To coincide with the release of his new solo album, Wooden Heart – Acoustic Anthology,  John Waite, former vocalist from The Babys, was recently interviewed by the Australian Rock Show podcast (audio below). Waite was asked about playing on the same festival lineups as AC/DC, which occurred in 1979.

Waite recalled: "F**k yeah, it was fantastic, we were all big fans - Powerage is still one of my favourite records… ’Down Payment Blues’, ‘Sin City’, ‘Gone Shootin’ - the end of ‘Gone Shootin’ where they keep jamming and the drums go into a four-on-the-floor – man it’s good, but Bon Scott, that whole thing. Yeah, it was my birthday, it was the 4th July in Rockford, Illinois and we were between AC/DC and Cheap Trick. I think somebody like Cheap Trick was trying to throw us to the lions cos there was a lot of competition, but we held our own.

"The crowd was really baked y’know, they’d been there all day - we’d played bigger gigs but it was a huge gig, it was about 40,000 people I think. But we’d played bigger gigs than that, I wasn’t frightened – I’ve always been kinda cocky on stage and just go for it - but we all went to watch ACDC and they were just, just fell off the bus – they were wearing... one of ’em, I forget who, it might’ve been the guitar player, the second guitar player, the brother (Malcolm Young) he wasn’t wearing shoes – it was just like, they were real hippies y’know.

"But they were powerful man, what a powerful, powerful band. I mean the guitar playing in that band is just off the hook. But that incarnation with the brothers and Bon, man – I mean Powerage man, Keith Richards once said it was one of his favorite records and there’s every reason in the world. I used to work out to that (Powerage) I used to get on a treadmill and do 5 miles to it – yeah, it’s just superb."