AC/DC Set Prague Ablaze with a White-Hot “Shot Down in Flames” on 26 June 2025

On 26 June 2025, the tarmac at Letňany Airport in Prague erupted into a roaring sea of black tee-shirts and devil-horn hand signs as AC/DC’s European Power Up Tour roared to life. Local evening temperatures hovered near perfect concert weather, and even before the stage lights blinked on, the collective hum of fifty-plus thousand voices suggested something historic was about to unfold. The spotlight would soon land on a song many fans never expected to hear this bold, this loud, this late in the band’s career: “Shot Down in Flames.”

Hours earlier, vendor stalls had doubled as storytelling circles. Veterans traded memories of sweaty club gigs from the late 1970s, while first-timers clutched fresh merch that still smelled of ink. A low thrum of guitar techs line-checking amps drifted over the chatter, mingling with the scent of grilled klobása and beer. Every tick of the clock felt like another jolt to a shared pulse, winding tension tighter by the minute until dusk finally deepened to stage-light black.

When the house PA dropped to silence and the massive LED wall burst alive with blinding strobes, the entire airfield answered with a unified scream. After a trio of opening punches—“If You Want Blood,” “Back in Black,” and 2020’s “Demon Fire”—Brian Johnson took a half-step back, and Angus Young tore into the serrated opening riff of “Shot Down in Flames.” The reaction was instantaneous: a tidal wave of voices volleying every lyric back at the stage with ferocity usually reserved for football anthems.

Angus, still donning his signature schoolboy get-up at age 70, duck-walked across the thrust runway, firing off blues-driven licks that crackled like live wires dragged through puddles. His tone was savage yet precise, each bend punctuated by strobing red lights that made the guitar neck glow like molten metal. Somewhere in the wings, techs no doubt grinned—no amp sims here, just Marshall stacks roaring at primal volume.

Brian Johnson, freshly empowered by custom in-ear monitors that cured the hearing woes which once benched him, prowled the risers in his flat cap like a triumphant scrapper. When he howled, “I never felt like this before,” his voice sliced through the night with zero forgiveness, sounding every bit as combustible as when he joined AC/DC back in 1980. The verse became a declaration that age had tightened, not dulled, his rasp.

Stage left, rhythm guitarist Stevie Young paid dutiful homage to his late uncle Malcolm by locking down the locomotive groove with metronomic right-hand strums. Behind him, Chris Chaney’s bass thundered alongside Matt Laug’s relentless kick-drum barrage—a rhythm section so airtight it felt carved from granite. Their low-end wall allowed Angus free rein to spray feedback squeals and cheeky chromatic runs, knowing the backbone would never buckle.

What makes “Shot Down in Flames” special is its lyrical grin-and-bear-it tale of a bloke who crashes and burns in the dating scene, only to dust himself off for another round. In Prague, that street-corner swagger turned into a stadium-sized victory chant. Four and a half decades after its debut on Highway to Hell, the riff still punched the sky like a heavyweight jab—proof that AC/DC’s simplest chord progressions can carry skyscraper-high emotional heft.

Prague itself added an extra layer of resonance. When AC/DC first visited the Czech capital after the Iron Curtain fell, Western hard rock was still a novelty; by 2025, Angus’s every pick scrape earned roars rivaling Champions League finals. The city that once discovered them via contraband cassettes was now an epicenter of unfiltered, multigenerational devotion, underscoring how music outpaces politics and borders every time.

Mid-song, towering LED walls began splicing grainy Bon Scott-era club footage with real-time drone sweeps over the current crowd, letting 1979 and 2025 share a single cinematic frame. The effect was goosebumps-inducing—a visual manifesto that the past isn’t gone, merely plugged into a larger stack of amps powering the present. Fans waved inflatable guitars in sync with Angus’s minute-long solo extension, turning the runway into a carnival of cardboard riffs and genuine euphoria.

As the final chorus hit, four crimson fireball mortars erupted behind the drum riser, bathing the stage in a furnace glow. Confetti cannons blasted scarlet streamers across the masses, sticking to beer-foamed forearms and sweaty hair like embers made of paper. Johnson milked the last “Shot down in flamessss!” while Angus punched a cymbal crash with his headstock, sealing the tune in classic, over-the-top style.

The applause that followed felt less like a cheer than a tectonic shift. Even seasoned security guards admitted the volume bordered on seismic—the kind of roar you feel in your ribs before you register it in your ears. In the control tower, decibel readouts flirted with jet-takeoff territory, an irony not lost on anyone attending a concert literally staged on an airfield.

Without a breath wasted, the band detonated straight into “Thunderstruck,” as if flipping a single giant breaker to keep the current surging. Each song funneled kinetic energy into the next, turning the setlist into one massive electrical circuit. Far from tiring, the audience rode that current like surfers on a wave forever cresting just ahead of them, refusing to crash.

On social media, clips of Angus’s extended solo were already trending under #BurningForPrague before the song even ended. International outlets hailed the performance “pure sonic carnage delivered by masters,” while old-school rock forums buzzed that AC/DC had “officially rewritten the manual on aging gracefully.” Family group chats lit up with blurry, ecstatic videos that still managed to translate sheer volume into smartphone vibrations.

By encore time, many realized their voices had all but vanished, bartered for memories destined to anchor pub stories and late-night playlists for years to come. Yet hoarse throats pushed through “T.N.T.” and the cannon-laden “For Those About to Rock,” unwilling to let the night fade without a final, defiant scream echoing across the summer sky.

The long walk back to Prague’s Metro C line became a parade of stunned grins, ringing ears, and smartwatch decibel readouts screenshot for bragging rights. In multiple languages, a shared question surfaced again and again: “How can they still be this good in their 70s?” It was less disbelief and more marvel—a collective realization that some flames, once fanned, simply refuse to die out.

Ultimately, the 2025 Prague rendition of “Shot Down in Flames” did more than revisit history; it re-engineered it for the present tense. It proved that rock-and-roll vitality isn’t measured in birthdays but in voltage—and AC/DC continues to generate enough current to light whole cities, one riff at a time.