AC/DC scheduled the final 10 dates of their Rock or Bust World Tour in March 2016 due to vocalist Brian Johnson's risk of hearing loss. The tour picked back up later that year with Guns N' Roses vocalist Axl Rose, though other vocalists were in competition for the spot.
One such vocalist was Jet vocalist Nic Cester – the guy who sang "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" – as he recently revealed on the Triple J show. According to Cester, it all started with a phone call shortly after seeing the news.
"I was staying with my in-laws and I got up in the morning and read the paper and it said that Brian Johnson was not in the band anymore," said Cester. "I remember saying to my father-in-law, 'Holy shit, you would not want to step into those shoes,' and literally 20 minutes later my phone rang and they're saying, 'Would you be interested in going to Atlanta, Georgia to audition and potentially fill in for this next round of dates that we've got?'"
"I was like, 'I think I'll say yes just for the life experience.' I wasn't really expecting to get the gig to be honest but I thought, 'How could I turn this opportunity down?'"
Cester then talked a little about the audition, saying that guitarist Angus Young wasn't settling for anything less than perfect. "They were in the Black Crowes' rehearsal studio and it was a tiny place but they were set up there with the enormous backline and I remember watching AC/DC and thinking, 'There's no way all of those amps are on.' Let me tell you, they were all fucking on! It was the loudest thing I'd ever heard in my entire life."
"Angus put me through my paces. Everything was a test to see how I'd handle it – the volume and him going, 'OK, let's do this song', and I didn't know [some of them] off the top of my head so he'd just go, 'Go over there and learn it' and the whole band would be waiting there for ten minutes and I'm just going, 'Oh fuck'. It was pretty intense, but I realize now Angus was a super professional guy and he wanted to push me to my absolute limit to see how I would react."
If you wanna see Cester's skills on an AC/DC song, look no further than his live cover of "Back In Black" with Muse from 2010. It's pretty solid.
