They were stellar during their Forty Licks tour, with a stage I best remember for its naughty graphics of a writhing woman riding their famous tongue logo, and for the stacks that gave off bursts of flames that added flashes of heat during Sympathy For The Devil. A year later, AC/DC stole their thunder at the day-long SARStock concert at Downsview Park, and I wondered if I’d ever again be enchanted by the greatest rock and roll band in the world. It took almost ten years, but on Thursday, June 6th, at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, or the ACC as we call it here, the answer was a resounding yes.
With our seats directly across the stage just 20 rows above floor level, the view was perfect; the backdrop was a half shell shape that projected large video images behind it and let the ‘tongue pit’ contain a group of fans as much as it made a great extended runway for the band to stroll around and engage the audience sitting farther back.
The set was solid, a mix of their biggest up-tempo hits along with a few rarities thrown in. I particularly liked the idea of the song request, although the winner, ‘Worried About You’, would not have been my obvious choice. With their vast catalogue, it was evident that many favourites of mine, especially their ballads, would not be included in the show. Still, over the two and a half hours that followed the opening number, they managed to keep the crowd on their feet, dancing, cheering, singing, and clapping along, a remarkable feat given the median age of the audience. It was an astonishing sight from below to see such enthusiasm and energy carried to the far reaches of the arena, one I am sure I last witnessed when I saw Freddie Mercury weave his magic in the early eighties at Maple Leaf Gardens.
The guest star was former Stone Mick Taylor, who came out during a few numbers to add his guitar touch to pieces such as ‘Midnight Rambler.’ There were great moments throughout the night: Lisa Fischer’s majestic trademark vocals during ‘Gimme Shelter’, the tongue logo’s incarnations of gold and then black, before morphing into multicoloured tumbling dice, as well as an elaborate video backdrop during ‘Doom and Gloom’ that evoked the graphic used by Roger Waters during his presentation of ‘The Wall’ last year and the magnificent montage of the King Kong-like gorilla late in the set for ‘Honky Tonk Women’. The Cawthra Secondary School choir took to the stage for the first encore, getting the thrill of a lifetime singing ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, making it a wonderfully local affair that again for me seemed reminiscent of the Waters show.
My favourite moment, however, was not on stage but a few feet away in our section of the audience: an elderly couple, likely well into their seventies, were dancing away in their seats and in the aisle for most of the night, she well-coiffed and elegantly dressed, and he no less striking in his black leather trousers and matching dark fedora. Enchanting indeed.