The heat in the desert was 90 degrees or more as the little guy in the schoolboy uniform led his band out on to the stage. It was October 7, 2023, and at the Power Trip festival in Indio, California, an audience of 80,000 was witnessing the return of arguably the greatest and assuredly the ballsiest rock’n’roll band of them all.
It had been seven long years since AC/DC had played live, and for the fans gathered at Power Trip a sense of anticipation was mixed with trepidation. So much was riding on this show.
Singer Brian Johnson had turned seventy-five just three days earlier, and hadn’t performed with the band since he was forced to step down from the Rock Or Bust tour in 2016 after suffering ear damage that threatened to render him deaf. This was AC/DC’s first show with new drummer Matt Laug, and the last with bassist Cliff Williams, who’d held down that bottom end since 1977. On rhythm guitar, Stevie Young had already proved he could bang out those riffs with pick-splintering ferocity, just like his uncle Malcolm had done for so long. As for Angus Young, the little guy on lead guitar, he’d always said that he’d quit if he couldn’t play the fast-fingered intro to Thunderstruck any more. But the clock was ticking. The eternal schoolboy, famed for his manic on-stage antics, was now pushing 70.
Even with the sun sinking low, it was like a furnace out there. “It was brutal,” recalls Kurt Squiers, host of the long-running podcast AC/DC Beyond The Thunder. “I was feeling pretty exhausted just sitting there in the grandstand, sweating my ass off. And I’m fifty-five, not seventy-five. I was thinking: ‘How is Brian gonna do this?’ I really didn’t think he was gonna make it through the show.”
As AC/DC walked out, bathed in red light, the first surprise came with the opening song. Many times in the past they’d begin with something from their latest album. Occasionally they’d kick off with a classic like You Shook Me All Night Long. But this time they went with a deep cut, If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It). And as Angus stood centre stage cranking out the staccato riff, another surprise: the long hair flowing from under his velvet cap was now as white as snow.
The band locked in to a heavy groove. The audience bounced. And as Johnson’s rasping voice cut through - ‘We got what you want, and you got the lust!’ - Squiers had his fists in the air. “It was awesome,” he says now.
What AC/DC delivered at Power Trip was a marathon 24-song set stacked with deathless rock classics, and with a few more surprises thrown in. From the early days in the 70s, those great songs that Bon Scott used to sing with them: . From the 80s, 90s and beyond, their best stuff with. From the latest album, for the very first time in concert, and . And from deep in the catalogue, for the true AC/DC connoisseur: , .
