You join us at sunset - around 9.30 - in the valley that time forgot. A tiny middle-aged man, wearing nothing but schoolboy shorts, Union Jack pants, high-performance trainers and - important, this - a guitar, has just run offstage, down an illuminated catwalk over the audience, and onto the scaffolding tower which houses his sound engineers.
Up on the gantry, he surveys his public, thousands and thousands of them, and - what else? - plays a solo. Endlessly and ecstatically, he isn't actively defying fashion, just beautifully unaware of it. For Angus Young and the deathlessly fantastic AC/DC, time is irrelevant, and you can only tell which country you're in by the flag on your underwear. It's just another field on another continent, another place to take care of business.
Welcome to Milton Keynes Bowl, then; your dad's already here. In a few days' time, whiny, spiteful Limp Bizkit and the nu-metal hordes will take over this vast, featureless arena. Tonight, however, is an old school reunion, a chance to compare faded tour shirts, patchouli and patch-covered denim jackets and the childrens' GCSE results. There will be spectacle, solos and precious little angst or irony.
It's an opportunity to play flying Vs ands double-neck guitars with rare seriousness - as openers Megadeth do, ad nauseam. The reason why Dave Mustaine is far better known for his messy former adherence to the metal lifestyle, rather than the metal he plays, is soon cruelly apparent.
Josh Homme, meanwhile, is a new breed of guitar hero. Clean-cut, sleek and ferocious, this is a chance for him to prove that his marvellous band, Queens Of The Stone Age, are unlikely successors to AC/DC's tradition of streamlined boogie and guilt-free party action.
They're an intense, unconventional lot - rabid bassist Nick Oliveri screams "COCAINE!" repeatedly, Brendan McNicol is heavy rock's finest (alright, only) proponent of psychedelic steel guitar - now augmented by the lean and threatening presence of Mark Lanegan, the grunge Johnny Cash, and possibly the greatest male singer on the planet.
They're brave as well as terrific, too, so a massively long and freaked-out finale becomes, for a time, desperately quiet, and is greeted with a hail of bottles. "No-one hurts me more than I hurt myself. Got that?" snarls Homme. Message understood.
The Offspring are an incongruous main support, a dorkish ramalam at odds with the prevailing mood. Something for the youngsters, maybe. But really, AC/DC are so ludicrously good, so monumental in their faith in the brute power and potency of rock, such anomalies are soon forgotten. When reviewing them, there's the tendency to list the props: the cannons, the bell, the huge inflatable fat woman, the huger statue of Angus with glowing devil horns and smoke billowing from the nostrils. All familiar by now, of course, but still just as straightforwardly entertaining.
Indeed, AC/DC gigs allow as much room for innovation as the Catholic mass. A microscopic adjustment in the setlist - tonight's rare appearance of 'Up To My Neck In You' - constitutes a near-seismic disturbance. This, though, is perhaps how it should be when, as a band, you're responsible for some of the most effective and impressive music of the past 30 years. Their professionalism is unnerving, the lines and moves - right up to Brian Johnston's winded near-collapse after a sprint down the catwalk - immaculately rehearsed. But the slickness has a purpose: to reinforce the steely rigour of the music, the grand gestures of the spectacle.
Needless to say, everything goes to plan. The swirling wind and shady mix that's bedevilled the support acts miraculously clear up. 'Back In Black' proves, yet again, to have possibly the greatest riff ever cranked out. The fans wearing school uniform who are even older than Angus play their air guitars impeccably. The storm of glitter confetti and the fireworks at the end are both lovely. And stadium rock - so often despised as shallow and alienating - is revealed, when a band are this brash and brilliant, to be the apotheosis of rock'n'roll. A criticism? The cannons weren't quite loud enough. Beat that, Durst.
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