Today, October 25, Dey Street Books releases The Lives Of Brian in North America. The 384-page hardcover, written by legendary AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson, hit store shelves in the UK on October 13 via Penguin Michael Joseph Books.
Brian recently spoke with ABC News about his memoir, by phone from his home in Florida. The following is an excerpt from the article...
Johnson was an apprentice engineer who sang on the side and was a young father and husband. To earn enough money for a P.A. system, he joined an airborne infantry regiment of the British Army.
He attended one of Jimi Hendrik’s first shows in Britain, saw Sting perform when soon-The Police star was 15 and made friends with members of Slade and Thin Lizzy. He would meet Chuck Berry but it didn't go well. "Never meet your heroes,” he writes.
Johnson, who would later pen the immortal lines “Forget the hearse/’cause I’ll never die,” made his live debut in the deliciously named The Toasty Folk Trio, survived a horrific car crash and finally found some success in the band Geordie.
The band made it to the “Top Of The Pops” — a show that was a crowning achievement for any nascent band. He gave up a good career at his engineering firm, but Geordie had only one Top 10 hit and soon fizzled out.
“At the age of 28, I’d lost everything. My marriage, my career, my house,” he writes. He moved in with his parents and recalls once watching AC/DC on BBC. “I loved every second of it. But, of course, it was also a reminder that I’d had my shot and blown it.”
Read more at ABC News.
Originally scheduled for release a year earlier in October 2021, The Lives Of Brian is Brian Johnson’s memoir from growing up in a small town to starting his own band to ultimately replacing Bon Scott, the lead singer of one of the world biggest rock acts, AC/DC. They would record their first album together, the iconic Back In Black, which would become the biggest selling rock album of all time.
Brian Johnson was born to a steelworker and WWII veteran father and an Italian mother, growing up in New Castle Upon Tyne, England, a working-class town. He was musically inclined and sang with the church choir. By the early ’70s he performed with the glam rock band Geordie, and they had a couple of hits, but it was tough going. So tough that by 1976, they disbanded and Brian turned to a blue-collar life.
Then 1980 changed everything. Bon Scott, the lead singer and lyricist of the Australian rock band AC/DC died at age 33. The band auditioned singers, among them Johnson, whom Scott himself had seen perform and raved about. Within days, Johnson was in a studio with the band, working with founding members Angus and Malcolm Young, Cliff Williams, and Phil Rudd, along with producer Mutt Lange.
When the album, Back In Black, was released in July—a mere three months after Johnson had joined the band—it exploded, going on to sell 50 million copies worldwide, and triggering a years-long worldwide tour. It has been declared “the biggest selling hard rock album ever made” and “the best-selling heavy metal album in history.”
The band toured the world for a full year to support the album, changing the face of rock music—and Brian Johnson’s life—forever.
