(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi)

It will have been Sydney; I don’t know the year. You’d think, with the amount of times he told the story, that the year might have come up, but it never did. The facts always stayed the same: he saw them with a friend he knew from rugby, cried when they came on stage and slept on the beach that night. He loved AC/DC so much that they would play constantly in his house, and when they did, this story followed close behind. It became a thing of parody. Eyes would widen as the first few words were spoken, and we would interrupt with, “You’ve seen AC/DC?”, “You went to Australia?” He would tut, call us wankers and keep listening to whatever track he was lost in. 

On February 1st, 2022, my dad died of a brain haemorrhage. That’s a sentence that remains difficult no matter how many times my therapist encourages me to write it down. He was too young, mid-50s, and it was before I ever started working full-time in music journalism, a job that I almost certainly should credit to him whenever I get the chance. Days at his house were spent watching the music videos of Guns N’ Roses, Kiss and his favourite band, AC/DC, moments taken for granted at the time but that were steadily setting the foundation I would build the rest of my life on. 

The first time I properly think about him on July 3rd, 2024, is in the tackiest of places. The band have set up a dive bar in Camden, day drinkers drink, and the bumbling thoughts of the quarter pissed are dropped like litter. AC/DC branding climbs the walls, ‘Show Business’ plays through speakers much too big for the room, and old videos of the band are projected onto any surface that will hold their image. I’m in love with the ridiculousness of it and know that he would be, too, telling me facts about the albums being sold, trying to convince me Bon Scott was better than Brian Johnson, and complaining about the price of a pint in Camden. His rugby shirt sits in my bag, which I hold tighter as I look around. 

We seem to go in one direction or another when our parents show us the music they are into; we either embrace it wholeheartedly or reject it completely. Both approaches form a big part of who we eventually become, and it all boils down to what we believe is cool. When my dad first showed me footage of AC/DC playing ‘Thunderstruck’, Angus Young with one hand in the air, duck walking up and down the stage, nothing appealed to me more. I was a lover of rock music from that day on. 

One of my first rock gigs was in Manchester when me and my dad went to see Kiss. I had my face painted as Paul Stanley, and he did his as Gene Simmons. We also saw Slash a few times, as these days are before the Guns N’ Roses reunion when he was touring his first solo album. We never saw AC/DC, though. So, on that day, walking down Wembley Way, excitement in my veins and liquor on my lips, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the overriding sadness in the fact he wasn’t there with me. 

There is no doubt in my mind that regardless of whether you accept or reject the music your parents loved when they were younger, it will bring you comfort at some point in your life. This doesn’t have to be when they die. The truth is we attach memories to music every day, which is natural, given we are constantly surrounded by sound and, therefore, continuously associate it with what is happening around us. However, how we view memories differs depending on how spectacular or un-spectacular what happened is.

There are no doubt songs that remind you of summer, so when summer comes around, you start playing them more. It doesn’t need to be attached to a specific moment, but summer as a whole is associated with that track, and therefore, when you hear it, you think of long days, sun cream and sweat. 

We also associate other songs with more specific moments. If we keep using summer as an example, some songs might apply to the season as a whole, but then there was that one summer when you met [insert name here], and a particular song was playing when that happened. This means you associate that track with that one specific experience. The feelings surrounding that person, be they negative, positive or, as is most commonly the case, complicated, are brought back to the surface whenever that song is played.

In this instance, your parents are summer. No, your parents are summer, winter, spring and autumn. When you hear the music they like and that they tried to push onto you, regardless of how much you did or didn’t like it, it becomes a warm blanket. The first time you’re away from home, when you leave for university or relocate to another city, and, inevitably, when they pass away, that music will remind you of them and your relationship together. That will make the music either something you want to listen to, can’t listen to, or have complicated feelings surrounding it. 

The crowd screams like victims of voodoo. No one is on stage yet, but the lights are down, and tension is up. Eyes fixate on the emptiness, locked in anticipation. Any breathing is done self-consciously, inadvertently, and quietly. The seats go down too far and up too high to see the end of either, so I sit there, phone pressed to my chest, making notes adrift in a sea of the obsessed. I write about everything around me; words like “atmospheric”, “cinematic”, and “anthemic” itch on the end of my thumbs, but in lieu of music, I can’t bring myself to type them. Instead, I make notes on the crowd: full, the atmosphere: palpable, and the price of drinks: too much. The dim stage lights change colour, an animation of a speeding car is shown on a screen, and the opening chords to ‘If You Want Blood (You Got It)’ fill the stadium. 

Normally, at this point, it’s my job to critique, to provide you with some insight into what the gig was like, and you, as the reader who was either at the gig, is attending a different gig or wishes they were attending this one, will read and either decide on whether you share my opinion, get excited for when you see them, or imagine yourself there. This time, I can’t do that. Reviews are subjective anyway; I’ve been to gigs I’ve hated in the past that people have loved and vice versa, but the two hours AC/DC were on stage were spent so firmly locked inside my own head that to provide you insight would mean telling you everything about myself and then still trying to justify how I felt. I don’t intend to do that, firstly because I don’t want to, and secondly, because it won’t be fun for you to read (I have lived a very mundane life). 

All that can be said is when that music started playing, I was no longer in Wembley. The crowd: gone. The atmosphere: non-existent. The drinks: whatever is in the fridge. My dad sat on his electric lounge chair, leg rest up, can of Fosters in the drinks holder and a bag of pork scratchings on a side table. I was sat on the sofa, constantly moving because it’s made of the worst leather, a can of coke on the side table which steadily morphed into a second Fosters as the years went on. AC/DC’s ‘Jailbreak’ plays on the TV, and he’s telling me the story about seeing the band in Sydney again; I’m zoning out, annoyed by the repetition, but safe, comfortable and happy. I don’t miss him in the moment, I’m overjoyed about the fact I knew him, and thankful to him for passing on his love of music to me. 

The band end with ‘For Those About to Rock We Salute You’, the roar is loud and the night is over. As is always the case with Wembley, the journey home is a nightmare; the tube is rammed, and the air is heavy. No one cares, though; people are still talking about the gig, and the excitement shows no signs of dying down.

I hold my dad’s rugby shirt in my hand. It almost cramps under the stress as I worry about letting both it and this night, this moment, go. This is the closest I’ve felt to him since he passed away. We are constantly connected through music, a link that refuses to give way no matter how much time passes. His was in Sydney, mine was in London. And it’s time to annoy everybody with an AC/DC story for the next 60 years.