How touring with AC/DC turned out to be the “worst thing” that ever happened for The Wildhearts
Considering how AC/DC were at one stage not just the biggest rock band in the world, but the biggest full-stop, being asked to embark on a tour with them is surely an invitation you don’t pass up.
In the mid-1990s, when the Australian rockers were set to tour their Ballbreaker album, one of the bands fortunate enough to have been asked to join them as a support act were Newcastle hard rock revivalists, The Wildhearts. Something of an unknown prospect outside of the UK, this was the sort of opportunity that they weren’t going to say no to, and to potentially expose yourself to a wider audience and join them on the biggest stage would ultimately serve them well in the long run.
At home, they’d had a reasonable amount of success, reaching highs of number six in the UK charts with the release of their second studio album, PHUQ. Not only was the album title the sort of childish gag that would’ve sat well with AC/DC, but the style of music that they played was full of energy and venom in the same vein that their Australian counterparts had delivered for over 20 years at this point, and it seemed as though they’d be the perfect pairing.
This could well have been the best thing to happen to The Wildhearts, and could’ve helped them break through into the mainstream, and into public consciousness around the world. Unfortunately for them, it was a step too far too soon, and they were simply unable to cope with the pressure of being invited on such a glamorous tour of Europe and the USA, largely because the distractions proved to be their unravelling.
Speaking to Classic Rock Magazine, frontman Ginger Wildheart claimed that they made a number of mistakes that prevented it from being the ideal experience for them, and instead, it provided them with a learning curve that they had to try and recover from. After having done alright in Europe, Wildheart claimed, “We went to the US and it turned from majesty to comedy to tragedy all in one month. We got there and took full advantage of the welcome that America affords a young band, which is as much drugs and alcohol as we could get our hands on, and then, inevitably, we started fighting with each other. And then we decided that we couldn’t work together anymore, and so we went home.”
He continued by claiming that he still has deep regrets about the entire situation. “It’s possibly the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he argued. “I was partly responsible for blowing a tour of America with AC/DC. And our crew and our manager were all as fucked up as we were, and they all agreed; there wasn’t one person who said, ‘You can’t go home.’”
As much as he professed his love for AC/DC and their consummate professionalism, he said that the stupidity of him and his band messed up the best opportunity they’d ever been handed, and they were likely never to get dealt a hand like this again after this shambolic five-day run.
