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- If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)
- Back in Black
- Demon Fire
- Shot Down in Flames
- Thunderstruck
- Have a Drink on Me
- Hells Bells
- Shot in the Dark
- Stiff Upper Lip
- Highway to Hell, con Dave Grohl
- Shoot to Thrill
- Sin City
- Jailbreak
- Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
- High Voltage
- Riff Raff
- You Shook Me All Night Long
- Whole Lotta Rosie
- Let There Be Rock, con extended Angus Young solo
Encore:
- T.N.T.
- For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
Ride On...
Time has come for one last post on this blog, to close an amazing adventure that started 25 years ago with AC/DC Abruzzo. What a journey it has been. And what an incredible final tour.
When the Power Up Tour started, after Power Trip, none of us really knew how far it would go. At one point we were expecting Dublin in 2024 to be the end of the road. Instead, AC/DC kept going. Europe became a complete world tour, with Australia, South America, and two American legs.
89 shows. We did "only" 36 this time. The maximum we could do. That "only" probably says a lot about us and about the strange standards we developed over the years. But this time the goal was different. We wanted to enjoy every moment as much as possible, without chasing numbers, listening once again to the greatest rock'n'roll band of all time.
For all of us who had been there in 2016, with AXL, this entire tour felt like a bonus. A huge, unexpected bonus. And for that, we can only be grateful to AC/DC.
We knew we had to be in America for the Grand Finale. Work, families and real life have become increasingly important over the years, and it has obviously become much harder to disappear around the world following a rock band. But somehow, once again, we managed to make things work and attend the final two shows.
Philadelphia first. Then the grand 21-gun salute.
Ironically, Philadelphia was supposed to become the final show, just as Philadelphia had played such an important role for us in 2016, when Cliff officially retired and Problem Child Axl finished his job in the Rock or Bust touer. Then, through one of those strange twists of fate that have followed this band and this blog for years, the postponement of the MetLife Stadium concert changed everything.
The last dance moved to East Rutherford. New York. New Jersey. MetLife Stadium. One more trip. One more stadium. One last time.
And this time the feeling was different.
There were mixed emotions long before AC/DC even walked on stage.
I had felt that knot in my stomach before. Hammersmith 2003. Bilbao in 2010. Philadelphia in 2016. Dublin in 2024. Those concerts when the future was uncertain and you knew, somewhere in the back of your mind, that perhaps you should look at everything a little more carefully because you had no idea when, or if, you would see it again.
But MetLife was different. This time we knew this was the final concert of the Power Up Tour. And deep inside, it also felt as if we were witnessing something potentially much bigger, perhaps the final AC/DC concert itself. You try not to think about it.
Then the lights go down.
And there they are. From the very beginning, there was something about Angus and Brian.
Intensity. Focus. Commitment.
It felt as if they were perfectly aware of the historical importance of that night. Not simply another stadium, not simply show number 89, but one final demonstration to the world of what AC/DC still were.
And what they had always been.
Power. Volume. Energy. Rock'n'roll reduced to its purest form.
No energy saved for tomorrow. Because there was no tomorrow on this tour.
If You Want Blood. And for the first few songs, I had tears in my eyes. The band sounded enormous.
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But suddenly every song started opening doors in my memory. There was no logic to it. No chronological order. Just images, people, venues and moments coming back without warning. A completely irrational storm of memories accumulated over more than half of my life.
If You Want Blood. Hammersmith, 2003.
Back in Black. Wilkes-Barre, 2008.
Shot Down in Flames. Stockholm February 2009.
Stiff Upper Lip. Birmingham, 2000. My first AC/DC show.
High Voltage. Sidney, 2010.
Sin City. Coachella, 2015.
Jailbreak. Perth, 2025.
Shoot to Thrill. Buenos Aires, 2026.
And so many others…
128 AC/DC concerts seen as a fan. There is a point at which a song is no longer simply a song. It becomes a place. A face. A journey. A night you thought you had forgotten. A person standing next to you twenty years ago. A moment of your life.
And all of them were somehow there with me at MetLife.
The different parts of the Power Up Tour also had their own personality.
Australia will always remain special. It is their home country, and seeing AC/DC there carries a meaning that cannot really be reproduced anywhere else. And this time Australia gave us Jailbreak, a song we had waited so long to hear again.
Then South America.
Probably the hottest rock'n'roll crowds on Earth. I had waited seventeen years for the opportunity to finally be inside River Plate Stadium with AC/DC, surrounded by those crazy Argentinians, jumping for two hours as if their lives depended on it.
Buenos Aires was everything I had hoped it would be.
And more.
The United States is different. The American audience sometimes seems to experience a concert almost as if they were sitting in a theatre. For AC/DC, that is certainly not my ideal way of experiencing rock'n'roll. But when in Rome…. And anyway, what was happening on the stage at MetLife was powerful enough to destroy any cultural difference.
The AC/DC loudest wall of sound surrounded us and penetrated our ears and bodies one final time in the pit. From our position close to the stage, the sound was incredibly clear. Every Angus lick cut through the air. Every note scratched its way inside. You could feel it physically.
That is one of those things that videos will never reproduce. AC/DC have always been a physical experience. You do not simply listen to that sound. You stand inside it.
After 89 shows spread across almost three years, Angus and Brian had also reached an extraordinary level of synchronization. Everything had been refined night after night until the machine seemed to run almost automatically. As it happens in each tour.
But there was nothing automatic about the effort. Angus was still Angus. Running across the stage. Duckwalking. Attacking the guitar. Carrying Let There Be Rock on his shoulders night after night and somehow making a stadium believe, for twenty minutes, that rock'n'roll could still defeat time itself. At his age, he was still demonstrating why he remains the greatest.
It brought back Steven Tyler's wonderful line from the 2003 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction: "How did such big balls get in such short pants?" More than twenty years later, the question still works.
Then there was Brian.
Perhaps one of the greatest stories of Rock’n’Roll. In 2016 we were suddenly told that Brian had "lost his hearing" and could no longer continue touring. For many people, that could easily have been the end of his story as the singer of AC/DC.
Instead he came back.
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And this tour gave him his full consecration again as the voice of AC/DC. Almost 80 years old, singing a monstrous world tour, night after night, across huge stadiums and several continents. Whatever happens from here, nobody can take that away from him.
The show also gave us one completely unexpected moment. Dave Grohl. The postponement of MetLife meant that The Pretty Reckless could no longer open the show, and suddenly Foo Fighters were on the bill. A stadium-headlining band opening for AC/DC. But Dave was not there behaving like a rock star doing another big event. He was there as a fan. He spoke about seeing Let There Be Rock movie when he was around 11 years old and about the impact AC/DC had on him.
I understood exactly what he meant. I had met Dave in Washington DC in 2016. We exchanged a few words before the show, and one thing was immediately obvious: he is a genuine AC/DC fan. You could tell from the look in his eyes.
Later at MetLife, he came back on stage for Highway to Hell. Probably Malcolm would never have allowed something like that. But somehow, on this particular night, it worked. And judging from Dave's face, it probably meant far more to him than another stadium performance ever could.
That is what AC/DC have done to people. Even rock stars can become kids again when Angus walks past them on stage.
And that brings us to something much bigger than one concert. What is rock'n'roll? The answer is different for every one of us.
Over more than 25 years, I have personally met hundreds of AC/DC fans in dozens of countries. People from completely different backgrounds. Different jobs. Different generations. Different languages. And yet everybody had a story.
For some people, the defining tour was Ballbreaker. For others Stiff Upper Lip or Black Ice… Or the 80’s….
For us at AC/DC Abruzzo, Black Ice will probably always remain the most significant.
And then we met people whose stories went much further back.
People who had seen Bon Scott in a gig in the 70’s somewhere in Europe, Australia or US, in their teenage years, thanks to their dad, uncle or bigger brother who took them to that tiny club that night…
Groupies. Friends. Relatives of members of the band. People who had been there when everything was still beginning.
Everybody experienced AC/DC differently. That is perhaps the real legacy. Not simply records sold or stadiums filled. Individual lives connected to the same soundtrack.
Vinyl. Cassettes. CDs. MP3s. Streaming. Different technologies, different decades, same songs.
AC/DC have now reached the end of this tour at the absolute top. Huge stadiums. Massive audiences.
And, most importantly, a completely new generation of fans who discovered them through the Power Up Tour.
That matters. The legacy is safe. You could see teenagers in the crowd who were experiencing something for the first time that some of us had been experiencing for decades.
For them, MetLife might one day become what Birmingham 2000, Hammersmith 2003 or Wilkes Barres became for us. Their reference point. Their story. Their AC/DC.
And then there were the people who had been part of our own story. The old faces. The friends. Those who had shared airports, trains, queues, hotel/motel, beers, front rows, frustrations and unforgettable nights.
Some appeared for one chapter. Some stayed for many. Some we lost contact with and then somehow met again years later outside another AC/DC stadium. That was always one of the strange miracles of following this band. You could arrive somewhere thousands of kilometres from home and still find familiar faces waiting outside the venue.
AC/DC Abruzzo itself started almost as a Game. A little website created by people from Italy who wanted to see how far this passion could take us. Maybe, somewhere along the way, we also wanted to prove something to ourselves.
That if you really wanted something badly enough, many things that seemed impossible could become possible. Including spending months on tour. Working online during the day. Going to an AC/DC concert at night. Waking up the next morning and doing it again.
It produced an absurd number of stories. Adventures. Journeys. Meetings with the band.
Having drinks with Brian and Cliff in Stockholm or Sydney or having cigarettes with Angus in London, Zurich or Perth. Moments that still seem surreal today. Two books. And this blog, which was not active in the last legs of the tour for a combination of reasons.
None of this was always easy. Behind every concert there was also real life. Jobs. Businesses. Families. Responsibilities. Flights that had to work. Schedules that had to be rearranged. Plans negotiated months in advance. Over the years, finding the balance between those responsibilities and our desire to see as many concerts as possible became increasingly complicated.
But the reason we continued trying was simple. The concert was where the chemistry happened. That strange ritual. That indescribable rock'n'roll apotheosis. Two hours and twenty minutes during which everything else disappeared.
And at MetLife we knew we were experiencing it one more time, maybe the last time.
Then came Let There Be Rock. Angus alone again, taking control of an enormous stadium.
Then the encore.
T.N.T.
And finally For Those About to Rock.
The cannons fired.
The final 21-gun salute.
One last explosion.
One last chord.
Angus lifts his arm for a final salute and Brian's words at the end, which carried a different weight that night.
"Bye Bye. Goodnight and… Tell your grandkids about this night."
That line stayed with all of us. Because maybe that is exactly what these experiences become eventually. Stories. One day the concerts are no longer something you are planning for next month. They become something you tell someone else about.
In fact, Brian also said before:
"We hope we'll see you again."
Hope. Not goodbye. And maybe that is exactly where we should leave AC/DC. Nobody knows what happens next. Maybe there will be another show. Maybe there will not.
For once, after spending 25 years wondering when the next date would be announced, I am happy not to ask. They have given enough. More than enough.
After the final bows, the stadium lights came on. People slowly started leaving. The crew began dismantling the stage. Ride On started playing through the stadium speakers.
For us at AC/DC Abruzzo, this journey accompanied more than half of our lives. Twenty-five years. Countries and continents. Two books. Countless friendships.
Meetings with the band that the younger versions of ourselves would never have believed possible. And a ridiculous number of stories.
Today, writing these final lines, I realize how much life happened around it.
The blog was never really about reporting AC/DC news. It was about being there. Living it. Trying it. Travelling. Meeting people and sharing it. And proving, at least to ourselves, that sometimes you really can chase something that looks completely unreasonable and somehow make it part of your life.
We did.
And it was a hell of a ride.
So there is no sadness in closing this chapter. There is gratitude.
For every show. For every friend. For every journey.
For those moments with Angus, the handshakes, the smiles and the pats on the back.
For Brian coming back.
For one more world tour that none of us really expected.
For Australia.
For River Plate.
For East Rutherford.
For the Power Up Tour. For the 36 we were lucky enough to see. For the 128 that became part of our own story.
And above all, for AC/DC. The greatest rock'n'roll band of all time.
The AC/DC Abruzzo blog is officially closed.
It was an amazing journey.
Ride On.
AC/DC ABRUZZO POWER UP TOUR 2023-2026
7 October 2023 – Indio – Empire Polo Club
17 May 2024 – Gelsenkirchen – Veltins-Arena
21 May 2024 – Gelsenkirchen – Veltins-Arena
25 May 2024 – Reggio Emilia – RCF Arena
29 May 2024 – Seville – Estadio de La Cartuja
1 June 2024 – Seville – Estadio de La Cartuja
5 June 2024 – Amsterdam – Johan Cruyff Arena
9 June 2024 – Munich – Olympiastadion
23 June 2024 – Vienna – Ernst-Happel-Stadion
26 June 2024 – Vienna – Ernst-Happel-Stadion
29 June 2024 – Zürich – Letzigrund
3 July 2024 – London – Wembley Stadium
7 July 2024 – London – Wembley Stadium
21 July 2024 – Bratislava – Vajnory Airport
13 August 2024 – Paris – Longchamp Racecourse
17 August 2024 – Dublin – Croke Park
26 June 2025 – Prague – Letňany Airport
30 June 2025 – Berlin – Olympiastadion
4 July 2025 – Warsaw – PGE Narodowy
12 July 2025 – Madrid – Riyadh Air Metropolitano
20 July 2025 – Imola – Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari
24 July 2025 – Tallinn – Song Festival Grounds
9 August 2025 – Saint-Denis – Stade de France
13 August 2025 – Saint-Denis – Stade de France
21 August 2025 – Edinburgh – Murrayfield Stadium
8 December 2025 – Perth – Optus Stadium
14 December 2025 – Brisbane – Suncorp Stadium
18 December 2025 – Brisbane – Suncorp Stadium
24 February 2026 – São Paulo – Estádio do Morumbi
28 February 2026 – São Paulo – Estádio do Morumbi
4 March 2026 – São Paulo – Estádio do Morumbi
23 March 2026 – Buenos Aires – Estadio River Plate
27 March 2026 – Buenos Aires – Estadio River Plate
31 March 2026 – Buenos Aires – Estadio River Plate
29 September 2026 – Philadelphia – Lincoln Financial Field
2 October 2026 – East Rutherford – MetLife Stadium
