Brian Johnson - The Lives of Brian: A Memoir

Photo Paul Natkin/Getty Images

To my Great, Great, Great Grandchildren, who

Ill never meet. Its nice to know well connect

through these words. I wish you the very best in

life whoever you are.

With Love your Great, Great, Great Grandfather

Brian Johnson

Contents

Courtesy of the author

Experience is what you get when you dont get what you want.

This is a book about what happened when I didnt get what I wanted, but never stopped believing, and never gave up. Luck also played its part, of course but I truly believe that you can achieve just about anything if your dreams are urgent enough, and if you dont just sit around, waiting for something to happen.

Others will have different memories of the events that I describe in these pages. Its been more than forty years since the making of Back in Black , after all and half a century since the glory days of my first band, Geordie. This is just my version of how it all went down.

Finally, Id like to say a big thank you to Angus, Malcolm, Cliff and Phil for rolling the dice and giving me a second chance at a professional music career under some of the most difficult and tragic circumstances that any band could face. Malcolm, if there is another side, mate, when I get there Ill be buying you and Bon a beer.

B. J. London, 2022

Dana Zuk Photography

Id taken some hard blows before. But this time felt different.

This time, barring a miracle, thered be no getting back up.

The first hint that something was about to go very badly wrong had come in Edmonton, Canada.

It was the end of September 2015, halfway through AC/DCs Rock or Bust World Tour , and we were playing Commonwealth Stadium, the biggest outdoor venue in the country packed to capacity with more than 60,000 people. It was extremely cold and extremely wet, with buckets of rain coming down in front of the stage.

Angus already had a bad fever, and I could feel myself starting to come down with the same thing.

Being Canadian, the crowd didnt seem to have even noticed the weather. But of course, they were bundled up in the kinds of clothes that you can only buy north of the U.S. border, which protect you from everything from raging blizzards to pissed-off polar bears.

As for us, we were just in our usual gear. Me in a black T-shirt and jeans. Angus in his thin white school shirt and shorts. The stage was at least dry, with some warmth from the lights, but Angus and I always like to go out onto the walkway to be with the audience. So, thats where we spent a lot of the show and after a few songs, wed worked up such a sweat from all the moving around, we didnt care that we were getting soaked to the bone in near-freezing conditions.

Two hours, nineteen songs and a couple of encores later, we came off stage, feeling great about the gig. The sound on stage had been perfect. The fans had been screaming and cheering and singing along. Angus had played like a man possessed. But there was no time to hang around we had to get to our next show. So, we said our goodbyes and climbed into our minibuses, which sped us straight to the airport.

As we boarded the jet that would take us to Vancouver, the adrenaline of the show was starting to wear off and the physical toll that it had taken was starting to become clear.

I couldnt stop shaking.

The thought crossed my mind that for someone just a week away from celebrating his sixty-eighth birthday, maybe all that time in the freezing rain hadnt been such a great idea.

Then again, Angus wasnt faring much better and he was just a wee nipper of sixty.

Touring is always hard on the body, I reminded myself, no matter what your age. Coming down with the occasional bout of flu between shows is just part of the deal.

I ordered a big shot of whisky, which helped, while Angus had his usual mug of steaming hot tea and before we knew it, we were wheels-down in Vancouver and heading to our hotel.

But something wasnt right.

It was my ears.

They hadnt popped.

I tried all the old tricks yawning, swallowing, holding my nose and blowing but nothing worked. I gave up, thinking that theyd clear themselves during the night.

But when I woke up the next morning... oh, shit. I felt like I was wearing a bearskin balaclava.

If anything, my hearing had gotten even worse.

I couldnt bring myself to mention it to anyone at breakfast. When youre the lead singer of a band, your bandmates, the crew, the management, the support staff, the record label and, most important of all, the hundreds of thousands of fans, are all depending on you to get up on stage and do your job, no matter what.

My ears would pop eventually, I told myself.

They always had before.

By the time we got on stage that night at BC Place another stadium, but this time with a roof Angus seemed to have shaken off the worst of the fever. But I was still struggling.

Then disaster struck.

About two-thirds of the way through the set, the guitars lost all their tone in my ears, and I found myself searching for the key of the song. It was like driving in fog all reference points suddenly gone. It was the absolute worst experience that Id ever had as a singer, made all the more terrifying by the fact that it was happening with several more songs to go... in front of tens of thousands of paying fans. But somehow, I made it through and if anyone noticed, they were too kind to say.

With only two more shows to go on this leg of the tour AT&T Park in San Francisco and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles I convinced myself that I could keep going, that my ears would eventually pop. It seemed impossible to me that they wouldnt.

But the exact same thing happened at both shows. Two-thirds of the way through, I lost the key of the song and couldnt get it back. Worse still, I couldnt hear the conversation in the dressing room afterwards or later, when we went out to a restaurant for dinner. I just smiled and nodded along, pretending that everything was fine.

But inside, panic was setting in.

Since Angus formed AC/DC with his brother Malcolm in 1973 first with Dave Evans on vocals, then the great Bon Scott, then yours truly its always been an all-or-nothing kind of band.

Just take the giant stack of speakers that we use on stage.

A lot of bands, they use fakes or real cabinets with empty compartments to get the same aggressive, awe-inspiring look. Not AC/DC. With AC/DC, what you see is what you hear and what you hear as a result is the loudest band on the face of the earth.

Then theres Angus.

The intensity that lad brings to the stage, the whirlwind of energy he can keep up for more than two hours... its frightening. He cant turn it off. When he comes back to the dressing room after a show, hes spent, dead on his feet, gulping down oxygen.

The normal, off-stage Angus is just this nice, softly spoken, five-foot-something guy. But on stage, something happens to him. He transforms. When he goes for a piss before the show, hes still Angus. But when he comes back and hes at the side of the stage, youve lost him. You cant look into his eyes and tell him, Have a good one.