The Lives Of Brian

Brian Johnson HARPER COLLINS

AC/DC singer tells his story.

A diminutive Geordie’s sudden switch from sweating under an oily car engine in Newcastle to recording Back In Black in the Bahamas with AC/DC is one of rock’s great Cinderella stories. And there are many more stories than that for Brian Johnson to impart in this memoir, starting with tales of an impoverished post-war childhood in Newcastle (where even his own extended family looked down on his half-Italian heritage), before recounting AC/DC’s many triumphs in entertaining fashion, and ending the story with his bewildering health scares before his temporary hiatus from the band. Johnson (aided by the customary ghost writer) has an amusing turn of phrase when reflecting on those years and the brief flush of fame Geordie enjoyed before (via a startling and inspiring lunch date with Roger Daltrey) he was catapulted from near-obscurity to flat-capped ubiquity within the space of a few months in 1980. And, unlike his previous memoir, 2009’s Rockers And Rollers, you don’t need to know or care about carburettors.