AC/DC completed their new album some two years before Power Up was ultimately released, as stated by the band’s engineer Mike Fraser.
The noise concerning a new AC/DC project started when Brian Johnson and Phil Rudd were both seen together outside a Vancouver recording studio.
“I think that was July, August 2018,” Fraser recounted via Brave Words. “Then [producer] Brendan [O’Brien] and I went down to L.A. and mixed for about three, four weeks, and then they sat on it for a little bit. Then Brendan and Angus [Young] got together and did some more editing and a couple of other remix things. So, I’m not exactly sure when it was over, but my guess would be October 2018.”
Fraser remarked that the lately reunited group dedicated to working “quietly,” as they evaluated their circumstances.
“Brian … was fresh back in the band after his hearing stuff, and they didn’t know how that was going to work,” Fraser said. “[Bassist] Cliff [Williams] had said he wanted to retire; [Phil] had his problems, so putting that all together, it must have been a logistic nightmare. And I think they wanted to keep it under wraps, and if it worked out it would give the fans a great surprise present. … I think they were kind of disappointed that it got leaked. But they’re a huge monster band, so how could it not?”
Fraser realized that he began to investigate the ultimate timeline, given the record’s long-overdue release: “It was two years since we recorded it, and you start wondering, with the pandemic going on and the record in the can, is it going to see the light of day this year? So, it was pretty cool to see that little glimmer of hope. It was like, ‘Yeah! Here we go!'”
Johnson stated some magic remained, remarking that the spirit of the late Malcolm Young was most obvious on “Through the Mists of Time” from Power Up. “Whenever I hear it,” Johnson said in a recent interview with the Independent, “I still get goosebumps.”