The penultimate track in this concert movie, "Rocker", shows and tells everything about the rage and the fury of what Rock and Roll can be: during this simple, high-speed rock-blues number, the lead guitar player, Angus Young, covered in sweat, suddenly exits the stage. A camera catches him backstage, breathing frantically from an oxygen bottle. He takes a sip of water and directly continues playing solo guitar, while a roadie grabs his arm and leads him to the front of the stage, where he mounts the shoulders of another roadie, waiting for him to carry him right into the audience. Suddenly in the middle of the fans, all hell breaks loose, everyone wants to touch this rock god, who does not seem to be affected by the chaos surrounding him and keeps on manically playing his guitar. Being brought back on stage, he mounts the shoulders of singer Bon Scott and gets carried across the stage to somehow conclude the madness of the song.
"Let There Be Rock" is for one part the very best you can get from a concert movie about a Rock and Roll band: for one, AC/DC are probably at their very height. They may have really good times to come, but doubtfully they were any better than on this night. Equally good, maybe often. But never better. Then this movie is thankfully filmed and cut in a very calm way, as if the camera is a mere observer of what is happening on stage. Slowly cut, you can sit back and watch the musicians working their way through the songs, sometimes on one aspect of the musician the camera just concentrates on. Very rarely there are fancy effects like some slow motion cuts or are a repeating sequence of Angus Young throwing himself to the ground. The effect of this calmly filmed movie is that the viewer can turn up the volume and get sucked into the power of one of the best rock and roll live bands ever to exist, playing at their very peak.
If it wasn't for the scenes cutting into the movie. While the opening sequence is a nice intro to the madness that follows, consisting of roadies setting up the stage, trucks bringing in more equipment and the Young brothers sitting backstage, tuning their guitars and playing quietly some notes and riffs, the concert gets often interrupted by more backstage scenes and worse, really bad interview sections. The questions asked often very much miss the point of what Rock and Roll, and in special AC/DC, is all about. Scenes where the musicians drive their cars, playing football and whatnot are an absolute waste of time and stand in harsh contrast to the beauty of the way the actual concert was filmed.
So when at home watching the movie: watch the intro, but whenever the concert is interrupted, skip to the next song. This way you see one of the very best concert movies ever to be filmed.
