221. AC/DC

Wembley Stadium

3 July 2024

There are gigs where you just know it’s the last roll of the rock ’n’ roll dice, the last time this band might grace a stage. That’s why me and a friend found ourselves on a muggy Wednesday night at Wembley Stadium, surrounded by 80,000 beer-sloshing disciples, waiting for AC/DC, the world’s loudest pension scheme, to remind us how rock was supposed to feel.

Let’s be honest: no one expected this tour to happen. The band are pushing ages that should come with a stern doctor’s warning, yet here they were: Angus Young, still in his schoolboy uniform and Brian Johnson, the Geordie thunder god, reinstated after years of deafness, doubt and dodgy headlines. This was, unmistakably, the end of the line, the final lap around the thunderstruck track.

As the lights dimmed, a jet engine roar tore through the stadium, and then the massive bell from “Hells Bells” clanged. The band launched into “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” and within seconds, 80,000 fists were in the air and the fella beside me was wearing most of someone’s Carling.

The thing about AC/DC is that subtlety has never been on the setlist. There’s no reinvention here, no ironic self-awareness, no “reimagined acoustic version.” What you get, and what you want, is two hours of meat-and-potatoes rock delivered with Napoleonic discipline. Angus duck-walked across the stage like a possessed metronome, still somehow managing to pull off that immortal solo-face combo of ecstasy and mild electrocution. Johnson, meanwhile, screamed every lyric like he was trying to shout down death itself, which, given his medical history, he might well have been.

They ripped through “Back in Black,” “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “Thunderstruck,” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” with an energy that made you forget, briefly, that half the band probably takes a statin before bed. The riffs were eternal and the grooves unstoppable.

Then came “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”. The cannons fired, the crowd roared, and Wembley trembled as Johnson bellowed that immortal refrain like a sermon from the Book of Riff. When the final note died, Angus stood alone, sweat-soaked and triumphant, grinning like a schoolboy who’s just set fire to the chemistry lab. The crowd, 80,000 strong, hoarse, delirious, half-deaf, erupted. It was glorious. It was ridiculous. It was AC/DC.

As we shuffled out into the night, we both knew we’d just witnessed the end of something. The last stand of rock’s greatest riff merchants. A final, thunderous farewell from a band that never learned the meaning of “turn it down.”