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Classic Rock 2

If it ain‚t stiff...

...it ain‚t worth a fuck! So say BRIAN JOHNSON and ANGUS YOUNG of AC/DC as the band get ready to unleash their first new album for five years, ŒStiff Upper Lip‚. Getting it up, keeping it there all night and other dodgy double-entendres: PHILIP WILDING.

AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson stares intently out of the window down on to busy, traffic-filled Park Lane, nine storeys below. He points to the long, curving road running to the corner and around the bend.
„I can‚t tell you how many times we drove down there with me old band, Geordie. We had this old, white diesel van, we didn‚t have a penny, and we pulled up just down there. There was a milk float parked
up and we jumped out, stole a load of milk and drove off to where all the Australians live. What‚s that place called?‰ Earls Court, I prompt? The irony that he sings in Australia‚s biggest ever band seems lost on him.

„Aye and we drank it there, all of it, right down. We were starving.‰ He mimics thirstily drinking a pint bottle. „People used to say, does your band do drugs? Nah, we stole milk, that was about as bad as we
got!‰ He pulls his gaze away from the memory and looks around at the opulent Metropolitan Hotel suite we‚re seated in. The physical distance is minuscule, the years yawning, the difference in respective lifestyles daunting. He puts a hand up to the peak of his cap and makes as if to adjust it. Guitarist Angus Young, minute, stifling a yawn, walks in through the door, they nod hellos and both smile. Johnson looks perplexed. „You know, Geordie used to cover ŒWhole Lotta Rosie‚, isn‚t it just amazing?‰

Brian Johnson is 52 this year; Angus Young will be 45. Number crunching with AC/DC is easy. ŒStiff Upper Lip‚ is their 17th studio album; the band have sold over 60 million albums worldwide; they once
played at a sold-out airfield - name one other band that could play an airfield, let alone sell one out? - in Moscow to over half a million people; 1980‚s ŒBack In Black‚ sold over 10 million copies in the US
alone.

The statistics are endless, a torrent of numbers, names and places testifying to the band‚s enduring appeal and staying power. Johnson alone has now been in the band for exactly 20 years.
In 1995, AC/DC released what would be their last studio album proper of the last millennium, ŒBallbreaker‚. Two years later, they presented the impressive and exhaustively researched Bon Scott tribute boxed set,
ŒBonfire‚ and promised that there‚d be a new album sometime the following year. Then it went quiet. Johnson was quoted across the Internet, reportedly insisting that the new album would be a return to a more familiar, rootsy AC/DC. The warmly remembered, roughly-hewn, stadium-filling bar band with a predilection for storming Little Richard licks and an endearing ear for songs that were quintessential celebrations of rock Œn‚ roll and its glorious trappings. But, hey, they‚d said that before, hadn‚t they? 1983‚s ŒFlick Of The Switch‚ and ‚85‚s ŒFly On The Wall‚, had failed to match either the critical acclaim or commercial impact of ŒFor Those About To Rock...‚ (a US Number One in 1981) or the seminal ŒBack In Black‚ (released the year before).

In 1990, ŒThe Razor‚s Edge‚ helped put a halt to AC/DC‚s relative commercial slide, while Œ95‚s Rick Rubin-produced ŒBallbreaker‚ - highlights included ŒHail Caesar‚, ŒThunderstruck‚ and ŒHard As A Rock‚ - helped reseal their heavyweight reputation with initial sales of over a million copies in America. But as traditionally rendered, blues-based AC/DC albums go, both were sadly lacking the depth and appeal of their
earlier masterpieces. ŒBonfire‚ aside, in the five years since ŒBallbreaker‚ (Johnson: „Has it been that long? Fucking hell, what a lazy bunch of twats!‰), the band have been ominously quiet. At one point, Johnson comments that most of his friends back home in his native Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (he now lives in Sarasota, Florida), thought the band had split up. But, as both Young and Johnson now make clear, that was never even in their thinking. „We‚d actually originally come over to London in the summer of Œ98 to start work on this record,‰ recalls Johnson, rolling a cigarette from the tin of tobacco in front of him. „Malcolm [Young] said, ŒJono, would you come over and we‚ll have a bit of a sing-song?‚. And I remember thinking then that there were some good little ideas going on there. You could tell straight away.‰

ŒStiff Upper Lip‚ is more than a few good little ideas. Written for the most part by Angus and rhythm guitarist Malcolm, it‚s a keenly felt, blustery blues rock record that, with repeated listens, begs favourable comparison to both ŒBack In Black‚ and ŒHighway To Hell‚. From the lazy drawl of the title track through to the evocative, rolling groove of ŒSafe In New York City‚, to the thunderously driven ŒSatellite Blues‚, ŒStiff Upper Lip‚ recalls all of AC/DC‚s familiar dirty charm: brazen, tightly wound, willful and wonderfully simplistic. Its focus is so defined that it makes other records seem deliberately uneven and sloppy
by comparison. It doesn‚t for one minute sound like the work of a band either in decline or content to simply ape their past. „I shouldn‚t agree with you,‰ says Brian Johnson just before agreeing with me. „It‚s not my job to do that or to criticise anything, but I do think it‚s the best thing we‚ve done since ŒBack In Black‚. It‚s like it‚s a complete album from beginning to end, and that in itself is a rarity. I don‚t know if there is such a thing, but it really is a live-in-the-studio album. I went up to Newcastle the other night to see my daughters and I played it to them and they were both knocked out by it. They‚re cool, groovy girls, both in their twenties and it‚s the first time in years that they were going, ŒThis is great dad‚. And I‚m
like, is it? Suddenly, dad‚s a winner. „It‚s good to be cool again. But you could kind of tell that the album was going to be a winner,‰ he continues with a hugely satisfied smile. „You know, I never go into the booth to sing, I can‚t stand all that studio shit. I just stand in the control room shouting me head off, I don‚t even use headphones. All the lads were just sitting there and I was doing ŒCan‚t Stand Still‚ and I did it straight through in one take - level, tone, whatever - with absolutely no fuck-ups. And at the end there you can hear all the lads cheering. It was that kind of atmosphere all the way through the making of this record.‰

ŒStiff...‚ also reunites former producer and elder of the Young brothers, George (former Easybeat and knob-twiddler from 1975‚s ŒHigh Voltage‚ to ‚78‚s ŒPowerage‚) with the band. Both Angus and Brian can‚t praise his work in the studio highly enough and it‚s apparent from their comments that George‚s easy, assured and, perhaps most importantly, familiar approach to working with the band contributed enormously to the album‚s overall sound and feel. „Mal and I always knew that this was going to be a rock Œn‚ roll record, that was the plan,‰ Angus reflects as he chain-smokes his way through another pack of cigs. „We‚d been putting ideas in and spinning them around and getting the actual producer was the last thing we were thinking about. And then it just hit us at once - it had to be George.

We‚d stopped using him because of things like record company pressure in America; they wanted you to try different guys. But George himself had said that at one point we had to go out on our own and work with other people. It wasn‚t that he didn‚t want to work with us, he just wanted us to experience other things, to see other stuff. „It was good for me having him and Malcolm in the studio, because I always look to Malcolm at the end of the day. „If Malcolm says, ŒYes, that‚s Angus‚, then I‚m happy. George is the
same. I know that Brian said he was shaking sometimes working with George. With me he just goes [snaps fingers], ŒRight, you‚re on, do your thing, come on‚,‰ he laughs.

„You know, I just love George,‰ says Johnson, reaching for a glass of orange juice. „What [manager] Bobby Robson is to Newcastle United, [George] is to AC/DC. He should be there. The presence he brings to the recording, if someone says, ŒThat‚s a bit scruffy, maybe we can clean it up‚, he just goes, ŒIt‚s rock Œn‚ roll...‚‰ He mimes the producer‚s exasperated glare. „Will you just leave it alone? That does something to me. He‚s like your best pal and your favourite uncle. When we did ŒHold Me Back‚ - and I love that song, it was the dirtiest, laziest song I‚ve ever heard - I just whipped straight into the vocal and said to George, ŒI can do it better than that‚. And he said, ŒNo, you can‚t, that was the laziest, nastiest vocal I‚ve ever heard, it sounded like you couldn‚t be fucking bothered, [but] in a nice way‚.

„At one point I was going, ŒJesus, George, I‚m getting on a bit now, I don‚t know if I can hit the high notes‚. And he just looked at me and went, ŒI‚ll tell you when you can‚t hit the high ones, Brian, now get out of here!‚ „I hoped it would come good and, to me, my performance is down to the great riffs on there and George Young, no doubt about it. Just watching the three brothers working together, they can have the equivalent of a three-hour conversation in a minute. „ŒWell guys, whaddya think?‚‰ he mimicks in an impressive Aussie accent. „It‚s incredible, they do that and they know exactly what they want.‰ He stretches back in his seat, tapping loose ash into the cup of his hand.

„There‚s no way you can plan everything, I think it was fate. ŒBack In Black‚ was one of the greatest rock records ever and as we say, who‚d have thunk it? Everything came together at the right time, me joining the band and the feelings the guys had with Bon gone, it was just right. It was the same with this one, there‚s parts of it where it‚s like Bon‚s come up and borrowed my body for a while and gone, ŒListen, Jono, this is the way to do this one‚, and helped us out. You never go in to make a bad album, or a mediocre album, you always go in to do the best you can. And sometimes, if you‚re lucky, the results are exceptional.‰

While the album may have been created in the classic AC/DC mould - rhythm, bombast and groove - it rarely plunders their own back-catalogue to the point of mimicry or derision. AC/DC, it seems, aren‚t running out of ideas just yet. Angus nods his agreement. „Well, if you do end up ripping yourself off then it can‚t be too bad,‰ he cackles.

„It‚s better than someone else doing it. I think there‚s enough of us to say, hey, we‚ve been through this water before. There‚s the odd bit, but we have to remember this is the stuff we play, this is the style we are. We always try and shoot for something different, try different ways of doing it, so that you don‚t get stuck into this thing where you end up writing ŒWhole Lotta Rosie‚ ten times. „But I think with us the story‚s a long way from over. If you look at the book, there‚s a few more chapters to come. The object was to make a good rock Œn‚ roll record, we‚ve never really worried about what the world thinks. We never have. When we started, musically, the world was all very soft, then it went into disco and then we came along at what ended up being a very good time for us, especially in America. „I think, at that point, they‚d sort of danced themselves to death. We‚ve always been a band from the bars and that‚s the way we‚ve played it in every country in the world. Start at the bottom and work your way up. Just do your own thing.‰ At the time of Bon Scott‚s death in February 1980, Johnson was dividing his time in Newcastle between a regular string of pub gigs with an ad-hoc version of Geordie and his own car custom-and-repair business.

„Vinyl roofs, sun-roofs, windshields - all that kind of stuff,‰ he recalls fondly. „That and playing at night, I was really enjoying myself. To be honest, I thought I‚d had my shot with Geordie in the ‚70s. I‚d never made a fucking penny, everybody got ripped-off in those days. And when AC/DC called up, I thought, ŒOh no‚, because I didn‚t think I could handle the rejection if they didn‚t want me. I was, ŒOh, I‚m too old for this shit‚. I was 31, or something. I don‚t know what I was thinking. I thought they‚d be looking for an Australian and I knew they‚d been rehearsing with singers for a couple of weeks, so I thought they must be getting down to the dregs, scraping the bottom of the barrel. But what I didn‚t know was that they‚d been trying to find me for two weeks.‰ In a twist of fate that most soap opera scriptwriters would balk at,
it emerged that the band had been keen to secure Johnson‚s whereabouts after he‚d actually been recommended to them by Bon Scott. Bon had witnessed the original Geordie live on a previous visit to the UK and had been impressed by the vocalist‚s daunting passion. „Bon had told me one night that this guy [Johnson] could really sing, could really do the Little Richard thing,‰ says Angus. „There were very few people that Bon said that about. He liked Steve Marriott, guys like that, but there were very few contemporaries. He always said that the mark of a rock Œn‚ roll singer was the Little Richard thing, that you
had to strive to be up there. He‚d always say that you couldn‚t sit back and sing rock Œn‚ roll, you had to get up there and belt it out. I think he saw that in Brian.‰ Johnson auditioned for the band in the spring of 1980 at Vanilla Studios in London. He now admits that he wasn‚t hopeful of securing the job.

„I‚d come down to London to sing on a TV advert for Hoover, that was the only real reason that I was in town,‰ he admits. „It was the first one I‚d done and they were offering me £350 and I was like, show me the money! So I came down and thought, ŒWell, I‚ll do this AC/DC thing as well‚. I didn‚t think I stood a chance. I thought I‚d do the ad, then pop along and have a sing at the same time. At the very least I knew I‚d be able to tell the lads back home that I‚d sung with AC/DC. „So I went in and they said, ŒWhat do you know?‚ When I replied ŒNutbush City Limits‚ [by Ike and Tina Turner] they all kind of looked at each other, then at me. Malcolm stared at me as if I was some kind of fucking idiot, then said, ŒAh well, at least it‚s not ŒSmoke On The Water‚ again‚. I think everyone who came in had done that and Mal and Angus were just sick of it. So Mal said, ŒWhat key?‚ and I said ŒA‚ and he was like, ŒThat‚s way up there, you know?‚ And I was like, ŒAye, I know‚. Then we did ŒWhole Lotta Rosie‚ and I remember bollocking them because it was too slow, because the band I was in played it really fast,‰ he wheezes with laughter.

„Cheeky, that was.‰

„Brian did a whole heap of things, I think we even had a go on some of the ŒBack In Black‚ bits,‰ Angus reveals. „I remember that he was playing pool downstairs with some of the guys. I didn‚t even know that he was there for the audition, he just wandered in, this guy in a hat talking away. Then he introduced himself, Mal told him to grab a mic and get comfortable and that was it. I think the pool thing lightened it all up a bit.‰

Johnson went straight from Newcastle to Nassau („The most stunning change of lifestyle I‚ve ever had‰) to record the ŒBack In Black‚ album. The band then returned to Europe to play their inaugural show on 1st July, 1980, at Namur in Belgium. An occasion Angus recalls vividly. „Everyone was so nervous because you just didn‚t know what it was going to be like. The audience let us know what they thought because it was only supposed to be a little thing which was what we wanted and it just turned into this monstrous event. It started off that we were just going to do this little show, but by the end of the day we‚d had to move venues three times to bigger and bigger places. I remember the promoter saying, ŒPeople keep turning up, what do you want to do?‚ And we were happy to play along. We certainly didn‚t want to cut anyone off so we ended up in this big hangar. We hired another sound system and put it outside. You could tell straight away by the audience reaction that it was going to be alright.

„I‚m sure a lot of fans came out of curiosity, but you could tell that they were just glad that it wasn‚t over yet. If you think about it and you were in a bar band and something like [Bon‚s death] happened, then you‚d probably have carried on. I know that even in Bon‚s time that he‚d played with guys and there‚d been tragedies and stuff, but they‚d kept going.‰ Johnson‚s memories are equally lucid, if somewhat different. „Belgium? What was that, a sports hall? I remember being dead nervous. At our height, Geordie had played in front of something like 30,000 people. But it wasn‚t the size of the gig, it was the intensity of it. They were such fanatical fans. Jesus, it was like being at a football match! But my first gig - what a fuck up. We‚d just done the ŒBack In Black‚ album and I‚d also had to learn all these other songs. I was working on ŒShot Down In Flames‚ and ŒHell Ain‚t A Bad Place To Be‚ and they sounded a little bit similar to me, so my head was just stuffed with all these songs. Anyway, we went on stage and I started singing ŒHellΣ‚ while the band was playing ŒShot DownΣ‚ and Mal‚s looking at me going, ŒWhat the fuck are you doing?‚‰ he laughs. „This is only the second song and all these kids down the front were just staring at me. I‚m thinking, ŒWhat the hell is wrong with you people? Have you all gone mad?‚ And then the penny dropped and I was like, ŒOh, fuck!‚ Actually, it was quite funny - but Jesus, never again...‰
Though Bon Scott is a recurring and constant figure in the AC/DC story, Johnson insists it was not too hard to step out from under his shadow.

„He‚s always there, but it‚s a benign shadow. I‚m one of the luckiest guys in the world when it comes to the fact that the kids go, ŒOh, Bon was great, we loved him, but you‚ve done a great job of taking over from him‚. So it‚s this lovely thing you‚ve got going on. „I‚ve never felt a bit of jealousy with that kind of thing because the boys in the band have always spoken about him as if he was still there, they were that close to him. And do you know, in 20 years of being in this band, I‚ve never heard one person say a bad thing about him, isn‚t that funny? That‚s just come into my head. Not one person connected with the band or anyone‚s ever said, ŒOh, remember the time he was a bad bugger‚Σ ‰ It must have helped that Johnson‚s debut with the band, ŒBack In Black‚, became the biggest-selling AC/DC album ever? „Oh yeah, that was absolutely nuts, wasn‚t it? I didn‚t even realise it at the time, I just remember thinking, this is a good album, I like this.‰

That‚s what you‚ve been saying about this one. „Aye, it is, isn‚t it? I remember going back up to Newcastle for the first time since ŒBack In Black‚ had come out and I met a few old buddies of mine who had heard it and they were like, ŒJesus, you‚re singing way too high on it, you‚re spoiling yourself with that, you should sing like you normally do‚. „And I said, ŒThat is the way I sing, you daft buggers!‚ And they were saying that I shouldn‚t have put it on record because it was way too high and it‚d never catch on. I was depressed for about 48 hours thinking that I was going to make a real fool of myself. Fortunately, 10 million other people liked it apart from the two dickheads I call my friends. I went up to see Newcastle play Manchester United [recently] and I saw them then. I never fail to mention it whenever I do. It‚s great.‰

For now, the AC/DC legend, in America at least, is enjoying a hearty revival. Syndicated radio has embraced their back-catalogue and made them a mainstay of daytime programming. „We‚re on two or three times an hour,‰ says a slightly awed Johnson. „You get sick of hearing yourself. We‚re like a pop band over there, we‚re on all the time. It‚s good because it means the songs don‚t get to age, there‚s always new people hearing them for the first time. There‚s a syndicated guy there called Bubba The Love Sponge - I know, ridiculous - who plays an AC/DC song every morning between 7.30 and eight, every single track from every album and then goes back and starts right from the beginning again. Madness, but it‚s great!‰

So the AC/DC promotional bandwagon rolls on. The band was leaving for Paris straight after our interview (Johnson: „You get to the continent and it‚s a nightmare, these journalists asking you, ŒIf you were an insect, what insect would you be?‚ Fuck off, you know?‰). Then, sometime before the summer, their next world tour will begin. The band have been mentioned in connection with this year‚s Big Day Out at Milton Keynes Bowl. Johnson says he‚s not sure what will happen yet, although he‚s aware of what he does and doesn‚t want. „I don‚t really like festivals, they‚re too big, the kids end up watching the screens and you don‚t get to see the sweat and the spit coming out of my mouth,‰ he grins. „I hate looking out into that inky blackness and not being able to see the crowd, it cuts the umbilical chord between the audience and the band. Angus hates it too. Some of these bigger bands who thrive on the stadium gigs must have massive egos to do what they do. It‚s a strange thing.‰

Brian Johnson has no apparent ego whatsoever. A charming everyman who happens to sing in one of the biggest rock Œn‚ roll bands in the world. Example: in 1984, backstage at the Donington festival, Johnson, the singer of the headline act, ended up chatting to the - then largely unknown - guys from opening act Mötley Crüe. Noticing bassist Nikki Sixx‚s intricate tattoos, he leant forward to remark that it looked as
though someone had been sick on him. „I did, aye!‰ he chortles again in his trademark Geordie wheeze. „I wasn‚t being mailicious, it really did look like someone had spewed on his arms,‰ he insists now. „All that yellow, black and red...‰ Brian Johnson pulls a face, grimaces and then breaks into another big drain-gurgling chuckle. „Big fella. Thankfully, he just laughedΣ‰

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Life Of Brian
Florida is „just like Newcastle‰ shocker!

While the rest of the band indulge themselves in landscape painting (Angus), or flying helicopters (Phil Rudd), Brian Johnson fills his time between rebuilding motorcycles and studying military history by developing his own racing team and, for the first time, sitting across the other side of a mixing desk producing the debut album for an American band called Neurotica.

„I have to keep my excitement level up, you know. About five years ago I was invited to race these beautiful sleek sports cars in this pro-celebrity thing for Mazda. There were four of us doing it and you‚re zooming about in these gorgeous cars and that was it for me, I was smitten. So now I have a race shop in Sarasota named after my late mother, De Luca. It‚s such good fun. I‚m just trying to get some footage of me driving into a bridge during a race for the record company over here for some TV show. „I love Sarasota, there are some great lads there,‰ he continues. „Apart from the heat, it‚s exactly the same as Newcastle. I was actually in a pub with me mates on the high street when I first saw that band Neurotica. They just came on and I was stunned, I thought they were great. My mate‚s signed them up and is now managing them, they‚ve just signed some deal with MTV and it‚s all going very well for them.

I‚m very limited as a producer, but I was very pleased with the way the album turned out, they need someone like George [Young] to work with them now. I just hope I‚ve put them on the right track. I wrote one song on there with them called ŒDeadly Sin‚. They‚re great, they‚re loud and that‚s good for me. I can‚t stand any of the other bullshit.‰