“To have a French customs officer slap a latex glove on and hear the squelch of the fucking gel as he’s looking for drugs up your ass, which were never there. It’s the things you do for rock & roll.” Our conversation with AC/DC's Brian Johnson:
But as he reflects now on his highway out of hell, there’s a youthful excitement you can still hear in his voice. “I have all these memories — some wonderful, some sad — and I’ll always live me life on a tightrope,” Johnson tellsover the phone in his thick “Geordie” accent native to Newcastle. “I never ever like being comfortable. It scares the shit out of me.”Me father had met me mother [who was Italian] while fighting in Italy, and when they came back, there was no houses for them to live in.
When you wanted to sing rock & roll, your dad put money down on your first PA. Why do you think he supported your dream? I was talking to [the singer-songwriter] Sam Fender the other day and he’s a Geordie boy and he said, “How do you handle it with all the people that don’t understand you when you’re talking to them?” I said, “Just stay natural.” Unfortunately, some chaps have tried to soften the accent. Like Sting. he’s softened his accent. But Mark Knopfler, not so much. It’s still a joy listening to Mark talk. And I think people up in the north appreciate that.
I was absolutely smitten. When it ended, I was going, “No, no, no. Do some more.” And I couldn’t even afford to buy a record. A few days later, I heard it coming out of somebody’s house and I still can’t believe what I did. I knocked on the window. And this girl said, “What do you want?” I said, “Could you play it again?” She went, “Oh, cheeky bugger.” And she said, “Go on and stand there,” so I stayed behind the window, and she opened the window a little crack and put it on again.
There was one particular journalist — a writer in Australia — who just wouldn’t let go of this thing. And of course, Malcolm and Angus were like, “What a fucking load of bullshit.” And I said, “I wish you would tell him.” And their attitude was always, “Just leave it. Just let them talk himself into a fuckin’ early grave.” And of course, it became more and more obvious by the day that Bon hadn’t, because the riffs weren’t written then. The boys were still doing it.
The only current subject you wrote about is your hearing loss. You’re hearing me fine as we’re talking. How do your new hearing aids work?