It was in March 1980 that Brian Johnson got the phone call that would change his life. A new decade had just begun, but Brian had little cause for optimism. At 32 he was feeling washed up. Recently separated from his wife, Brian was living at his parents’ house in Gateshead, running a small car-repair enterprise and struggling to get by. His days as a rock’n’roll star had long-since passed.
In the early 70s Brian had lived the dream. As the singer with glam-rock band Geordie, he was Newcastle’s answer to Noddy Holder, a working-class hero with a Jack The Lad charm and a voice like the Tyne ferry’s foghorn. Geordie had enjoyed a decent run: they were signed to EMI and had a Top 10 UK hit in 1973 with the foot-stomping All Because Of You. But, unlike Holder and Slade, Geordie were never really cut out for the big league. The hits dried up, the band lost their record deal and, after some lean years playing working men’s clubs in the North East, they split up.
“When I left Geordie,” Brian recalls, “I was broke. I had nothing. I had two kids and a mortgage to pay. I was driving a VW Beetle that was 14 years old. I was fuckin’ skint.”
In the late 70s Brian had scraped together just enough cash to start up his own business, fixing windscreens and fitting vinyl roofs on fancy sports cars. It just about paid the bills, and was partly a labour of love: Brian had been “nuts about cars” since he was a kid. He was also making a little money on the side – just beer money – with a new version of the old band, christened Geordie II. Only this time there were no delusions of grandeur.
“It was a cracking little band,” Brian says, “but we were never gonna make it as a recording act.”
Brian Johnson was no fool. He knew there were few second chances in rock’n’roll, and so he treated Geordie II as “a bit of fun”. The band’s live show had a touch of cabaret about it – “We did a lot of comedy in there, ’cos the boys were very funny” – but they could rock too. And there was one song that was always guaranteed to get their audiences jumping – a song by an Australian rock band called AC/DC that was making a big noise in the late 70s.
“I didn’t know too much about AC/DC,” Brian admits. “They were this cult band.We used to play We’d always save it for last, ’cos the place would go crazy!”
