Brian Johnson had to step away from AC/DC during the band’s 2016 “Rock or Bust” tour due to hearing issues. The band postponed the last 10 dates of its North American trek but went on to complete the European and North American tours with Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose stepping in for Johnson.
Johnson is about to release his new autobiography, “The Lives of Brian,” and according to Ultimate Classic Rock, he commented on Axl’s tenure with the band. He also said that having to step away put him a state of “despair.”
“I’m told that he did a great job,” Johnson said, “but I just couldn’t watch — especially when you’ve been doing it for 35 years. It’s like finding a stranger in your house, sitting in your favorite chair. But I bear no grudges. It was a tough situation. [AC/DC guitarist and co-founder] Angus [Young] and the lads did what they felt they had to do. That said, after the band released a statement confirming that I was leaving the tour and wishing me all the best for the future, I couldn’t relax or concentrate on anything. It was just always there.
“Part of the pain of it was that I blamed myself,” Johnson admitted. “For most of my career, I’d been in the loudest band in the world. I’d flown constantly. I’d flown even when I knew I wasn’t well.
“For a while, people would ask me if I was depressed, but depression is treatable. My hearing loss wasn’t. What I was feeling wasn’t depression. It was something closer to despair.”
Johnson also talked about making the call to step away.
“I called Tim, the tour manager, on my mobile right there in the room to tell him that I just couldn’t continue,” Johnson said. “It was one of the most difficult conversations of my life — the pain of it made worse over the weeks that followed when the tour simply went on without me. It was a sheer cliff. I didn’t tumble down, I was in free fall.”
Johnson said he shifted his focus to his other love: racing cars. “I found myself winning more than usual,” he said.
“People would come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Brian, you’re fearless!'” Johnson wrote, “but I wasn’t fearless. I just didn’t f*cking care anymore. I’d always thought that the best way to go out would be at 180mph, flat-out around a corner. You’d hit the wall and boom, it would be over, just like that. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to die. … I just wouldn’t have minded all that much.”
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