The AC/DC album Brian Johnson thought “must have been crap”
No artist is safe from having imposter syndrome now and again. Even if you think you have your own answer to an album like Abbey Road, it’s impossible to see the merit in your work unless you get validation from someone else beforehand. Although Brian Johnson already had tremendous shoes to fill by taking over for Bon Scott in AC/DC, he initially thought that rough mixes of Back in Black would make it terrible.
For any regular AC/DC fan, it felt like the band was done when Scott passed away. Although he may not have been the man behind all the massive riffs, Scott was the spirit of AC/DC in every sense of the word, making songs that celebrated the excesses of being in a kickass rock and roll band.
Whereas other artists like Led Zeppelin were writing about more cerebral topics than what rock was used to, Scott was proud to write about the pleasures of rock, whether that’s the rules of the road or the more nefarious habits that go on behind closed doors. Scott did like to have a drink or two or ten, too, and one fateful night would spell disaster for the band when their singer was found dead after a night out.
While replacing Scott seemed impossible, the band remembered that one of the best replacements had already been suggested by their former frontman. After catching the band Geordie play, Scott returned to AC/DC raving about the singer Brian Johnson, who would join the band in Scott’s place.
Even though Johnson brought his everything to the sessions, he knew that he wasn’t supposed to look at himself as the next singer in AC/DC. Years after the fact, Johnson still said that he was one of the luckiest guys in the world for taking Scott’s place, telling Behind the Music, “I was never brought in to replace Bon. I was brought because Bon was there no more”.
After going through the handful of riffs the band had assembled before Scott passed away, Johnson brought his own spin to the lyrics. While still paying tribute to Scott’s usual style, many of the lyrics to songs like ‘Hells Bells’ and ‘Back in Black’ were reverent to what their old frontman had done, celebrating the wonders of rock while acknowledging their legendary partner.
Once recording wrapped up in the Bahamas, the long wait time to master the album made Johnson question whether it was any good. When talking to CBC, Johnson thought that the long wait time meant that it was terrible, saying, “Malcolm and Angus were putting on different bits and all of this and stayed there for the mix. So we went back, and after about six weeks, I was going, ‘It must have been crap.’ Because I haven’t heard anything”.
Even when recording the album, Johnson said that one of the first things he did after cutting his vocals was light up a cigarette on a dock and wonder what he was going to do for a living. Although Johnson was convinced that the band would hate his vocals in the mix, his signature gravelly tone slid into the band’s sound perfectly.
Without being an imitation of Scott, Johnson bridged the gap between both eras of the band beautifully and walked away with one of the best-selling rock albums of all time. It’s almost impossible to find someone who lived and breathed rock and roll as well as Bon Scott, but it’s miraculous that AC/DC actually managed to find another guy with the exact same vocal power.
