They all look like they’d benefit from a Jerry Lewis telethon. Seventeen thousand diseased and uncontrollable bodies. Imaginary guitar soloists are standing on metal folding chairs, twitching. Imaginary guitar soloists who’ve had one too many Quaaludes have fallen off the chairs midway through a strenuous riff and are twitching on the floor. The floor’s sticky. The air’s sticky, a nice mix of Indianapolis pizza, beer and whiskey, most of it second hand. Headbangers never see their hair again when it sticks to the floor like flypaper. An exuberant bunch, half of them would be the spitting image of Angus Young if they rolled up their jeans and took off their shirts. Not such a bright idea on a night like tonight in Indianapolis, cold enough to "freeze the balls off a wallaby. Then it wasn’t such a bright idea to line up outside in Arctic weather to make sure of the best seats, but that’s what 17,000 adolescents have done, with only a bottle or two to ward off frostbite. Inside there’s so much 100% alcohol in the air you’d be scared to light a match in case you put half of Indianapolis’s young male population quickly out of their misery. But these madmen take the risk anyway, flicking their Bics the moment the bell starts tolling behind the black stage curtain.

The band goes on and all hell breaks loose. WHOAARGGHH screams Brian Johnson, working-class rhino stomping the stage in his flat cap and beer belly, all charged and horned. “Whooaaargh” echoes Indianapolis in that HMconcert way, as “Hells Bells” starts over an hour of rock as subtle as the clap with a similar effect on the brain cells.