AC/DC at sixty

I finally saw AC/DC. They’ve been one of my favorite bands since I was a teenager in China listening to copied tapes and not understanding half the lyrics, and I had mostly assumed I’d missed my chance.

Angus Young turned sixty this year. Brian Johnson is in his late sixties. And for two hours Angus did everything he’s been doing for forty years: the school uniform, the duck walk, the solo on his back, the bit where he’s lifted above the crowd and plays from up there. By the end his shirt was soaked through and he was still going.

It’s a strange tour to have happened at all. Malcolm Young, who co-founded the band with Angus and wrote most of those riffs with him, stopped playing last year because of dementia. Their nephew Stevie is on rhythm guitar now. Phil Rudd had legal trouble in New Zealand, so Chris Slade is back on drums. On paper the band is patched together. On stage it didn’t sound like it at all.

What struck me most wasn’t the show, which was loud and exactly what I wanted, but the question of how you keep doing something with that much energy at that age. It clearly isn’t discipline in the sense of forcing yourself. He looks like he’s having the best night of his life, every night. I think when you love one thing enough, the physical limits become something you work around rather than a reason to stop.

I’m not even thirty and I already catch myself thinking about what I’ll be “too old” for in a few years. The engineers I most admire don’t seem to think that way. They’re still curious about the same kind of problems they were curious about at twenty, they just have better tools and more patience now. Angus is still doing the one thing he’s always done, and doing it better than people half his age.

Anyway. My ears are still ringing, and I’ve had “Rock or Bust” stuck in my head for two days. There are worse things.