He’s Not The Messiah…
He’s the singer in AC/DC. Johnson’s second memoir focuses on the music. By
The Lives Of Brian ★★★★ Brian Johnson PENGUIN MICHAEL JOSEPH. £25
IN 2016, when Axl Rose replaced him on the final leg of AC/DC’s Rock Or Bust World Tour, Brian Johnson couldn’t watch. “It was like finding a stranger in your house, sitting in your favourite chair,” he writes. Acute hearing loss had left Johnson mortified when unable to locate the key of Highway To Hell on-stage one night, and later, near-total deafness ensuing, he felt increasingly isolated and vulnerable. “I didn’t want to die,” he says. “I just wouldn’t have minded that much.”
Happily, prosthetic eardrum technology restored Johnson’s pitching and lifeforce. He rejoined DC and made 2020 comeback Power
Up, the band’s first album in six years, and their first since the passing of talismanic rhythm guitar god, Malcolm
Young. In a book that’s essentially an extended riff on snatching victor y from the jaws of defeat, all of this figures. Recounted with wit, honesty and a confiding down-the-pub intimacy, The Lives Of Brian is a tale of fate, serendipity and dogged determination. It’s also a much more detailed, ruminative book than Johnson’s 2009 car-themed memoir, Rockers And Rollers: An Automotive Autobiography.
Despite the odd longueur (there is actual mention of jumpers for goalposts), Johnson’s childhood comes alive as he sketches his immovable, war-worn sergeant major dad (“I’ve never watched Top Of The Pops and I’m not starting just ’cos you’re on it,” huffs Alan when Brian’s ill-fated glam band Geordie appear), and his lovely, Frascati, Italy-born mum, Esther. Depressed by English food, weather and the view to Dunston’s coal staiths, Esther attempts to escape to Italy with Brian in tow at least twice but is lured back.
The singer’s decade-long apprenticeship for ‘proper’ fame is vividly evoked. Hamstrung by dodgy contracts, gruelling day-jobs, a failing shotgun marriage, homesickness for his kids and no clear sense of musical direction, Johnson makes lemonade all the same. He sings The
Move’s Fire Brigade for firemen, then they call out for Penny Lane (“It took a moment for that one to click”). Elsewhere,
Roger Daltrey rides in bare chested and centaur-like to impart rock’n’roll wisdom – “He seemed to be holding onto the horse just by its mane” – and there are memorable encounters with Phil Lynott, Chuck Berry and Ian Dury.
Naturally, the book climaxes with Johnson’s funny, ultimately rather moving account of his joining AC/DC. It’s a cagey and nervejanglingly convoluted process, Brian fearful of again entertaining the possibility of success, and DC mindful that, post Bon Scott’s tragic death, they must find just the right guy. “I looked around to tr y and gauge the band’s reaction,” says Johnson of his second audition. “Totally unreadable.”
When he finally gets the nod via a phonecall from Malcolm Young, he’s home alone, back living at his parents’ council house in Dunston with its familiar view over the railway line to the Vickers tank factor y. “AC/DC?” says his dad upon his return. “Never heard of them.”
“I’m not watching Top Of The Pops just ’cos you’re on it” ALAN JOHNSON, BRIAN’S DAD