Live: AC/DC at the Forum

If one way to view Australian hard rock mainstay AC/DC is as the world's most triumphant bar band, then on Saturday, one way to view the Forum was as the world's biggest bar. Most of the hard rock fans in the sold-out crowd seemed bent on annihilation, not from alcohol but from the ministrations of the group, whose ambition was to lead them into happy surrender to their baser instincts.

Before the show, men moved through the venue's parking lot in packs. Many dumped bagged tallboys at the door, exchanging them for plastic cups full of pale American beer. Women pushed up their cleavage in the bathroom: "I look so old," said one fortysomething rock chick to another. "It's the crummy light," her friend replied.

In the stands, friends jostled one another until it seemed like they might fight. But once AC/DC took the stage, a strangely sanguine mood descended, as if each person in the crowd had blissfully surrendered to the band's big riffs and old tricks.

To say AC/DC's tricks are no longer fresh isn't an insult. Extreme familiarity is a big part of the band's success. The hits that filled the 1-hour, 45-minute set Saturday, including "Highway to Hell," "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" and "T.N.T," all feature thumping 4/4 beats, football chant choruses and blues-based, metal-fed riffs. So did the newer songs from its stupendously successful 15th studio album, "Black Ice," which had the second-highest one-week sales of any album in 2008.

That simple four-beat rhythm, maintained by the unflinching back line of guitarist Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd, formed a field of artificial turf over which lead guitarist Angus Young could run rampant. The 53-year-old Angus (Malcolm's brother) played solo after lengthy solo Saturday, sweating hard in his patented schoolboy outfit as he stomped and duckwalked around the stage.

His playing sometimes recalled Elmore James and at other times raised the ghost of Muddy Waters; occasionally his rapid arpeggios invoked Pete Townshend of the Who. Young bases everything he does in the blues, though he approaches the form in his own way. He's not a storyteller, like music's suave, stalwart black pioneers, nor particularly cerebral, like current blues-rock favorites Ben Harper and John Mayer.

To use a fancy word, Young is a minimalist. He may have played a dazzling array of notes in his solos Saturday, but each move of his fingers on the fretboard related tightly to the next. In his style, Young mixes the blues with rough-edged garage rock, breaking down the combination into a few sharp and aggressive phrases that he then repeats until they're bloody from overuse. The effect is primal -- virtually everyone at the Forum pumped his or her fists on cue, unleashing an aggression that had a definite sexual edge. Hardly anyone left before the encore, either.

AC/DC's sexiness, if you can call it that, isn't seductive; it's exclusively male in nature and obsessively bent on release. On the one hand, it's communicated through Young's perverse juvenile delinquent act; on the other, it's embodied by vocalist Brian Johnson, the man who plays potato to Angus Young's meat.

Chortling as he snarled out double-entendres about loving a fat woman, contracting a disease from another lover and commandeering a third as if she were a runaway train -- an image reinforced by the massive fire-spewing locomotive that dominated the stage set, mounted near the show's end by a top-heavy inflatable doll -- Johnson was a blustery raconteur with sweaty biceps and a dock worker's cap. Strutting on a catwalk that extended half the length of the arena, Johnson shook his denim-clad derrière and sang about excess and oblivion, never abandoning his blokish good humor.

Most hard rock singers have an androgynous edge; the 61-year-old Johnson is 100% dirty uncle, a man's man and a woman's lovable nightmare. His famous yowl (this is one aging vocalist who'll never be accused of shrieking too much) was a little wobbly in his midrange. but he recovered from the bad notes by projecting extra bravado.

It was all very silly, and of course the band was in on the joke. No one can churn out cartoon blues in front of fake cannons for 30 years and not develop a sense of humor. But everyone at the Forum this evening was clearly in agreement that crass jokes, thrusting lust and really loud guitar can play an important part in freeing the human soul. As the custom license plate of the BMW I followed out of the parking lot after the show read, LET1RIP.

-- Ann Powers

Photos: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Sdumas]

Plain and Simple - AC/DC were phenomenal and they r at the very top the rockin roll world with nodody when close.

[sdavidson]

AC DC ROCKED AGAIN !! It was great to see that after all these years they can still have the audience on their feet for the entire show! pounding their fists!

[Brue]

I can't hear today...It was great.

[PRBMCHD]

Best live AC/DC show since The Razor's Edge. It was much shorter than their shows of the past, but I know I couldn't do what they do for much more than two hours.

[JC]

Impossibly great. "Shoot To Thrill" was absolutely tops. I wish I'd worn ear plugs cause I sure feel like Im wearing them now.

[John Peale]

Great review! I was there Saturday night and it was an awesome show. Ann Powers really caught the mood of the whole scene in her review. She is a most worthy successor to Hilburn!

[KR]

We traveled from Mountain Home, Idaho, to see this show, and it was worth every last penny. My husband and I are diehard ACDC fans, he's seen them now three times, I've seen them once. People were very friendly and cool at the show, but one thing, too many were standing still during most of the concert. We didn't understand that, but no worries. The Forum was a great venue, and the staff were helpful and cordial. Tremendous experience all around.

[Maria]

Was there an opening band?

[John Peale]

The opening band is a group called The Answer. Jimmy Page says they sound like what Zeppelin sounded like in the 70's. They are supposed to be on the Mark and Brian Show on KLOS tomorrow morning at 9.

[Carlos Cortez]

I've been listening to ACDC sine the 80's but only had the opportunity to see them live this past Saturday for the first time. IT WAS GREAT!!!! This was by far the best concert I have ever attended. My only regret is that I waited so long to see them live. Heck I still have my ears ringing to their music.

[wes]

monday's concert: spectacular in every way

angus showed he is greatest living guitarist if not greatest ever

brian showed he was a lady's man and angus proved he is a sex symbol

a real tom and jerry show with those guys scurrying around the stage

their magic only tempered by:

1] no close up of angus fingering on start of thunderstruck,

2] lame audience on shoot to thrill clapping [it sure wasn't donnington]

3] only a few hudred red horns in audience - not thousands

4] forum acoustics leave a lot to be desired - best sound and view may have been in collonade around row 10 on far end sides; it was probably too loud for the blokes real close

5] more of new album would have been nice up front

this is a must see band/show

do whatever you can to catch them

their old records are only 7 bucks each at la's pop up store - what a bargain

will they ever tour again?

the glow will last a lifetime if you see them live once

fantastic

[jude]

I had better seats than Tommy Lee at this show, thanks to a WONDERFUL friend! I could see him 10 feet away from me, watching with his two boys; they might have been on the floor, but first row loge was absolutely the finest spot in the house--Angus and Brian were literally smiling at me, possibly because i was one of the few females in the section, but also quite possibly because I was literally dangling over the rails in my enthusiasm for this band, and I still have the bruises on my hips to show for it!!! From the begginning strains of "Runaway Train" to the very last notes, I felt ancient, but in the best possible way; like a Roman, cheering in the coliseum!! For a couple of hours, I had not a care in the world, and my joy was effluent, as was that of everyone surrounding me! I would catch the eye of a fellow reveler, and we would smile, knowing that WE GET IT!!! Who needs drugs, REALLY, when you've got THIS??When it was over, I told my dear friend, who now feels like my new brother, "I finally know how it is possible to feel both like an old reprobate and that I was fulfillling my teenaged fantasy at the same time! "Never in my wiildest thoughts did I dream as a teen that one day, I'd be sitting in the $4,000 seats, close enough to have my skin scorched by the pyrotechnics, and wishing I had a time machine to replay this moment over and over and over again. It was practically a religious experience.I felt the rapture! Thank God for youtube, which I've been visiting quite a bit the last few days, as close to a time machine as I guess I'm gonna get!