Download Festival 2010
Friday 11th to Sunday 13th June 2010Donington Park, Leics, England MAP
£140 weekend (with 5 nights camping + £40)
Daily capacity: 111,000
Last updated: Wed 9th Jun 2010
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.
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.
review by: Luke Seagrave
photos by: Danielle Millea
Latest Updates
Download Festival 2024
festival details
festival details
last updated: Tue 26th Mar 2024
Download Festival 2024
line-ups & rumours
line-ups & rumours
last updated: Fri 2nd Feb 2024
Download Festival Headliners Revealed
Queens of Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold to headline 2024 edition
Queens of Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold to headline 2024 edition
last updated: Wed 8th Nov 2023
Download Festival 2023 - The Review
Let's hope Download lives on for at least another twenty years, long live Download!
Let's hope Download lives on for at least another twenty years, long live Download!
last updated: Tue 27th Jun 2023
Download Festival 2023
festival details
festival details
last updated: Tue 6th Jun 2023