[5] Browning feared that Pattenden was too old and didn't fit the band's image, so he instead pushed for Cliff Williams, who had previously played with Home and Bandit.

In a 2011 interview with Joe Bosso that appears on MusicRadar, Evans reflected on his ousting from the group: The band finally toured America for the first time in the summer of 1977, focusing on smaller markets at first but eventually playing CBGB in New York City and the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles.

In December, they played a set in front of a small audience at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York City which was broadcast live over Radio WIOQ in Philadelphia and hosted by Ed Sciaky.

[citation needed] Biographer Clinton Walker wrote in his 1994 Scott memoir Highway to Hell, "'Gimme a Bullet' was perhaps Bon's most accomplished piece of writing to date, in which his penchant for hardcase metaphors finds even more genuine pathos and humour than it had before.

[citation needed] "Bon was a street poet – he described it as 'toilet wall' poetry," former AC/DC manager Michael Browning explained to Peter Watts of Uncut in 2013.

In an interview with Bass Frontiers, Cliff Williams recalls the sessions fondly: "The guys had already been in the studio for a while and we went in to do what turned out to be the Powerage album.

Eddie Van Halen and Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards have stated that Powerage remains their favourite AC/DC record.

[23] The Detroit Free Press called AC/DC "another late '70s boogie band making strides toward commercial clout [who] pumps out heavy metal with a reasonable amount of panache".

[26] AllMusic gives Powerage a rating of three and a half out of five stars, stating that while "it is the most uneven of" AC/DC's 1970s material, the album still contained a "few genuine classics", specifically mentioning "Down Payment Blues" and "Up to My Neck in You".

[12] Edwin Faust of Stylus Magazine considers Powerage "AC/DC's best album... because it isn't simply about sex, drinking and tongue-in-cheek Satanism", but shows a band "growing up".

[27] In 1994, Bon Scott biographer Clinton Walker opined in his book Highway to Hell that "altogether, Powerage just seemed to lack the uncompromising coherence and relentless body and soul that was its predecessor's greatness."