Angus Young’s Hydraulic Lift

Angus Young’s Hydraulic Lift

When AC/DC figurehead Angus Young plays a guitar solo, something seems to take over his body. His eyes bug out, his hair gets even more wild, his face does this thing where it looks like he’s trying to eat flies. He is an incredibly strange-looking elderly man who looks like he smells like piss. He still comes onstage in a schoolboy outfit, then gradually sheds clothes and looks even more insane by the time he’s down to just shorts and orthopedic shoes. He is awesome.

For AC/DC’s pre-encore closer “Let There Be Rock,” Young started out playing a fractured, staccato, endless solo, and then he disappeared from the stage. Then, suddenly, he jumped up on a glass platform right in front of me, maybe 20 feet away. I hadn’t even realized this thing was there, but it turned out to be a hydraulic lift, one that lifted Young a couple of stories into the air while confetti shot out all around him. For a few moments there, my face hurt from smiling so much.

People were weirded out when Coachella announced AC/DC as a headliner, and I get it. They’re older than dirt, they’re a nostalgia act, they have zero to do with the climate of music as it exists today. But they’re also one of the greatest, most singleminded party bands in history. There’s never been a stadium rock band in history with their level of hammerhead focus; they rival the Ramones for pure simplicity. And they remain an impressively strange hit machine. Brian Johnson looks like Popeye and walks like a boxer. The other guys in the band look somehow feeble and terrifying at the same time. They have a gigantic inflatable Rosie and a bell that hangs from the stage ceiling during “Hell’s Bells.” They shoot off real cannons during “For Those About To Rock.” They’re an anachronism, but a glorious one, and Coachella is lucky to have them.