“That was it”: The song Brian Johnson the most important song he ever heard
Rock and roll has always been about having an all-star frontman in front of the microphone. Even if the person in question couldn’t hang with the best vocalists of all time, it was worth it to have a true entertainer behind everything, whether that was Jim Morrison creating a trippy atmosphere with The Doors or David Lee Roth turning into a cartoon character whenever Van Halen lit up the stage. While Brian Johnson could easily get the job done after AC/DC lost Bon Scott, he knew that he wouldn’t be where he is today without the true greats of rock and roll that came before him.
Then again, AC/DC were never a band that concerned with evolving their sound too often. Most of their musical taste was solidified by the time that Elvis Presley was drafted into the army, and although there were some great acts that came after him like The Rolling Stones, they knew there was no point in trying to compete with the likes of Led Zeppelin when people like Chuck Berry already perfected everything.
But listening to Scott’s incarnation of the band, he was bringing something different to the table. Compared to Robert Plant’s shouting and Gene Simmons’s booming voice, Scott’s voice was the epitome of the word ‘sleaze’, practically telling the story of every wild night he’d ever had whenever he got up to the microphone, not even bothering trying to put in any innuendo on tracks like ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’.
It would be hard for anyone to fill his shoes, but Johnson never tried to be a Scott clone when working with the Young brothers. He had his own vocal tone going for him, and by the time people heard Back in Black, they got a taste of the banshee that the band hired. His voice was as raw as Scott’s was with more of a feral edge to it, but even Johnson couldn’t claim to be the originator of raw screaming.
Before rock and roll was even an idea, Little Richard was the architect of what every singer should aim for. His vocal tone might not have been the most pleasant for people who preferred their music to be along the lines of Frank Sinatra, but the minute that everyone listened to ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Keep A-Knockin’, they knew that they were dealing a one-of-a-kind talent that had some true gusto behind all of that glitter.
“I just saw this guy with this stunning sweep back hair, beautiful jacket and he opened his mouth with ‘Whop bop b-luma b-lop bam bom’. That was it, I was just gone.”
Brian Johnson
And as far as Johnson was concerned, he wouldn’t be where he is today without a song like ‘Tutti Frutti’ coming first, saying, “I just saw this guy with this stunning sweep back hair, beautiful jacket and he opened his mouth with ‘Whop bop b-luma b-lop bam bom’. That was it, I was just gone. I think that was one of the most important songs that I heard. It was just magnificent.”
If Little Richard was everyone’s first taste of that style of singing, though, Johnson was that kind of vocalist on steroids. He could still make his voice shrill when he wanted to, but hearing a song like ‘Hells Bells’ for the first time is enough to make any singer’s voice sore just by listening to it.
It might be a workout for anyone to even attempt to get up into the register that Johnson has to this day, but if you were to ask both him and Little Richard about their secret, they probably wouldn’t have told you that it came from any specific technique. It was about taking all of the emotion that you had in your body and making it come out loud enough so that everyone in the venue could hear it.
