AC/DC prove rock's not dead with a mighty show at Donington

After many years of rumours about AC/DC playing at Download, AC/DC finally turned those rumours into reality and signed on the dotted line for a headline slot at Download Festival 2010. It is clear that a band as legendary as this don't really need to play festivals as I'm sure they could sell out venues of this size just on their own. So being AC/DC part of their stipulation for playing was that they would be allowed to bring their own stage and set up.



Once in the main arena you could see the regular Download main-stage then attached to that was another stage which was just as tall and wide as the main-stage but this had two huge inflatable schoolboy red caps with horns protruding from the top of either side of the stage. These schoolboy caps even had a big letter 'A' emblazoned on them just in case there might be some misunderstanding about which stage was which. The AC/DC stage had a huge runway stretching into the middle of the audience.

AC/DC opened their set with some video footage of at rain on the verge of crashing, when the train crashed on the video monitors, a real life sized model of the front of a train crashed through the back of the stage and that lead nicely into the opening track 'Rock N Roll Train'. AC/DC explained that they had come to party, and sure enough by the time they had reached the third song 'Back In Black' it was clear that the band had come to prove a point that rock music is far from dead.

As you would expect AC/DC did all of their trademark stage antics, with Angus doing his famous duck walk down the runway and Brian Johnson swinging from a huge bell for 'Hells Bells' and an inflatable 50 foot Rosie tapped along to the drum beat during 'Whole Lotta Rosie'. And of course for the finale canons were rolled out to fire whilst the dying notes of 'Those About To Rock (We Salute You)'.

My personal highlight was seeing AC/DC perform 'Thunderstruck' with nearly one hundred thousand people singing along with them, it was one of those rare Donington memories that I will always treasure.

So after 7 years of rumours, I can thankfully say it was worth the wait, rock bands don't get much better than this and it will be a very long time before AC/DC play Download Festival again, if they ever do play it again.

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