AC/DC’s Energy Up tour: the primary assessment

Emotion? What emotion? “It’s great to see ya all once more, ” mutters AC/DC singer Brian Johnson cheerfully on the finish of tonight’s opening track If You Need Blood (You’ve Obtained It) like he’s walked into a day session at his native boozer fairly than kicking off his band’s first tour in eight years. “Take pleasure in yourselves, OK?”

This famously hard-shelled band don’t do sentimentality, however the 70,000 folks gathered underneath the closed roof of the huge Veltins-Area, simply exterior of the German metropolis of Gelsenkirchen, are positively feeling it. All however probably the most blindly optimistic AC/DC fan doubted this night time would ever come. The band that wound up the Rock Or Bust tour in 2016 had been three key males down: singer Brian Johnson, retired injured midway by way of and changed by stand-in Axl Rose; drummer Phil Rudd, in authorized scorching water after some ill-advised drug possession/demise threats shenanigans; and, most poignantly, guitarist and AC/DC’s steely coronary heart Malcolm Younger, at dwelling battling the dementia that will finally declare his life (bassist Cliff Williams additionally introduced his retirement after the tour was over). Positive, there was final yr’s comeback on the Energy Journey competition, however who knew the place there that was going to steer.