AC/DC were a band on ice. Eight years had passed since 2000’s Stiff Upper Lip album, and five since their last performance at a SARS benefit concert in Toronto. Sony worked the back catalogue gamely enough, keeping the big hits and the schoolboy iconography in the public consciousness, but creatively speaking, there was an eerie silence from the world’s loudest band.
Even worse, filling the void during the wilderness years were malignant whispers from that scurrilous tool of modern witchcraft, the internet. Cliff Williams had taken a career-threatening cut to the hand (true). Angus had a blues solo project on the go (false). Beano was packing it all in (almost true).
