(Credits: Far Out / Michael Joseph)
Tue 3 March 2026 16:00, UK
There’s hardly anyone who could have even thought of being Brian Johnson in AC/DC around 1980.
Bon Scott had just recently passed away, and while the Young brothers wanted to continue on, there’s hardly any reason to think that they were going to be one of the biggest names in music all over again after losing that voice. But once Johnson started opening his mouth, everyone in the band knew that they had a shot at becoming one of the greatest rock bands of all time all over again.
Because, really, what’s not to like about Johnson’s vocal delivery? Actually, don’t answer that. If you think about it, there’s actually quite a bit not to like in terms of how his screeching voice grates on the eardrums, but the reason why it works is that it’s playing off the guitars. The whole point of AC/DC songs is to make sure everything is nice and loud from the first opening chords, so having a singer that’s basically a human air raid siren was the best thing they could have hoped for.
And if that wasn’t enough, getting Scott himself to recommend Johnson was about as close to the perfect endorsement as possible. There’s no possible way that Scott could have known his fate, but when looking at the other local acts that he was singing on the circuit, hearing Johnson’s band Geordie gave him the biggest thrill that he had heard since he had started working with the band.
But Johnson knew from day one that he wasn’t looking to “replace” Scott in the truest sense. The fact was that Scott simply wasn’t here in his earthly form anymore, so whenever he got up onstage, he was practically serving as a musical conduit to what he was doing when he first started belting out ‘TNT’ and ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’. Then again, he picked the right kind of artists to emulate.
Scott already had that Little Richard-style wail whenever he made one of his songs, but Johnson was also a fan of what people like Tina Turner brought to the table. She may have been able to do it all by the way she danced and sang up and down the stage, but if it wasn’t for ‘Nutbush City Limits’, chances are he wouldn’t have ever been given the time of day by the rest of the band.
Johnson’s audition was bound to be nerve-racking, but all that the band needed to know came from those first few measures, saying, “When I went to audition, was (actually) a trial, was not (really) an audition. (It was) ‘come along and have a sing’ with the boys from AC/DC. (My band at the time) in Newcastle was doing ‘Nutbush City Limits’ and it was one of the crowd’s favorites. So powerful, you need everything, you can’t half-sing ‘Nutbush City Limits’ and the boys started joining in, the drums, just this little run-through thing. It was magic.”
And it’s not like Turner doesn’t have the right kind of voice for what Johnson was going for. A lot of AC/DC’s greatest moments came from when the energy is at full speed at every single second, so it’s hard to really go wrong when you have the same kind of voice that turned ‘Proud Mary’ inside out as a guide for what you’re trying to do.
Johnson was definitely cut out to be AC/DC material already, but if there’s one thing to take from Turner’s voice, it’s the amount of soul she put into everything. Most artists would be fine with relying on pure muscle to get to where they needed to go, but Turner was living proof that if it didn’t come from the heart, there was no point in anyone trying to make it work.