Before Bon Scott and the Young brothers came along, The Doors were the coolest thing you could play at a party in Australia.
Jim Morrison’s poetic brooding was the soundtrack to every every sharehouse, every attempted seduction. Then AC/DC arrived and made all that mystical nonsense completely irrelevant overnight. Suddenly parties weren’t about lying on the floor contemplating your existence—they were about getting absolutely destroyed to Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
The shift wasn’t subtle. AC/DC didn’t just become popular, they became the only band that mattered. They essentially invented Australian arena rock, taking the pub rock energy of the early 70s and blowing it up to stadium scale. By the time the 80s rolled around, they’d fundamentally changed what rock music could be—louder, simpler, harder, and completely unpretentious. No poetry, no mystery, just riffs that could level a building.
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Last night’s setlist proved why they’ve maintained that stranglehold for nearly five decades. Opening with If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It) immediately established the evening’s lack of subtlety—this wasn’t going to be a nuanced experience. Back in Black, Thunderstruck, and Highway to Hell arrived soon after. Yes, Brian Johnson had a few vocal hiccups early on (he does have a curious habit of coughing directly into the mic between songs). And yeah, they kinda stuffed up the dueling guitars intro to Thunderstuck.
But when they warmed themselves up, they delivered the rest of the set with the kind of precision that comes from playing these songs thousands of times, and with the kind of enthusiasm of a band that haven’t played to a home audience in far too long.
The highlight was arguably Jailbreak, performed live for the first time since 1991.
For a band often criticised for recycling the same 12 songs forever, pulling out a deep cut like that showed they’re still capable of keeping things interesting. Angus Young’s guitar work throughout remained sharp as hell, his solos on Let There Be Rock and Whole Lotta Rosie proving that age hasn’t dulled his technical ability one bit.
The encore—TNT into For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) delivered exactly what people came for. AC/DC don’t do reinvention, they do consistency, and after 50 years they’ve earned the right to just play the hits without apology.
They’ve been dismissed as dumb, as one-dimensional, as the band for people who don’t really like music. But that criticism misses the point entirely—AC/DC figured out the formula for perfect rock music decades ago and saw no reason to mess with it.
Last night at the MCG, surrounded by 100,000 people losing their minds, it was hard to argue with that logic.
