THE POWER AND THE GLORY
It was, as Angus Young recalled it, “the magic show”, and what came out of it was one of the greatest live albums of all time. When AC/DC played at Glasgow Apollo on April 30, 1978, they were flying. The album they had just recorded, Powerage, was their best yet, hard rock’n’roll so gritty and ballsy that it would make Keith Richards a fan. As a live act, AC/DC were electrifying. And in Glasgow there was a deep connection between this band and their audience.
Back in 1973, AC/DC had formed on the other side of the world, in Sydney, Australia. But three of the band had been born in Scotland: lead guitarist Angus Young and his elder brother Malcolm, rhythm guitarist, in Glasgow, singer Bon Scott in the small town of Forfar.
The Apollo was a venue famous for its cauldron-like atmosphere: the heat and noise generated by 3,500 rowdy Glaswegians. And on that night in 1978, the air was charged, the room shaking as AC/DC blasted through songs that would become rock classics and staples of the band’s live show for decades to come: Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be, The Jack, Bad Boy Boogie, Whole Lotta Rosie, Let There Be Rock. Angus, wearing a schoolboy uniform, was a blur of perpetual motion. Bon carried himself with the swagger of a gunslinger. And behind them, flanked by two great walls of amps, the rhythm section of Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd hammered away relentlessly.
For those present that night, it was an experience never to be forgotten. “I was blown away,” recalls Doogie White, who was 18 when he saw that show, still dreaming of the life he would lead many years later as the singer for legendary guitarists Ritchie Blackmore and Michael Schenker. “The power of AC/DC had the force of a storm coming off the hills and knocking the bejesus out of you.”
That power, and that heated atmosphere, was captured on the album released later that year, on October 13. It was an album that documented the AC/DC live experience in all its ragged glory. As Angus Young said: “One night, guitars out of tune, feedback, singer farting, whatever.” And the title of the album spoke volumes of a band who, night after night, left everything on the stage: If You Want Blood You’ve Got It.
It was on the road that AC/DC’s reputation was made, and where the legend of Bon Scott was born. From the start, Malcolm bossed the band, and Angus was the star of the show, the guitar hero duck-walking like the bastard son of Chuck Berry. But as Angus said, it was Bon who “gave the band its flavour”, with his whisky-soaked voice, devilmay-care attitude and dirty, witty lyrics. On stage Bon was the perfect foil for Angus,, one of the key early AC/DC songs, that Bon defined himself most succinctly: ‘.’
