The season finale of AC/DC Beyond The Thunder, a podcast that revolves around famous fans who’ve been involved with and / or influenced by AC/DC, features Jim Parson’s of Sporadic Productions, a 30-year veteran producer & director who’s worked with some of the biggest acts on the planet, including Metallica, Paul McCartney, U2, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers & The Rolling Stones (not to mention winning a Grammy for Led Zeppelin’s Celebration Day concert film).
But the highlight of Parson's career would be bringing to life one of AC/DC's most rare TV appearances: VH1’s Uncut back in 1996.
The request was first sent to the band during their Ballbreaker tour by Parsons and then Head of Production at VH1, Mike Kaufman, fully aware of AC/DC's infamous ability to thwart off such requests.
“The next day we’re in the office…and there’s a fax from Malcolm (Young) saying:
‘We’re up for doing a performance for Vh1.
This is the date we can do it on, and this is what we need.
We’ll fly in, we’ll do the performance, and we’ll fly out.’”
Not only would this be AC/DC’s first time performing on live TV since the 70’s, but surprisingly lead singer Brian Johnson’s very first television appearance with the band ever.
To make things even more exclusive, a custom setlist was curated for the Aussie rockers, featuring some tracks that had never been tackled by the frontman before, including, "Riff Raff", "Gone Shootin’", "Down Payment Blues" and "Go Down", all of which can be heard during the episode.
“'Go Down' was one that they’d never ever played and certainly never played with Brian,” recalls Parsons, who was also asked by the band to write the lyrics down for Johnson before the cameras started rolling.
“The whole thing was quite surreal,” confesses Parsons. “The idea was to do a four or five song set…and because they were enjoying it, they decided to play a few more. I thought, ‘We’ll stay all night!’”
“We thought we’d just play requests,” founder Malcom Young told Parsons following the performance, “but nobody wants to hear any so we’ve gotta call our own tunes!”
From trying to persuade Angus Young NOT to wear his trademark schoolboy uniform during their live set, to sneaking off to play Malcolm’s guitar while he was off getting a cup of tea (“the most difficult guitar I’ve ever played”), the episode is filled with many behind the scenes anecdotes surrounding this fan-favorite moment in AC/DC history.
Fans of the podcast can listen to this new episode and more at BeyondtheThunder.com.
Listen via the links below:
Apple
Pandora
Spotify
iHeart
AC/DC Beyond The Thunder is a podcast which features professional actors, authors, athletes, chefs, CEOs, comedians, musicians, media hosts, wrestlers, even war heroes, all paying homage to one of the greatest bands of all time, AC/DC. Guests have included Slash, Hall of Fame MLB pitcher Trevor Hoffman, SNL comedian Jim Breuer, US Military War Hero Mike Durant from the film ‘Black Hawk Down’, pro wrestler Chris Jericho, classically trained Croatian duo 2Cellos, as well as Eddie Trunk, Dee Snider, Dweezil Zappa, Scott Ian, Lemmy, Chris Slade, Simon Wright, Mike Fraser, Hell’s Belles, Darryl DMC McDaniels and many, many more. From archival interviews to all new guest episodes, AC/DC Beyond The Thunder has now completed its third season with over 225,000 streams.
