Gig review: AC/DC + The Pretty Reckless at Veltins Arena, Gelsenkirchen

Live review: AC/DC with The Pretty Reckless at Veltins Arena, Gelsenkirchen, Friday, May 17 2024

By STEVE MASCORD

THIS is not quite the AC/DC you remember. The braggadocio and athleticism are gone, replaced in the spotlight by the singular towering talent of Angus Young as a guitarist and performer.

And your reviewer uses the word ‘towering’ advisedly. The stage these giants strode in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on Friday night was the tallest I have ever seen. So tall, in fact, that with a coveted piece of rail in the front row of a 65,000-capacity indoor stadium, I could not see any member of the band for 85 percent of the show.

Alas, my camera acted as a periscope. I was so close I could hear singer Brian Johnson talk to Angus between songs via a monitor a metre away. But I watched the show on the 15-metre high screen directly before me and the viewfinder of my Lumix.

Angus dropped by a few times, thankfully. Brian was not sighted stage left and if you know anything about the job descriptions of AC/DC’s bass player and rhythm guitarist, you’d have no questions as to the whereabouts of Stevie Young or tonight’s debutant, Chris Chaney.

Your trusty correspondent was fortunate enough to stand in a similar position on a similar occasion in 2015 at Coachella for the band’s first show in six years. Friday was their second in seven. Angus was 60 then; he is now 69. Brian was 67, now 76. Those are big years in the aging of human beings.

That night – with the benefit of a stage not constructed for people watching from half a mile away – I marvelled that Angus’s knees were bleeding. Like a sportsman playing the first pre-season game, he was building up calluses on them after a long period of inactively. On Friday Angus’ knees didn’t bleed because he was never on them. This was only the second occasion, after all, he had played live with grey hair.

Brian does not swing from that giant bell anymore. I could hear him breathing heavily between songs. My friends in the stands said that the entire set would go black until he raised an arm, an apparent signal that the production would switch on again for another song.

Early, ‘Beano’s’ voice was thin and raspy and even half-spoke some lyrics.

But what AC/DC may now lack in unrefined virility and physical abandon they compensate for pacing, nuance, a sense of celebration and the spotlight on Angus Young’s virtuosity.

This was the setlist from PowerTrip and the one that conceivably will not be altered during the next four months playing every fourth day throughout Europe.

In previous years sometimes you would feel pummelled two thirds of the way through an AC/DC set, overly familiar songs with precious little shade to counter the light (or vice versa depending on how you think of their music) leaving one a little numb before the crowd-pleasing finale.

There was no such dip on Friday because of the nature of the set and the unfancy elegance of the delivery. The highlights were not the predictable ones. Angus’ beguiling playing on “Stiff Upper Lip” was more devilish than anything on the Hell-themed ditties; “High Voltage” was updated by a midsection that delivered it from 1970s schoolhall romp to something a little more substantial; the otherwise dour Chaney’s heart looked like it might explode as he realised he was playing “Riff Raff” WITH AC/DC in front of 50,000 people.

By this stage, Johnson’s voice had found some match fitness. He was not the growling howler of yore but nor was he a croaking septuagenarian.

In the early minutes of the show, the lingering question was whether a band that has traded on muscle could hold the attention of a drunkien working class stadium with sinew and experience instead. It took a while for them to get there, to be completely honest.

But by the time the encore of “TNT” and “For Those About To Rock” had been iced by (rather alarming) indoor fireworks, Ackadacka had turned a common insult hurled at their ilk on its head. Ten of the first 12 songs had been Brian Johnson era, 10 of the last 12 had been from Bon Scott’s time as frontman.

The journey from Burwood to here – millions of euros in gate receipts and merch paid by 50,000 Germans who felt a personal connection to this 69-year-old in a school uniform and 76-year-old in a flatcap – felt like a small miracle. Perhaps these were the first steps on a final lap of honour.

The insult is that bands decline into tribute acts. But sometimes great artists are fallible, no matter how populist they profess to be. Their imitators, meanwhile, have the objectivity they lack, playing the songs everyone wants to hear.

In this sense, AC/DC in 2024 – with grey hair, deep breaths at intervals and two American hired guns – have not descended to being a tribute act. They’ve ascended to it.

PS: The Pretty Reckless did about as well as any support band for AC/DC could manage. They play hard rock that is very, very different and the crowd like them. That’s about all I can say really. The samples played before many of the songs sounded incongruous for such a setting but that may be just down the age of the listener.

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