{"id":801892,"date":"2026-03-03T20:01:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T20:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/801892\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T20:01:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T20:01:13","slug":"the-magic-song-that-got-brian-johnson-into-ac-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/801892\/","title":{"rendered":"The “magic” song that got Brian Johnson into AC\/DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brian<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Michael Joseph)<\/p>\n

Tue 3 March 2026 16:00, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s hardly anyone who could have even thought of being Brian Johnson<\/a> in AC\/DC around 1980.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bon Scott had just recently passed away, and while the Young brothers wanted to continue on, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Because, really, what\u2019s not to like about Johnson\u2019s vocal delivery? Actually, don\u2019t answer that. If you think about it, there\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s basically a human air raid siren was the best thing they could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

And if that wasn\u2019t enough, getting Scott himself to recommend Johnson was about as close to the perfect endorsement as possible. There\u2019s 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\u2019s band Geordie gave him the biggest thrill that he had heard since he had started working with the band.<\/p>\n

But Johnson knew from day one that he wasn\u2019t looking to \u201creplace\u201d Scott in the truest sense. The fact was that Scott simply wasn\u2019t 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 \u2018TNT\u2019 and \u2018Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap\u2019. Then again, he picked the right kind of artists to emulate.<\/p>\n

Scott already had that Little Richard-style<\/a> 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\u2019t for \u2018Nutbush City Limits\u2019, chances are he wouldn\u2019t have ever been given the time of day by the rest of the band.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s audition was bound to be nerve-racking, but all that the band needed to know came from those first few measures, saying<\/a>, \u201cWhen I went to audition, was (actually) a trial, was not (really) an audition. (It was) \u2018come along and have a sing\u2019 with the boys from AC\/DC. (My band at the time) in Newcastle was doing \u2018Nutbush City Limits\u2019 and it was one of the crowd\u2019s favorites. So powerful, you need everything, you can\u2019t half-sing \u2018Nutbush City Limits\u2019 and the boys started joining in, the drums, just this little run-through thing. It was magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not like Turner doesn\u2019t have the right kind of voice for what Johnson was going for. A lot of AC\/DC\u2019s greatest moments came from when the energy is at full speed at every single second, so it\u2019s hard to really go wrong when you have the same kind of voice that turned \u2018Proud Mary\u2019 inside out as a guide for what you\u2019re trying to do.<\/p>\n

Johnson was definitely cut out to be AC\/DC material already, but if there\u2019s one thing to take from Turner\u2019s voice, it\u2019s 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\u2019t come from the heart, there was no point in anyone trying to make it work.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Michael Joseph) Tue 3 March 2026 16:00, UK There\u2019s hardly anyone who could have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[232382,77,269,28212,16,15],"class_list":["post-801892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-brian-johnson","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-tina-turner","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116167028844364832","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}