January 14th 1986 Whitley Bay Ice Rink
Whitley Bay Ice Rink was a venue for concerts throughout the 1980s. I remember seeing quite a few gigs there including Rainbow, The Cure, Wham!, and The Jam. However, this gig draws a blank. I have a ticket and a programme, so I must have been at the gig. But I can’t remember anything at all about it. I can only conclude that this wasn’t a particularly memorable gig! By now AC/DC had graduated from clubs to concert halls, to arenas and festivals, with stadium gigs to come.
The Ice Rink was a vast, cavernous and very cold (naturally; it was, and still is, an ice rink!), and not the best place to see a band. It did however fill a gap in the North East venue map. The old Newcastle Odeon, with a slightly larger capacity than the City Hall, had sadly been converted into a multi-screeen cinema by the 1980s, and the Arena wasn’t built until 1995. Setlist: Fly on the Wall; Back in Black; Shake Your Foundations; Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap; You Shook Me All Night Long; Sin City; Jailbreak; The Jack; Shoot to Thrill; Highway to Hell; Sink the Pink; Whole Lotta Rosie; Let There Be Rock; Encore: Hells Bells; T.N.T.; For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
4 Jan
AC DC: Whitley Bay Ice Rink Jan 14th 1986
Posted January 4, 2012 by vintagerock in AC/DC. Tagged: blues, concert, concerts, folk, gig, gigs, heavy metal, music, pop, prog rock, punk, R&B, rock, rock n roll. 5 Comments
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Posted by Paul on February 13, 2013 at 10:08 pm
I was at this concert. It was a first for me, this particular venue and first ever concert. 14 year old! What I do remember about the concert, is when the cannons went off during FTATR, it brought down the giant plaster boards from the ceiling on to the heads of the audience stage left. Deaf and head injuries! We salute you!
Posted by DT on September 1, 2017 at 11:02 am
Fantastic ! , i was there too – still got the ticket ! , and told the same story to my wee boy who’s as mad as me about the band…!
AC/DC – we salute you…
DT
Posted by Brian Ellis on November 18, 2017 at 2:44 pm
I was there with two friends. We listened to one song then went up to the bar which overlooked the ice rink (We were more into Springsteen et al). They locked the door to the bar shortly after but we noticed that the after event party passes looked identical to the tickets and so we blagged our way into that. I remember it well because…….I was driving that night, back to Teesside!
Posted by connor jackson on March 16, 2022 at 5:19 am
First time I saw AC/DC, my memory is that the band gave it everything – they always do – but the sound was shocking, the mix was muddier than a rain soaked footy pitch, and it was absolutely freezing, and icy outside the venue, I slipped and twisted my ankle on the way out and had to be partially carried by my two mates, so not great memories! WB Ice Rink was an awful venue but did see a canny few gigs there, Metallica and Oasis being the best that I remember, they did at least partially tame the cavernous acoustics; I next saw AC/DC at Newcastle arena in 96 and that was a great gig, the Wildhearts supported who are a local band I love, then Hampden Park 2009, then Manchester in 2016 with Axl Rose fronting the band, which was actually amazing, he did really well. Hope I get to see them one more time!
Posted by vintagerock on March 16, 2022 at 12:13 pm
AC/DC are a great band Connor. I too would like to see them one more time. It is some years since I saw them. I first saw them in the mid-70s when they were relatively unknown at Newcastle University, the Reading Festival and Middlesbrough town hall. Always great. Happy days Peter