Angus Young has gone viral in a YouTube clip from AC/DC’s August 31 performance at the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. The reason? He seemingly lost his bearings during his solo to Whole Lotta Rosie.
The clip is titled “Angus Young forgets the solo and gives AC/DC a different Whole Lotta Rosie” and it has nearly half a million views in under four days – but is that what really happens here? We beg to differ.
And Accadaccaologists – of whom there are many in the comments – would tend to agree with us. This is Angus Young doing what Angus Young does when deep into an AC/DC set; he takes the solos to the edge then he walks it back.
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It’s performance, a little drama, electric guitar as theatre. It’s the kind of thing he would have learned from watching his hero Chuck Berry,
And we are deep in the set here. AC/DC have already played Back In Black, Thunderstruck, Highway To Hell and You Shook Me All Night Long. The hits had been coming thick and fast. There were deeper cuts too. They opened with with If You Want Blood (You Got It), played Sin City and Riff Raff. Whole Lotta Rosie was the second-last song of the night.
There is often a subtext to these kinds of videos. If the artist is a legacy artist, i.e. a veteran act, and AC/DC are that – Angus Young is 71 – then there can be a whiff of condescension around their performance. You’re past it. And all that unsavouriness. We’ll give this video the benefit of the doubt. It comes via an AC/DC superfan account, Marco’s HIGH VOLTAGE Music Channel. And Marco is right; Young gives us something different, but that’s rock ’n’ roll, and that’s oftentimes how he handles this solo as the band back off and he takes the spotlight.
The only concession here to age is that he keeps his shirt on. But c’mon, he’s still in uniform. Yes, he throws in a sour note, or at least one off-menu note, or maybe he is just vamping and momentarily lose the run of it – it doesn’t matter. All this, and yet what he does play effectively signposts the denouement of the solo, when he gives it that same ripping pentatonic/blues scale treatment, a punk energy brought to bear on barroom boogie-woogie blues-rock.
As one commentator on Reddit writes: “Are you going to post the clip of him messing up?”
Was this the definition of styling it out or throwing in a red herring to keep the audience guessing? Jury’s out. But Angus Young can play what he wants is the consensus.
You can watch the clip above and judge for yourself.
AC/DC’s PWR/UP Tour continues apace. See AC/DC for full dates and ticket details. Tonight they rock St Louis, Missouri.
