‘It was the most electric moment of my life’
Brian Johnson recalls the day he auditioned to join AC/DC, just a month after the shock death of Bon Scott. “Why did I do it? I f..king had to.”
When the call came to audition for the hard-rocking Australian-born band soon after the shocking sudden death in February 1980 of its previous vocalist Bon Scott — from what a coroner concluded was due to acute alcohol poisoning and death by misadventure — Johnson’s future looked set.
He was father to two daughters aged 12 and 9, and separated from their mother, Carol, though the pair was not yet divorced. On weekdays, he ran a small business situated under the arches on the Quayside in Newcastle, fitting custom vinyl roofs to cars. By night, he was the singer of a British rock band called Geordie II, so named after the dissolution of Geordie’s original line-up in 1978.
Johnson was the only carry-over member from his old group, and by 1979, the second iteration was gradually building a name for itself. Though by his own account a “barely semi-professional outfit, playing very small and unglamorous venues”, Geordie II was getting booked most nights week, and with a performance fee of 250 pounds per gig, was doing pretty well for a bunch of part-timers.
The vinyl roofing business was ideal for a working musician, because garages didn’t open until 10am or so, which allowed the singer to catch up on sleep if he didn’t get home from a gig until after midnight - which was most nights.
This was Johnson’s situation before he was thunderstruck by AC/DC: at age 32, he was having the time of his life. His business was booming, and the band had built a reputation as one of the hottest live acts in Britain’s North East.
On the romantic front, he had just met a young widow who was nearing 30 and ready to settle down and have kids. If Johnson kept the vinyl business while playing shows with Geordie II on the side, it all might have worked out beautifully. But rock ‘n’ roll, as he reveals below in an edited extract from his new memoir The Lives of Brian, had something else in store for him.
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‘Why did I do it? I f..king had to’
To say that I had mixed feelings about getting a call from AC/DC wouldn’t really go far enough. I mean, the second that I heard the band’s name, I remembered the tragic event from just a few weeks earlier.
It was Ken who’d broken the news to me at the vinyl shop. “Hey Brian, you know that song you sing – Whole Lotta Rosie?”
“Yeah?”
“The guy who sings it is dead.”
“No, he’s not. I just saw him on Top of the Pops. He’s as fit as a butcher’s dog.”
“Well, it says here that he was found dead inside someone’s car – ‘Death by misadventure’ they’re calling it.”
“What? That can’t be right… give it here.” I took the paper from him and read the story myself… but I just couldn’t understand how it had happened. In those days, I was completely ignorant about the dangers of drinking to excess or taking any kind of drug. Part of it was the fact that no one in my world ever had enough money for drugs and we all had to get up at the crack of dawn most days to go to work, so getting drunk to the point of losing consciousness wasn’t exactly an option. I’d never smoked a joint – and as for harder drugs, I’d never been offered them, never known anyone who’d taken them, they were completely beyond my experience. So, it was shocking to me that a lad like Bon, who was just a year older than me, fighting fit and in the prime of his life, could die like that.
Most of all, though, it was the tragedy of it that struck me – not only for Bon’s family, bandmates and friends, but also for anyone who loved rock music. Whole Lotta Rosie was one of the greatest rock songs of all time, as far as I was concerned, and it was just one of many classics that he’d written and recorded with AC/DC, from Let There Be Rock to Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. And, of course, Bon and the boys had outdone themselves the previous summer with their Highway to Hell album. Thanks to that gem – and the title song about the hardships of life on the road – they’d finally broken through after six years of non-stop gigging to become a major headline act. Meanwhile, the album had gone all the way to No. 8 in the British charts and to No. 17 in America – where they were becoming an even bigger deal than they were in Europe. The lads had even got onto TV’s Top of the Pops with their second single, Touch Too Much. I’d watched it myself at home just a couple of weeks earlier.
Bon had looked like he was having the time of his life. After all, thanks to Highway to Hell, he must have known AC/DC were on their way to becoming a huge band. Meanwhile, it still hadn’t clicked in my head that Bon was the guy from Fang with whom I’d shivered in freezing Torquay [in south-west England] seven years earlier. And it would take a while yet…
The East German woman who phoned to tell me about the upcoming audition for AC/DC wouldn’t tell me her name, so I came up with one myself – Olga from the Volga. From what I could gather, Olga worked in the office of a guy called Peter Mensch, a tour accountant turned manager, but whenever I asked her a question, it was met either by stony silence or “Zis, I cannot say.” What puzzled me was how my name had ended up on their list of singers to call. It made no sense. By now, it had been seven years since Geordie’s run of minor hit singles, and I was only a household name in the sense that everyone in my house knew my name.
What I’d find out later – much later – was that my name had actually been put forward by several different people. There was an AC/DC fan in Cleveland, Ohio, who’d seen Geordie back in the day and written to Peter Mensch, recommending the band try me out. Then there was the young South African producer of Highway to Hell – Robert “Mutt” Lange – who also knew of Geordie and had also mentioned me to Angus and Malcolm. And I learned later that Bon had also told them about me after our Torquay adventure.
The other question at the top of my mind was whether Angus and Malcolm and the other lads would even want to continue without Bon. Again, it would take a while before I learned the full story, but the answer might have been “no” – at least right then – if it hadn’t been for Bon’s parents, Isa and Chick (Chick was short for Charles). They told Angus and Malcolm that Bon would have wanted AC/DC to keep going and finish the album that they’d just started work on. At the very least, they thought it would be a welcome distraction for the band – something to help them deal with their grief.
As for me, my mind was racing by the time I got off the phone with Olga. I mean, I was flattered and excited to get the call, of course. It almost didn’t feel real, auditioning for a band that was so well known around the world. But I also knew that there’d be dozens of other contenders all vying for the same gig, and I wasn’t sure that I had the heart to go through all the anticipation and disappointment, especially since my little band was doing so well.
Hang on Brian, I told myself, get yourself together. Get the facts straight. You’re 32, living with your mother and father. You’ve got a successful little business and a successful little band. You’re happy with your girlfriend, you’ve got your two lovely daughters – everything’s going great. Why would you do this?
I’ll tell you why – I f..king had to.
Later, in London, I found the entrance to Vanilla Studios, a rehearsal space and recording facility where I would be meeting the band for my audition. I was welcomed by the AC/DC road crew, who were in the middle of a game of pool. Next thing I knew, I’d put a coin on the table, it was my turn to play, and we were having a great old natter and a laugh. I’d just sort of assumed that the band were busy with something and would come and get me, but no, they were in the rehearsal room, looking at their watches, wondering where the f..k the guy from Newcastle was. Eventually, the band’s tour manager, Ian Jeffery, was dispatched as a search party.
“Has anybody seen that Geordie lad?,” he asked, using the colloquial name for people from Newcastle.
“Well, I’m a Geordie,” I said.
Shocked, the crew looked at me. “Are you Brian?”
I nodded.
“Oh, for f..k’s sake, we’ve been waiting for you for an hour!”
Nobody had even thought to ask me, because I looked like a working boy.
If the lads were irritated, they kept it well hidden. In fact, they couldn’t have made me feel more at home. “I believe this is your local brew?” said Malcolm, holding out a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale for me. It was such a Malcolm thing to do.
“Oh, I could kill one of those,” I grinned. “Thanks, mate.”
“What do you want to sing, mate?” asked Malcolm casually.
Oh, Jesus. What a question. I didn’t want to launch straight into an AC/DC song because they’d know it by heart, and I’d be flailing around, which wouldn’t exactly be a level playing field. So, I threw out Nutbush City Limits, the classic Tina Turner song. Angus – who hadn’t said a word – looked a bit taken aback.
“Well, you passed the first test,” said Malcolm, deadpan.
“What’s that then?” I asked.
“You didn’t say Smoke on the Water. Good song, Nutbush,” he added. “Everyone ready?”
“What key?” asked Angus, finally speaking up.
“I think it’s A?” I replied.
Malcolm looked at me and he said, “A? Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
You see, A is the high rock’n’roll key – it’s Robert Plant area. The rock’n’roll key of rock’n’roll keys.
And then Malcolm said, “Hang on, I think I’ve got it.” Then, before you knew it, Phil and Cliff joined in, Angus was there, heads started rocking and off we went. I started coming in and they were waiting to hear this voice, to see whether it was worth their while, and it was the most electric moment of my life.
I mean, I played with a good little band, but nothing prepared me for that sound. It was just the best thing I’d ever felt and heard, and I started singing like my life depended on it.
“That was a lot of fun,” I said afterwards, almost welling up, because it really had been just magic, for me anyway.
But then came the real test.
“Can you have a go at something of ours now?” asked Malcolm. “Just name a song, any song…”
I didn’t even have to think.
“Whole Lotta Rosie,” I said.
No matter how good it had felt to play Nutbush, Whole Lotta Rosie was almost an out-of-body experience. As soon as we got into it, I started to get these weird tingles and shivers. I felt like Bon was right there in the room with us, smiling and sipping on his rum and Coke. He’d been gone barely a month, you’ve got to remember. And there I was, in that tiny room, singing his signature song, with Angus next to me, this absolute force of nature. When he tore into the solo, it was so loud, and proud, the hairs on my arms were standing on end. Every member in the band playing like their life depended on it. It was the AC/DC way. It sounded so right.
This was rock’n’roll. This was how it was all meant to be.
Extracted from The Lives of Brian (Penguin, $35), out now
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