Of all the music acts that experienced their commercial peak sometime during the 20th century, there are approximately 15 (as of late March 2025) that have over 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Members of this club of timeless icons include Elton John, Queen, The Beatles, Nirvana and Madonna. Also among them, with 31.9 million as I’m writing this, is the Australian hard-rocking, head-banging, heart pounding power chord machine that is AC/DC. My suspicion that this number was an indicator of how beloved they are by all ages was very much confirmed at the opening show of their “POWER UP” North American Tour in Minneapolis on Thursday, April 10th, their first US show in almost a decade. From little kids to college students, Gen Xers, the elderly and everything in between, people from all walks of happily volunteered to have their socks rocked off by a band with 50 years of experience in doing just that, and they still do not disappoint.
When a band takes on a stadium tour in their twilight years, it’s easy to imagine that they’re doing it just for the paycheck. And when you’re a legend and can put a name like “AC/DC” on the ticket, people will flock by the tens of thousands and enjoy the show regardless of how well you actually perform. But that’s clearly not how this band operates. The hype actually started the day before the show with the appearance of the “High Voltage Dive Bar” pop-up experience at a local event venue. I wasn’t able to attend, but my secondhand understanding is it’s like the band’s traveling museum, complete with iconic props and a gift shop, and I only heard good things about it. By showtime, the excitement of the crowd was palpable.
Singer Brian Johnson and lead guitarist/founding member Angus Young, 77 and 70 respectively, were the stars of the show; the only ones that moved around the stage and at least one video board camera on each of them at any given time, they still know how to make the most of the spotlight. Johnson, who only just returned to the band 18 months ago after stepping away for several years due health issues, marched around on stage with a joyful grin that was contradictory to the dark and scary lyrics he was singing in the absolute best way. Unsurprisingly he needed the breaks between songs to be slightly longer than normal and singing may not be as fierce as it used to be, but that’s nothing to hold against him and he served his role as conductor of the rock n’ roll train brilliantly.
For Angus Young on the other hand, the only sign that he’d recently become a septuagenarian was his disheveled white hair. I don’t have many live rock guitar performances under my belt, but it is a list that includes Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Mick Mars of Motley Crue, C.C. DeVille of Poison and the E Street Band trio of Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren. And maybe this is recency bias, but for me, Young trumps them all in terms of pure ability and is up there with the greatest players ever. If you were there and his iconic contributions to smashes like “Shoot to Thrill”, “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “T.N.T.” didn’t convince you of this, then the extended guitar solo to close out “Let There Be Rock” and the show’s main set, which was possibly 20 minutes long but I was so engrossed that I didn’t realize time was passing at all, certainly did. His trademark schoolboy outfit may have slowly disintegrated as the night went on, but his ability to blow the doors off of US Bank Stadium with just a guitar never wavered.
One more thing I want to quickly address is the critical decision every attendee of an AC/DC concert has to make and is a topic of much discussion online: to wear earplugs or not to wear earplugs? Anyone I’ve ever talked to about seeing the band live says it’s the loudest show they’ve ever seen, and I don’t find that hard to believe. Furthermore, any time you find a post on r/ACDC or any other forum related to the band that asks, “This is my first AC/DC show, what should I expect?” half of the replies mention the need for earplugs. A few songs into the show on Thursday, even though I hadn’t seen anyone around me using them, I decided to give earplugs a try; nothing fancy, just basic orange foam plugs. And it wasn’t because I felt like my ears were hurting or anything, but more so that it was so loud that the music sounded somewhat distorted. Earplugs changed all of that and the band sounded great from that point on, the only trade off being that I couldn’t hear Brian Johnson quite as well but enough to enjoy his performance. Overall, my verdict is suggesting them to any future AC/DC concertgoers, both for the well-being of your ears and for getting the most out of the music.
For all the bellowing I’ve done about my experience at the show, the most important part of this story is the experience of the person I attended with. My mother has been a fan of rock and roll her whole life and seen many incredible shows, but the one band she’d never caught, until Thursday, was AC/DC. She couldn’t help but shed tears of joy when we bought the tickets back in December, and they returned as the band kicked into their opener, “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)”. I joked with her that she was the first person to cry at an AC/DC concert, and while that’s certainly not true, it speaks to the power of music and the power of this band. For having a murder’s row of songs about… well, murder, as well as hell, Satan, perversion, drinking and every other sin and force of evil in the book, they bring a lot of people a lot of happiness, and that’s something to salute.
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