AC/DC’s Brian Johnson writes about his Cinderella in new memoir ‘Hell’s Bells’

Before he began tearing down the roofs of arenas as the lead singer of hard rock icon AC/DC, Brian Johnson was fixing roofs.

In his new memoir, the “Hell’s Bells” singer describes how he went from vinyl car roof fitter in the north-east of England to lead one of the most respected bands in the world.

This is the story of Cinderella. Only Johnson, now 75, was Cinderella at least three times, never giving up on his dream of singing in a rock ‘n’ roll band.

“I don’t know what it is, I just never, ever gave in any way,” he said recently over the phone from his home in Florida. “I was always ready to give something when the more pessimistic wouldn’t have it. I always thought the glass was half full.”

“The Lives of Brian Johnson”, from Day Street Books, chronologically goes through his ups and downs while growing up near Newcastle, joining AC/DC with him and recording the band’s seminal “Back in Black” album. ends with doing.

He said of the book, “It wasn’t so much to validate my life. It was so much to validate the lives of all the wonderful people I met who helped shape my life — from school.” Friends, friends in factories, friends in music.”

Music was his North Star and he remembers the first time he heard Little Richard sing “Aop Bop / A-loo Bop / Awop Bum Boom” at 11 p.m. N’ Roll Being – Which is true, because my dream of becoming a singer was also born at that very moment,’ he writes.

Johnson was a handyman engineer who sang side-by-side and was a young father and husband. To earn enough money for the PA system, he joined an airborne infantry regiment of the British Army.

He attended one of Jimi Hendrix’s first shows in Britain, saw Sting perform soon-to-be the police star was 15 and befriended members of Slade and Thin Lizzy. He will meet Chuck Berry but it doesn’t go well. “Never meet your heroes,” he writes.

Johnson, who would later write the immortal lines “Forget the Horse / ‘Cause I’ll Never Dare”, made his live debut in the deliciously titled The Toasty Folk Trio, survived a horrific car accident and eventually joined the band Geordi. I had some success.

The band made it to the “Top of the Pops” – a show that was a significant achievement for any nascent band. He left a good career at his engineering firm, but Geordi had only one Top 10 hit and soon dropped out.

“At 28, I had lost everything. My marriage, my career, my home,” he writes. He moved in with his parents and remembers once watching AC/DC on the BBC. “I have loved every moment of it. But, of course, it was also a reminder that I took my shot and blew it.”

Johnson rebuilt his life, became a windscreen fitter – later a car roof fixer – and founded Georgie II. He was happy. He had a small business and a small band. “I thought I had a second Cinderella story, but there was more to come,” he says.

The book traces the origins of his trademark hat: once he arrived at a gig in no time to change, his eyes were covered in sweat with glue and glass shards. His brother, Maurice, gave him his cloth driving cap as protection, an addition that fans loved.

Still, Johnson’s part was incomplete. It was a meeting with singer Roger Daltrey that proved important. The Who’s frontman invited Johnson – then living with his band in an apartment with just four mattresses on the floor – for a meal at his manor house.

That day, Johnson remembered Daltrey bare-chested and barefoot riding toward him without a saddle, clutching the mane of his galloping white horse (“If it ain’t a rock star, I thought to myself (I don’t know what that is,” he writes.)

“He said, ‘I’m going to give you a piece of advice, Brian. Never give up. Do you understand me? Never give up.’ And I really took it to heart,” Johnson recalled. “He might’ve forgotten he said that, but I didn’t.”

Bon Scott, AC/DC’s original lead singer, died in 1980, and Johnson received an audition to replace him based on recommendations, including from Scott himself, who heard him sing one night. Only years later did Johnson realize they would meet.

At the audition, co-founder and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young offered him the Newcastle Brown Ale, a nod to Johnson’s legacy. And Johnson’s first song with the band at the audition was Tina Turner’s “Nutbush City Limits.” (“It was the most electric moment of my life,” he writes). Then he sang some AC/DC tunes. He got the job, of course.

Johnson’s editor, Rowland White, a writer whose most recent novel is “Into the Black”, said the shape of Johnson’s story is “extraordinary because it doesn’t usually happen.”

“He was delighted with the idea that he gave it a shot and he made his peace with it. And this is what makes the shot in AC/DC somehow more enjoyable because it was no longer something that he strained for. I was in.”

The book ends as Johnson finally achieves his lifetime goal. If fans are expecting more of AC/DC’s origins, they argue it doesn’t have a story to tell – it’s the surviving members guitarist Angus Young, bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd. Is. “That book belongs to the people who were there from the beginning because that’s what I want to hear,” he said.

Johnson is a natural storyteller, and it was his manager who first suggested a memoir. Johnson protested. “Every week some old actor or musician brings out a book. And I always went, ‘No, not another.'”

But encouraged to write a few chapters, Johnson sat down with a yellow legal pad. A few years later, he had a book, which he dedicated to his great-grandchildren.

Why? He remembers asking his father how his grandfather was going for his funeral. He was “just a friend”, his father said. Then he asked how his father’s grandfather was and the answer was “How do I know?”

“I thought, ‘What a shame, what a pity,'” Johnson said. “Nobody knows anyone just two generations later. That’s why I wrote it for my grandchildren. I hope the words in this book help me learn a little more. And I hope you have a little bit of me in me, and I hope you have a long and lovely life.”