Oh, it must have been wonderful to see this band live at this stage of their career. If there was a time machine somewhere I would go back and watch this.
Read on!
Great balls of fire
Concert review by Hugh Fielder
AC/DC
Hammersmith Odeon
AMBITIOUS THEY may have been in choosing London’s premier rock venue for their first headlining British tour, but then one thing AC/DC have never lacked is nerve.
In fact there were plenty of open spaces up in the balcony of the Hammersmith Odeon but down in the stalls it was respectably full although the crowd didn’t remain seated for more than half a minute after AC/DC’s opening number; they transformed themselves into an amorphous swaying throng at the front of the stage and remained that way until the end.
But if they’re not quite ready to fill the Hammersmith Odeon, they’ve certainly grown out of the Marquee and come a long way in the short space of time since Angus’ then unknown pearlies graced the front cover of the esteemed organ you are now clutching in your grubby mits.
They arrived at the Odeon, two thirds of the way through their `Dirty Deeds Done Cheap’ tour with the minimum of presentation. Not for them the dry ice, laser beams, mirror balls and strobe lights used by the big brothers of rock and roll. Two rows of stage lights, two spots and a black backdrop was all we got. What with that and the stacks of Marshalls across the stage it was a return to the basic essentials of rock and roll. Unabashed rock and roll with the needle never dropping below `frantic’ on the intensity scale.
At first I thought they might have trouble getting across from the wide, bare stage to the audience — a considerable change from the hot, cramped conditions of the Marquee. But I reckoned without the band’s seemingly bottomless reserves of energy and enthusiasm.
Little Angus – who looked so small on the massive stage that he almost vanished from view every time he passed by the monitors – treated the stage like a school playground, racing from side to side, up and down the side speakers and along the three promentaries from the stage to the audience. He only stopped moving at the end when he was lying flat out on the floor. Even then his feet were still pumping furiously.
Matching him for output was singer Bon Scott whose vocal chords seemed quite unaffected by their arduous schedule as he roared through ‘Live Wire’ and `She’s Got Balls’ from their first album before giving us a taste of what’s to come with ‘I’m A Problem Child’ and ‘I’ve Got Big Balls’ (another of their delightfully testicular ditties with words written large for the audience to sing along — ‘Oh I’ve Got Big Balls/I’ve got big balls/And they’re such big balls/Dirty big balls/And he’s got Big balls/ And she’s got big balls/But we’ve got the biggest balls of all’) from their forthcoming album. There’s evidence in the new songs that they’ve sharpened up their approach, but don’t get too upset — it’s still raw, bruising rock and roll all the way and exactly the sort of thing that used to come out of Marshall speakers when I was a lad (although with considerably less clarity in those days). They wound up their act (it was a short one — less than an hour — but you can’t take or deliver that kind of pressure for long) with ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’, the old R&B classic, but such was the state of my mind by that time that I was convinced that Bon introduced the number as ‘Baby Please Don’t Blow’ (!) The song seemed on the verge of ending several times but Angus, who by this time had removed his blazer and satchel and was running amok and riding piggy back on Bon, dragged it back each time and whipped himself up into yet another frenzy. He didn’t flash his bum which was just as well as the Vice Squad have been taking an unnatural interest in the group since an ‘incident’ earlier in the tour. At the end of this tour they return to their native Australia for Christmas and an American tour in the New Year. We’ll see you in the Spring lads; I don`t think we’ll forget you in the meantime.
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