AC/DC singer Brian Johnson is about to release his autobiography, “The Lives of Brian.” An excerpt of the book has been shared via Ultimate Classic Rock which tells the very sad tale of how Johnson was in the same hospital as band co-founder and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, but he wasn’t able to see his former bandmate.
Johnson had undergone surgery to help the hearing failure that sidelined him for the second half of the band’s “Rock or Bust” tour. Johnson said he woke up in a Sydney hospital and was greeted by a “smiley-faced” nurse who “told me something that left me reeling: Malcolm was a resident of the care facility just over the wall outside my window,” Johnson wrote.
“That was where he was being treated for his early-onset dementia. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was Malcolm just 20 yards from me, but this nurse also did shifts over there – and one of his jobs was to take him out for his daily exercise.”
Johnson asked if he could see Young. “The smiley-faced man stopped smiling and dropped his eyes. ‘Sorry, mate, I can’t do that. It’s the family’s wishes.’ I told him I understood. In the next building was the man who I’d shared a stage with for 35 years, the man who’d hired me as the lead singer of AC/DC – the man who’d cared about me so much, he once visited my hometown to meet my parents. He’d even taken my dad for a pint at his club – I mean, who does that?”Johnson said it was “a tough thing, to shed tears in front of a stranger.”
Turns out Malcolm’s wife, O’Linda had made the request for no visitors after she was told it wasn’t clear how much memory Malcolm still had.
“O’Linda knew how proud Malcolm was – we all did,” Johnson writes, “and she feared that if I or anyone outside his immediate family went in to see him, he might be embarrassed about his condition. She didn’t want to take that risk, especially given everything else that he was going through. She was just looking out for her husband, like she always did. [Malcolm’s sibling and bandmate] Angus [Young] visited him, as did his grandchildren, who I’m told made him very happy. But it broke my heart all the same.”
Brian ultimately had his hearing mended enough to the point he was able to rehearse with AC/DC again and record their latest album, “Power Up.” Recently, he also responded to rumors that Bon Scott wrote lyrics for the band’s landmark “Back In Black” album.”
