Last Of The True Believers

IT S THE last thing you d have expected from them at this stage of their career. Seduced by dance culture, AC/DC s latest offering finds them ditching their trademark powerchords and embarking on an Orb-style flight of ambient fancy. Slo-mo beats combine with shards of ethereal melody as the boogie blueprint of old is tossed into the bin.
Only kidding. The new AC/DC album is almost indistinguishable from its 16 predecessors a defiant two fingers to the vagaries of fashion which will reverberate right round the planet. It may be Macy Gray who s getting the colour supplement treatment in London, but in Lima, Lan Song and Lahore, all the kids wanna do is rock.
Aye man, it s gone fooking mad, rasps Brian Johnson excitedly. We used to think that six months was a marathon but we re going to be touring this record for at least a year-and-a-half. Most of the places they tell me we re going to I ve never heard of before, which is great cause that s where they re hungriest to have a good time. We ve done gigs in South America and Eastern Europe which, no kiddin , would have been classified as riots here.
So how did a band that started off playing for beer money in Sydney transmogrify into such a global big deal?
By telling the record company people to go fuck themselves, he cackles. When they formed this band in 1973, Angus and Malcolm vowed that no matter what happened, they would always play rock n roll. During the 80s, especially, we were put under enormous pressure to do the power ballad thing. The A&R people thought that because Reo Speedforeigner (sic) were number one in America, we should be copying em, but no fucker was getting me into spandex. I d already been a fashion victim with my previous band, Geordie. Christ, I had bellbottoms which you could keep a small village in.
The man does not lie. Keen to position themselves between the two dominant acts of the day Led Zeppelin and T. Rex Geordie affected a unique brand of glam brickie chic. Revived during the New Romantic era, it gave 16 stone beer boys from Wallsend carte blanche to prance round in their sister s No. 7.
Did I ever wear make-up? I m not fooking telling you that! Oh alright, if we were on TV and had been pissing it up the night before, I used to paper over the cracks a bit. Just so we wouldn t scare people.
As soon as you put music and fashion together, you start dating yourselves. I could be wrong, but I imagine there are certain items of apparel which Judas Priest and The Scorpions would like to go back and remove from their wardrobes.
If Charlotte Church is blessed with the voice of an angel crying tears of honey ) The New York Times Brian Johnson has to be the gnarly old rocker who coughs up Brillo Pads every time he opens his mouth. Which, let s face it, is exactly what s required from somebody who s still conscious of filling Bon Scott s shoes.
Aye, it was the 20th anniversary of his death last month, he says solemnly. As a singer, a songwriter, a performer, a human being, the legacy Bon left behind him was fucking massive. Whatever level you judge it on, there s no way I could top Bon Scott. He was unique and I feel honoured to have taken his place in the world s greatest rock n roll band.
The 52-year-old is justifiably proud of AC/DC being the hard rockers that it s okay for hip indie things to like. Along with the cover of Big Balls that s on the new Will Oldham album, they ve also been entertaining correspondence from the Beastie Boys.
They ve just asked if they can have the master of Back In Black , to which we replied, Fuck off, do your own! I don t mind people sampling us, or doing covers, but wanting the whole track so that they can rap over it is a bit cheeky. Never mind them giving us 50% of the royalties. It s like me going up to a Reubens in an art gallery, dabbing on a couple of extra clouds and saying, I painted that!
Actually, Malcolm was really nice and told em, We don t mind you copying it, but you can t have what we did .
Despite being in the serious earners league 60 million albums and rising AC/DC still appreciate the simple things in life.
Aye man, I was at St. James Park a few weeks ago when the real United beat that other shower from Manchester three to naught. Freddie Fletcher, diamond that he is, said Get your arse up here and we ll find you a place in the Directors Box . I was sitting a few seats away from Kevin Keegan, so I was dead chuffed.
Getting to see your team demolish Man U for free isn t the only perk of being a rock star. When he s not chilling out in his Florida mansion, or Lear Jetting round the world to meet up with his bandmates, Johnson can be found fronting his own race team.
I thought it was a bit more rock n roll than taking up golf, he laughs. We started small and have developed it to the point where we hope to have a car ready for the Le Mans 24 Hour in 2002. I ve been racing for the past four years and picked up two championships in a row, so it s a bit more than a hobby.
Had any nasty smashes recently?
Aye, there s one I ve got on video from Atlanta. It was my first race in the HSR that s the historic racing which I do for fun and naturally I wanted to show them what my 1964 Lotus Cortina Mk. 1 was capable of. I was being chased by a gaggle of Porsches when we suddenly had a Georgian downpour. I should have gone straight into the pits, but there was only one lap to go and I was determined to beat these flash bastards in their 365 Spiders and 365 Coups. Anyway I was driving up this blind hill, turned my wheel and nothing happened. Well, apart from me smashing into a bridge at God know s what speed. They had to cut me out of that one.
How does South Florida compare to Newcastle a city, lest we forget, that s often referred to as the Nice of the North-East .
Now you re taking the piss! Florida s sunny which is good for the arthritis, but Newcastle isn t battered every year by hurricanes. Actually, some of the best parties I ve been to are the hurricane ones where everybody goes down to the basement and gets slaughtered.
Me heart s in Newcastle, me house is in Florida and luckily I can afford to fly between the two of them whenever I want to.
The fact that there are tracks on it called Meltdown and Can t Stop Rock N Roll tells you all you need to know about Stiff Upper Lip. Having suppressed the urge to become the new Aphex Twin, it s hard rock business as usual with the band still going right off the Richter Scale.
We re just five average lads, but when we come together we make this huge thing called AC/DC, Johnson reflects. You d have thought the magic would have worn off by now, but no, we re fucking hotter than we ve ever been.