I went to see AC/DC this weekend in Hampden Park, Glasgow – seeing them is on my bucket list and I doubt they’ll be touring for much longer, so I overcame my hatred of Hampden (whose motto should be “Where sound goes to die”) on the grounds that it can’t be that hard to amplify two guitars, a bass and a drum kit.
It is in Hampden, it seems. Hampden is the wrong shape for gigs, I’m told, too low and too prone to the wind whooshing the sound away. So AC/DC joins my list of bands I’ve seen but not heard at Hampden, a list that includes Eminem (couldn’t hear the raps), Bruce Springsteen (couldn’t hear The Boss) and U2 (couldn’t hear The Edge).
It’s not the sound engineers’ fault, I know, but when you’ve got 50,000 people paying really big money for a gig and the only ones hearing it properly are the hardcore fans at the very front, you’re really taking money under false pretences. If you’re not the push-to-the-front type, it’s one of the worst places to hear music I’ve ever visited. And I’ve been to gigs at the SECC.