Back In Black Before The Storm: How Brian Johnson Went From Fixing Cars In Gateshead To Fronting AC/DC
- Johnny Bee
- Jul 25, 2020
- 10 min read
You know that moment when life throws you a curveball and it lands right in the sweet spot. Brian Johnson was 32, back in his parents’ house in Gateshead, fitting vinyl roofs and windshields to pay the mortgage, convinced the dream had sailed. Then the phone rang. A woman with a German accent said a band wanted him to audition in London. He asked for the name. She would not tell him. Initials then. A small pause. A C and D C. He put down his pie in a Pimlico cafe and walked into history.
This is the story of a comeback that should not have happened and yet somehow did. A singer who thought he was past his sell by date joining a band that had lost its talisman. New songs hammered together in grief and grit. A tropical storm that gifted the opening lines to one of the heaviest album intros ever recorded. And a tolling bell that needed a whole lot more ingenuity than anyone expected. By July 1980 AC/DC released Back In Black and Brian Johnson went from beer money gigs to the biggest selling rock album on earth. As Malcolm Young would later put it with beautiful bluntness, "We meant it. It is real. It is coming from within. The emotion on that record will be around forever."
From Geordie to Geordie two and the feeling that time had passed
In the early seventies Johnson fronted Geordie, a glam tinged Newcastle band signed to EMI with a proper Top 10 single in 1973, All Because Of You. He had the cheeky working class swagger of a pub born showman and a voice like the Tyne ferry foghorn. Then the hits dried up. The record deal went. The band ground on through working mens clubs before finally calling it a day. He remembered it without varnish. "I was completely broke. I had two kids and a mortgage and a fourteen year old Beetle. I was skint."
He did what practical people do. He scraped together enough to start a small car trim outfit because he had always been nuts about cars. For pocket money he reformed a no illusions bar band that he called Geordie Two. The set had a streak of comedy because the lads were funny and the show needed to land in clubs. But they could rock. The finale was often a then cult track by an Australian outfit called AC/DC. Whole Lotta Rosie never failed to lift the roof. Brian loved belting it out. He still loved the stage. He just did not believe lightning would strike twice.
February 1980 the unimaginable and a band at a crossroads
Until the morning of 20 February 1980 AC/DC looked unstoppable. Highway To Hell had broken them wide in America. Touch Too Much had just delivered a first UK Top 30 single. Then Bon Scott was found in London after a heavy night out and pronounced dead. The coroner recorded death by misadventure. He was 33. The shock was total. The band briefly considered stopping. Bon’s father gave them simple permission at the funeral in Fremantle. Carry on. He would have wanted it. So they did.
Back in London the Young brothers did the only therapy that ever worked for them. They picked up guitars. Two sketches existed from before Bon died, one a stop start riff Malcolm had worked on during soundcheck, another a rough demo of a boozy idea with Bon bashing the drums. They wrote. They grieved. Then they faced the dread practical question. Who could sing these songs without trying to be Bon. Angus was clear. Bon was unique. They did not want a Bon imitator. They wanted something a little different.
The recommendation that would not die and a jingle that paid for the train
Johnson’s name had floated around AC/DC long before the call reached him. Bon had seen Geordie years earlier and told Angus he had witnessed the best Little Richard style howler he had ever seen. The story gets better in the way real stories do. The reason Brian had been rolling and screaming onstage that night was not just showmanship. He had appendicitis and was in agony. After Bon died a fan in Cleveland mailed management a Geordie record with a note. You have to listen to this guy. Producer Robert John Mutt Lange also mentioned Brian to the Youngs. When a name keeps popping up in a hard nosed camp like AC/DC it does not happen by accident.
Even so the invite nearly came to nothing. Brian was wary. He had been burned once by the music business and had a shop floor full of jobs. He only said yes because a friend asked him to come down to London the same day for a paid advert session. Three hundred and fifty pounds for a Hoover jingle was serious money. He would do the ad. If there was time he would nip over to Pimlico and have a sing.
Vanilla Studios Pimlico brown ale and Nutbush City Limits
He nearly did not go in. He sat in a small cafe staring at a pie he could not eat because the crust was like iron and fear had seized his appetite. Then he crossed the road and opened the studio door. The first thing Malcolm Young did was hand him a bottle of Newcastle Brown with the line You must be thirsty. It broke the ice. When they asked what he wanted to try first, he picked Nutbush City Limits rather than the expected Smoke On The Water. Breath of fresh air, the band said. Then they hit Whole Lotta Rosie and something crackled in the room. Drummer Phil Rudd later said they knew they had their man. Brian went home to Gateshead none the wiser.
A second try out followed. Another quiet train home. Then the call came on his dads birthday. Malcolm on the line. We have an album to do. We leave in a couple of weeks. Are you set. Brian being Brian asked him to ring back in ten minutes in case someone was taking the mick. Mal rang back on the dot with the same no fuss sentence. Are you coming or what. On 1 April 1980 AC DC announced their new singer. If you think the April date was awkward you are right. His own brother thought it was a prank.
Compass Point Nassau five weeks of pressure and lightning in a bottle
The new look band flew to the Bahamas to record at Compass Point in late April with Mutt Lange. The set up was spartan. The schedule was unforgiving. The weather was biblical. Johnson has told the story many times of sitting on his bed in a breeze block room trying to write lyrics fast enough to keep up. Mutt poked his head around the door to check he was all right. Then the sky went black. A tropical storm roared in. Listen. Thunder. Write that down. Rolling thunder pouring rain arriving like a hurricane. Hells Bells wrote itself as Brian described it, more or less a weather report.
Other songs came with the same mix of instinct and intent. That stop start riff of Malcolms became Back In Black, the title track and the album’s mission statement. Have A Drink On Me was a toast to Bon from the band that still loved him. You Shook Me All Night Long gave Johnson his first AC/DC single and cemented his perfectly rude way with a double entendre. She told me to come but I was already there. He admits he wondered if he had gone too far. Nobody else in the room thought so.
By the end of week five nine songs were in the can. One more was needed. Malcolm tossed a title into the air. Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution. Johnson laughed out loud at the rhymes he would need to find for that mouthful, then walked into the booth, took a drag, and delivered the preacher style spoken intro in one take. He assumed it was a throwaway. It became a fan favourite and a defiantly on brand closing argument.
The bell that would not ring and the pigeons that ruined the take
The album’s most famous sound effect might be the most expensive single note in rock. Mixing at Electric Lady in New York, Malcolm decided the opening to Hells Bells needed a literal bell, a heavy ominous toll to set the tone. Engineer Tony Platt flew to England to record a church bell in Loughborough. Every time the clapper struck, dozens of pigeons burst from the tower, their wings wrecking the recording. Plan B. Commission a foundry in Leicestershire to cast a custom bell and record that instead. The solution worked. The bell on the record tolls with a weight that still sends a low level shiver through the floorboards and it famously strikes 13 as the song fades in.
The cover that said it all and a release that rewrote the odds
Atlantic Records had concerns about a pure black sleeve. The band held the line. The cover was a memorial to Bon and a statement of intent. No frills. No gloss. Just the name, the title and a field of mourning black. Back In Black arrived in late July 1980, the United States release dated 25 July with the United Kingdom following a few days later. It went straight to Number 1 in Britain within two weeks and settled in for an epic run in America, racking up a thirteen month stay in the Billboard Top 10 through 1980 and 1981. In time it would sell more than fifty million copies worldwide. Only Thriller has sold more.
The album did more than rescue a great band at its most vulnerable moment. It made AC/DC a global force on a scale even Highway To Hell had only teased. It also transformed Brian Johnson overnight from a Geordie grafter to an arena sized frontman. When the tour finally came home to Australia in early 1981, Bon’s mother Isa told him, "Our Bon would have been proud of you son." It was the blessing that mattered most.
Human scale memories the Chevy Blazer and the neighbour with the Cortina
For all the mythology, the personal stories are the ones that stick. Back in Newcastle after the whirlwind, Brian treated himself to a Chevy Blazer in black and white because of course he did. The neighbour who always smirked at his old bangers had a new Cortina every four years and could not resist a dig. That is a big daft thing. You jealous mate. Johnson laughed. It was daft and glorious and his. In a way the car said it all. The lad from Dunston who had plastered the rust on a Beetle to keep the job going now owned a slice of American excess because he had found his voice again.
Another domestic footnote arrived years later when his daughter rang to say she had finally listened to the album properly and was proud of her dad. Her favourite tracks. Shoot To Thrill and Let Me Put My Love Into You. How old are you now pet. Thirty six. You are older than I was when I made it. That exchange captures the oddity of being a rock icon who still sees himself as a dad and a bloke who likes engines. The genius of Back In Black is that both truths coexist.
Why Back In Black still hits like a freight train
Part of the answer is craft. The riffs are chiseled from granite. The grooves swing just enough to move your hips without ever losing the iron fist. Mutt Lange drilled performances until they clicked in the pocket. The Young brothers wrote with economy and intent. And Johnson’s rasp cuts through like a racing V8. But beyond craft is feeling. These songs were written by men who had just lost a friend and were determined to honour him by going harder and cleaner than ever before. When you hear the title track kick in after that bell you hear defiance, grief, humour and the basic human refusal to fold.
Even the lyrics that seem like wink and nudge laddishness work as catharsis. The bawdy lines on You Shook Me All Night Long are not clever poetry. They are a new singer proving to himself and to the world that the band still lives in the most primal rock sense. Have A Drink On Me is not a nihilist invitation. It is a wake. And Hells Bells is not devil theatre. It is weather, weight and warning. It is the sky turning black in Nassau and a room full of musicians deciding that the only way through was straight ahead with the volume up.
The respectful distance between two frontmen
One tricky question sits underneath every Back In Black conversation. How do you follow a singer as beloved and unique as Bon Scott without simply copying him. The answer Johnson found was to be absolutely himself. That meant the classic shouter vocabulary of Little Richard and old rhythm and blues, the grit of the North East, and a generous comic streak. It also meant standing in front of songs shaped by the man he replaced, and refusing to pretend the past had not happened. The album’s title and tone give the truest possible salute. The band does not wallow. It celebrates the life they had with their mate by making the hardest swinging record of their career.
A phone call that changed everything and a lesson for anyone who thinks the door has closed
It is tempting to say there are not many second chances in rock but that is only half true. Second chances usually come disguised as work. Johnson did not get his because fate sprinkled fairy dust. He drove south in a borrowed Toyota, fixed a puncture by the roadside, sang a jingle to pay the bills, drank a bottle handed to him by a stranger who would become family, and then sang his heart out on Nutbush and Rosie because that is what he knew how to do. When the second audition clashed with a shop full of customer cars, he still went. Then he wrote and wrote until the lines came.
The band did the same. Two brothers who had grown up grafting on the Australian pub circuit relied on muscle memory in the middle of grief. They wrote riffs. They wrote choruses. They sat in the storm. They argued for a black sleeve. They sent a patient engineer on a mad bell chase that involved panicked pigeons and a Leicestershire foundry. And they made a record that sounds both effortless and heavy because it was neither.
The legacy in plain English
Back In Black remains the biggest selling rock album of all time and the second biggest selling album of any genre. It took AC/DC from cult heroes to permanent stadium headliners. It also installed Brian Johnson as a frontman who could lead with warmth and steel. The more you learn about its chaotic birth the more miraculous it seems. And yet everyone involved tells it without mystique. The lads did the work. The weather helped a bit. The bell was a nightmare. Then the songs did what great songs do. They outlived the moment that made them.
Or as Brian himself likes to say with a grin, I do not think I could have done it unless it was those particular four boys. If it had been four other gentlemen it could not have happened. This is a special band. They do something to you.
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