass’s roar of, what was going on Saturday night on Jones’ Road, so when the titanic opener “If You Want Blood (You Got It)” began, they must have had a dark moment of realization and wondered if that offer of an office job still stood.
The setlist, were I to repeat it, would make unfortunates who weren’t there weep with regret. The diminutive Angus Young, sporting a suitably green variation on his standard school-boy outfit, battled with his Gibson SG like a man wrestling a particularly angry alligator. From it he spat riffs so lean it’s as if they’d spent forty days and nights in the desert resisting temptation.
Giving him a run for his money was the perma-grinning Brian Johnson, howling like a man possessed. His ‘choreography’ consists of a lot of pointing and nodding, and the slightly inebriated strut of a man approaching the podium after unexpectedly winning a spot-prize. He kept the inter-song patter to a minimum — there was something about Dublin being the best place in the world — but that was because he had work to do. The other three musicians, replacements for retired and fallen comrades, were as commendably tight as a bend on a mountain road.
The crowd at Croke Park were nearly as great as the band. Extra kudos to the heroes utilising the space behind the merch stand to throw shapes even though it restricted their view for blessed were those who could not see yet still believed. The marketing genius who came up with the flashing devil horns also deserves a raise as they provided a spectacular effect on the heads of the audience as the sun went down.
AC/DC didn’t bother too much with electronic jiggery pokery – the flames on the screen during ‘Shot Down In Flames’ looked like something your Da might cook up in PowerPoint -although they did, of course, bring out the bell for ‘Hell’s Bells’ and actual cannons during ‘For Those About To Rock’.
Who needs such A/V trifles when you have the squiggly kick of ‘Thunderstruck’ to induce conniptions, or a ‘Dirty Deeds’ filthier than a mechanic’s rag, or the thousand-miles-an-hour anarchy of ‘Let There Be Rock’, or – Good Lord! – the monumental riff of ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’ which the UN should repeatedly blast into space to scare off any passing alien horde?
OK, the extended solo guitar section went on a bit, but who are we to reason why when he is Angus and we are not? His duckwalk during an elemental ‘Riff Raff’, and a stadium making enough noise during ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ to have God wondering what all that racket was about could make a rocker out of the Pope. AC/DC are the greatest.
