AC/DC was built to last when it formed 51 years ago in Sydney, Australia, according to guitarist Angus Young.

And that’s proven true over the course of 17 studio albums and more than 200 million worldwide record sales — not to mention departures, retirements and even deaths that have rocked the band on its long way still at the top, including the current PWR/UP Tour that brings it to Detroit’s Ford Field on Thursday, April 30.

“We’re committed to going on, going forward. That’s our main thing,” Young, 70 — who’s the sole remaining founding member still in AC/DC — said as the group rolled out its latest album, “Power Up,” in the fall of 2020. “The band’s been that way since the beginning. It was always a do-or-die effort. Anything we ever did, you went for broke. Even when we were younger, playing in a bar or club or something, you always went on with that attitude: ‘We gotta make this. You gotta win those people.’”

Those were words Young heard, too, during the past decade when dementia forced his older brother and fellow guitarist Malcolm Young out of the band (he died Nov. 18, 2017, at the age of 64).

“Mal himself, when he knew it was time to stop, he said: ‘You do it. You keep doing it,’” his brother recalled. “It was his baby in the beginning. It was his whole idea. He wanted it to go on.”

AC/DC has, of course, maintained a spot in the upper strata of the rock ‘n’ roll pantheon.

The music was in the Young brothers’ DNA; older brother had hits with his band the Easybeats and co-produced AC/DC’s first six albums with George Young. “All the brothers (six), played guitar,” Malcolm said in 2003. “You walked, you learned to talk and you played guitar. It was just in the family.”

With original frontman Bon Scott and early favorites such as “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “T.N.T.,” “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and “Highway to Hell,” AC/DC established a template not only for itself but for a particular brand of hard rock in general, one cited as a crucial inspiration by generations of musicians that followed.

“It’s just … how we sound, y’know?” Angus Young said. “When people would say to Mal, ‘All your albums sound the same,’ he would say: “Yeah? It’s the same band!’ We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. We just wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll band.

“George … always said: ‘You’re just a guitar band. The guitars are so dominant in what you do.’ He always saw that as a big plus factor, that the guitars were so strong. So we’ve just stayed with that. It’s just a groove. But it’s not an easy thing to do — at least not successfully.”

AC/DC’s wherewithal was tested in February 1980, when Scott died of alcohol poisoning in London at the age of 33. But with replacement Brian Johnson, the band achieved even greater heights. That year’s “Back In Black,” which was dedicated to Scott’s memory, is one of the top-selling albums of all time, globally — right behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” with more than 50 million copies worldwide. It spawned enduring stadium anthems such as the title track and “You Shook Me All Night Long,” refining AC/DC’s penchant for solid riffs and cheerfully leering lyricism.

The template has held firm ever since.

AC/DC’s commercial fortunes ebbed and flowed with musical fashions and trends, but it’s fair to say that the band has been fairly bulletproof since “The Razor’s Edge” in 1990 and its hit singles “Thunderstruck” and “Moneytalks;” the five albums since have all debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, with 2008’s “Black Ice” and 2020’s “Power Up” bowing at No. 1.

“I don’t think you can take anything for granted,” Young acknowledged. “You always hope it’s gonna be accepted, but … the public’s their own mob, y’know. You never know when the mob can go the other way.”

Young, meanwhile, has held the band together through all sorts of tumult and turmoil. His brother’s health issues began surfacing during the “Black Ice” cycle, but pushed him off the stage in the mid-2010s, even though he contributed to the writing of 2014’s “Rock or Bust.” The Young’s nephew Stevie Young took his place, while longtime drummer Phil Rudd was sidelined by legal issues. Severe hearing issues also sidelined frontman Johnson partway through the tour, with Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose taking his place for dates in Europe and Australia.

And Cliff Williams, AC/DC’s bassist since 1977, announced his retirement at the end of that trek.

After all of that and Malcolm Young’s death, it was widely assumed that AC/DC had finally unplugged, so the “Power Up” album — with Johnson, Williams and Rudd all back in the fold — came as something of a surprise. Even Angus Young admitted that. “To be honest with you, I didn’t know … and then I thought, ‘Well, I’ll start doing some work,’ which I’d always done.” That led him to a trove of ideas he’d worked on with Malcolm that were developed and finished for recording with producer Brendan O’Brien in Vancouver in 2018 and 2019.

“Malcolm is in every song,” frontman Johnson said at the time. “He was in the studio and I’m not talking spooky and stuff like that. Malcolm was there. He was such a strong character in life and it seems to have just passed on. I’m sure there’s not a guy in the studio that didn’t turn around and think of Mal, ’cause that’s his legacy, with Angus — it’s the band. I think we all felt it.”

And the youngest Young does see a kinship between that latest effort and “Back in Black,” which came out 40 years before it.

“They are alike,” Young explained, “because ‘Back in Black’ was a tribute to Bon Scott and it was our way of paying our respect to him. Even the color of it, we did it in black because it’s the mourning color, for people in mourning.

“And (‘Power Up’) album was for Mal. I thought, ‘Malcolm always liked things very simple and straight,’ so I just thought we’ll put a little candle (on the cover) and let him know that the album was for him.”

Talk of touring to support “Power Up” was initially curtailed by the pandemic, but AC/DC returned to the road last May in Europe and then earlier this month in North America and more European dates this summer. Improved hearing technology has allowed Johnson to rejoin the band, while Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction, Alanis Morissette) has replaced Williams and Matt Laug (Morissette, the Dirty Knobs) is in the drum seat.

“It’s just a brilliant feeling,” said Johnson, who published a memoir, “The Lives of Brian,” in 2022. “Getting back and just feeling part of it, being back with your family, it was just brilliant. It’s the one thing I’ve always loved doing.”

What nobody is predicting, however, is how much more of it AC/DC will be doing. But given the band’s history, nothing should be ruled out.

“There’s a lot of ideas and stuff, yeah, that I’ve still got, in different shapes,” Young said. “At the time, especially after (Malcolm’s) death and everything … it was a very hard thing to get through. But (Malcolm) himself, while he could still communicate, was always pushing — ‘You got to keep writing, keep doing it … .’ And I am.”