It’s Monty Python meets Spinal Tap
The Lives Of Brian
Brian Johnson Michael Joseph £25 ★★★★★
Back in 1980, when classic rock legends AC/DC released Back In Black, Brian Johnson (pictured, right with Angus Young) seemed to have appeared by magic. An uncannily perfect replacement for the band’s original singer (the late Bon Scott), he screamed his way into the hearts of existing fans, and millions more new ones – Back In
Black is the second-biggest-selling album of all time, topped only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
But like so many extraordinary stories, its beginning was much more prosaic. Born into a hard-up, half-Italian, half-Geordie family in the North East,
Johnson is particularly good on the grime of post-war Gateshead, a place so insular that ‘Even people from Sunderland were hissed at. The Scots were practically extraterrestrial.’
We follow Johnson through the Sea Scouts, the Territorial Army, numerous ill-fated bands, a windscreen-fitting business and, finally, into the Australian rock giants. And while there’s plenty of 1970s humour and high jinks – think Monty Python meets This Is Spinal Tap – it’s certainly not all sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
From his early 20s, Johnson had a wife and children to support and, before joining AC/DC at 32, he had ‘never smoked a joint – and as for harder drugs, I’d never been offered them, never known anyone who’d taken them, they were completely beyond my experience’. A few pints in the pub was much more Johnson’s speed.
And, of course, not all his fellow aspiring rockers made it. The drummer from one of Johnson’s former bands ended up working for Calor Gas ‘until he retired’. Johnson himself is frequently caught between home commitments and musical dreams. There are so many reminders, in this book, of how thin the line can be between one life and another.
Accordingly, The Lives Of Brian is both a rollicking tale of rock’s bygone glory days and a deeply human account of a working-class boy who never gave up. Told in
Johnson’s light, engaging prose, it’s everything you want, and didn’t know you wanted, from a rock-star memoir.