The “magic” 1973 song that got Brian Johnson into AC/DC
Timing is everything. The early bird gets the worm, but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese. The story of AC/DC is one that reminds me of this in many ways.
Their first singer, Dave Evans, quit in 1974 because the group wasn’t making any money, and he had bills to pay. More than 200 million album sales later, he may well rue that decision. But he very nearly wasn’t the only one in their storied history who missed out on a fortune over fears of financial stability.
The Aussie rockers are, in many ways, the ultimate working-class band, and the lore of their history proves how difficult it is to be a successful one, given that the trampoline of financial security, that so often launches the middle classes to success, isn’t there to play with. Brian Johnson might be a singer with a voice that could stir honey into tea from a country mile away, but it was the fickle fate of circumstance that amplified the talents of the humble lad from lowly beginnings to the attention of the global stage.
Luck is a beast of a thing, and seeing as though it can’t be tamed, Johnson’s tale to the top is one that reminds us that we shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate our own good fortune and berate others for their lack of it. Led Zeppelin photographer Jorgen Angel might have said that Geordie – Johnson’s aptly named first band – were the best live group he had ever seen. But the singer’s career as a performer looked all but over as his 20s drew to a close.
The cult praise for his live shows had failed to bring about a secure future. And Johnson was ready to call it a day when it came to music.
“I was living at home with my parents in my 30s, a fucking loser,” Johnson joked on the Howard Stern show. Geordie were floundering, and Johnson was being forced to face up to adulthood. He planned to give the music industry another couple of weeks while he transitioned into an automotive business. He was literally weeks away from being a gravel-voiced man talking about horsepower for a living when the spotlight wandered onto him in an auspicious swing of fate.
As the rasping singer explains, “There was a fan from Cleveland who, to my eternal debt, I thank, Mutt Lange [Record Producer], said you’ve got to try this guy. And unwittingly, Bon Scott himself had said, ‘Of all the singers I have seen in England, this kid called Brian Johnson was the best’… which was a very nice thing to say.” Thus, when Scott tragically passed away in 1980, his AC/DC bandmates already had a replacement in mind.
Johnson, however, had all but washed his hands with music, so when one day he got a phone call to his office from a German lady saying he had to come to London to audition for an unnamed band, he was naturally reluctant. “Well, I’m not coming down to London if you can’t tell me which band it’s for,” Johnson, 250 miles away from the capital in Newcastle, explained to the mystery caller.
He implored, “You’ve got to give me a clue.” To which the German enigma apparently said, “The initials are AC und DC,” before adding, “Oh, I have said too much.”
Yet, he was still uncertain. Having been a beleaguered member of the music industry for a decade now, he was still worried about pursuing it as a career. After all, although AC/DC were beloved at this point, they were still very much a cult act yet to register on the mainstream. Their highest charting single at this point had been ‘Highway to Hell’, which somehow only rose to 47th in the US.
With that in mind, Johnson standing on the forecourt of a potentially profitable garage with a degree of ambivalence about the offer becomes far more understandable. “I’m 32, I’m past my sell-by date for rock bands, I’m an old fart,” The Newcastle lad mused. But once more, the stern German lady assured him, “This is zee man they are after.”
Actually, it turns out, she was a little more zealous than the Aaazee/Deeezee themselves. They were still eying up other options at this stage. One song changed all that in a heartbeat. Tina Turner might not have been the most obvious choice for him to sing. In fact, his would-be Aussie bandmates shot each other a few suspect glances when he suggested it during his audition.
Johnson noticed. As soon as he suggested the 1973 hit, he felt the tension rise in the London rehearsal room. Suddenly, the bottle of his native Brown Ale that they had greeted him with tasted a little more sour. Their response was somewhat closer to ‘I suppose we can give it a whirl’ than an instant ‘1,2,3,4 count-in’.
However, as soon as they broke into ‘Nutbush City Limits’, an alchemical buzz turned the awkward rehearsal space into a crowdless concert. A few bars in, they knew they had found their new singer. Johnson knew he had found his new band. ”Two or three weeks later, I was on a plane to the Bahamas,” Johnson happily recalls. What became of the garage is anyone’s guess.
Needless to say, Johnson still has a soft spot for ‘Nutbush City Limits’. “It speaks for itself, that voice,“ he says of the track. “So powerful, you need everything, you can’t half-sing ‘Nutbush City Limits’.“ The same was true for Tina. This was the first song she ever wrote. And it became one of Ike & Tina’s biggest ever hits. She knew she might not get another chance, so she followed the advice to “write what you know”, and put her all into a soulful classic that still stands up.
As Johnson says, it typifies one of the key tenets of rock ‘n’ roll that has always abided in AC/DC’s own discography: NO HALF MEASURES. Johnson went into his audition with that mentality and came out laughing.
Thankfully, timing meant he gave it all he had on that fateful day. “It was magic, it was something. That’s why it’s important to me; it changed my life that day in 1980. That’s why it became really personal for me,” he concludes.
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