by Fink, Jesse
I tried to corroborate this account with Calder but was given a firm no by the office of Neil Portnow, the president/CEO of The Recording Academy, the Los Angeles home of the Grammys: “The response we received was that the projects you mention took place more than 30 years ago, and he will not be in a position unfortunately to be of any assistance.”
Calder, who started out in A&R for EMI in South Africa, was ranked by Forbes as the 521st richest person in the world in 2012 and #1 on the Sunday Times Rich List of Music Millionaires the same year, ahead of Sir Paul McCartney. He got his first big payday selling the Zomba Group, which he founded with Ralph Simon in 1975, to BMG for almost $3 billion in 2002. Simon and Calder had earlier split in 1990 over an “ethical disagreement” and, in Simon’s words, it “did not finish on a good note … Calder’s ego had just gotten out of control.”
Despite Simon’s criticism, Greenberg defends Calder as “one of the all-time, great, great record men,” and Cedric Kushner goes further: “He’s probably the most successful entrepreneur in all of the music business in the entire world. A very brilliant guy.”
As for Klenfner, Greenberg says he gave him the option of announcing that he had resigned rather than been fired.
“His answer to me was: ‘Fuck you. I want everybody to know you fired me.’ And I told him to leave the building, which he did.”
In January 2013, Klenfner’s collection of rock memorabilia, most of it from his years at Atlantic, was auctioned in Bloomfield, New Jersey. A cherry-red Gibson SG signed in silver pen by Brian Johnson, Malcolm Young, Angus Young, Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams sold for $860. Angus had even drawn a caricature of himself and signed it “To Klef.” A Powerage tour jacket went for $176. A fire sale: an unfitting fate for the treasured possessions of a man who’d given so much of his best years to AC/DC, even if he had got it wrong over Lange.
Michael Browning nominates Klenfner as the most important figure inside Atlantic for AC/DC. Again, it’s a surprising sentiment given he is so unflatteringly portrayed by the band’s biographers.
“He shouldn’t be,” says Browning, who can take credit for being one of the very few people who has previously sung his praises, having done so in the Wall biography—even if the English author couldn’t return the compliment to Klenfner and spell his name right. “He was one of the great supporters.”
I ask Klenfner’s widow, Carol, how her husband felt after what happened at Atlantic. Does she think he was unfairly treated?
“Michael was always a fierce advocate for what he believed in and not afraid of speaking his truth and stepping on toes, so he was aware that going with his gut had ramifications,” she says. “And he paid the price at Atlantic. I remember how upset and devastated he was about the selection of Mutt Lange as producer. He was passionately committed to the band and thought they could be huge. He loved them. He saw something special in them early on and fought tirelessly for them like a lion.”
Browning himself was the next to be axed, Peter Mensch of Leber-Krebs becoming the band’s new manager in July 1979. The Australian is writing his own book about his time with AC/DC.
“Michael was a good guy that saw the raw potential of this band and worked his ass off to deliver them,” says Doug Thaler, who has more charitable things to say about Browning than Browning does about him. “He got shoved out before the big payday and that is a shame because he brought them right to the threshold of huge international success, which is no small feat.”
Then, last of all, there was Scott. He died alone, out of it, lying back and covered by a blanket in the front seat of a Renault 5 in London in February 1980, six months after the release of Highway to Hell. One beautiful but flawed soul lost, millions of words written, and are we any closer to the real truth about who he loved, what he lived for, and how, let alone why, it ended? There are some compelling theories, the most sensational involving heroin. But can it ever be known? Is there a definitive truth? Or was David Krebs right? Is the AC/DC story just another Rashomon?
I’ve started to think it is.
* * *
Allan Fryer was at his home in Adelaide, South Australia, when he got the call from George Young to come to Sydney to audition for the vacant position in AC/DC. At the time he was lead singer of Fat Lip, soon to be renamed Heaven, a leather-clad hard-rock band of Frank Stallone clones that would go on to sign with Michael Browning. Mark Evans joined them briefly in 1983. When AC/DC’s former bass player finally got to America for the first time, touching down in Los Angeles, his old bandmates were playing at The Forum.
“I just [said to myself], ‘Ohhh, another one of those weird coincidences, Mark; well done,’” he laughs.
“They were big shoes,” says Fryer of the ones he was in the running to fill.
But there was no question in his mind about going. He flew to Alberts in Sydney and ended up singing on a bunch of AC/DC tracks stripped of Scott’s vocals.
George, by Fryer’s account, was happy with the audition and told the singer not to say anything to anybody. Fryer went back to Adelaide. Yet the music press in England prematurely broke the story he’d landed the gig as AC/DC’s new singer. The calls wouldn’t stop. He remembers sitting on his sofa in Adelaide, staring at the buzzing phone, thinking, “Wow, shit.”
Nothing official, however, had come through from Vanda & Young, Alberts, AC/DC or their new management company, Leber-Krebs. So Fryer, assuming no news meant no thanks, signed on with Browning: he wanted a record deal and a chance to get to America.
Anecdotal evidence abounds that much else was going on. There was Stevie Wright’s assertion that George offered him the role. Promoting his autobiography, Who’s Crazee Now?, Slade’s Noddy Holder claimed in 2000 he’d turned it down. Other names linked to the vacant job included Marc Storace of AC/DC soundalikes Krokus and Gary Holton of Heavy Metal Kids. More recently there was the left-field suggestion made by Moxy guitarist Earl Johnson in The Austin Chronicle in 2008 that Buzz Shearman, the band’s singer, was approached. AC/DC had supported Moxy at their first American gig in Texas in 1977. (Shearman died in a motorcycle accident in 1983.) Others closely associated with the band also had their own ideas about who was the right fit.
Mark Opitz was one: “When the unfortunate news came through about Bon I just assumed, ‘Swanee’s got a gig now.’ At that time he was clearly the best male singer in Australia. He even had the edge on John Farnham with that big, pure, full voice he had; a real rock voice. He was Glaswegian. You couldn’t have got a better fit. He was a ten-pound tourist, just like the rest of them. I thought that would be it. That he was a lay-down misère.”
But John Swan was by his own admission “out of control” on alcohol and cocaine.
“That was what we did to be in control,” quips Swan, who has been sober and clean for over a decade.
In his view the band didn’t need another Scott; they needed someone who could hold it down night after night. Even though Swan was an honorary member of the Young family, “the reality is the phone call didn’t come from the boys, so I know that to be the reason; that’s what it is.”
He reflects: “One of the things we do have in this industry is a lot of loyalty from people who love you no matter what you do wrong. And that’s the boys. The lads were making a business decision. I was told at that time I had about six months to live.”
Ironically, he’d support AC/DC when they played in Australia a year later.
* * *
Meanwhile, over in England, Angus and Malcolm Young were conducting their own exhaustive auditions, with two singers standing out.
Terry Slesser, formerly of Back Street Crawler, got a call from Mutt Lange’s then wife, Olga, asking him if he’d like to sit in with the band in Pimlico. He’d also heard separately that Ahmet Ertegun personally wanted him to join AC/DC.
Slesser had drunk with Scott at the Marquee and Speakeasy clubs “many times” and was introduced to the Youngs through Coral Browning in 1976, around the time Paul Kossoff died mid-
flight from Los Angeles to New York of a drug-related heart attack.
Like Tony Platt, he believes it was “very evident” that the Youngs were influenced by Kossoff’s guitar playing, which probably accounted for their interest when Scott died.
“Not many could cope with the minimalist way Koss played,” he says. “Most players copied the speed-freak guys. Hence you ended up with Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen and other similar drivel. It’s easier to twiddle than feel it for real.”
Says Phil Carson, who worked with Free: “If you listen to early Free tracks, particularly ‘All Right Now,’ you can hear a lot of the space that Paul put into his playing. [Free’s drummer] Simon Kirke also epitomizes the no-frills, four-on-the-floor approach to drumming, so there must have been a certain Free influence on the Youngs.”
Then there was Geordie’s Brian Johnson. Scott had previously mentioned Johnson to the Youngs and Lange put his name forward on a list he put together with Platt.
“This was pretty much a foregone conclusion,” says Carson. “The band had met Brian in Newcastle and Bon had told them that if anything happened to him, here was their replacement.”
To this day Slesser believes he was still in with a shot, but let the chance slip.
“It was down to Brian and myself. But my audition recordings on ReVox [an open-reel tape recorder] had not actually recorded. Malcolm asked if I would like to do them again, and at the time I wasn’t keen on redoing the whole thing and sort of allowed the opportunity to pass me by. I did offer to return if they still hadn’t found anyone but meanwhile Brian came in after me and no doubt blew them away with his voice, humor and enthusiasm.”
Says Carson: “This was a decision in which I totally deferred to the Youngs. They knew how their band should sound and they made the right decision. The move, of course, changed Brian’s life, but at the same time injected new blood into AC/DC. I was simply a facilitator at that point and, along with Peter Mensch, made sure that the administrative details caused no glitches. Bringing in Brian was solely a decision made by the Youngs.”
* * *
In Fort Worth, Fryer is still scratching his head.
“It wasn’t really explained [why I didn’t get the gig],” he says. “I’ve heard different things. Our similarities; that I was too close to Bon. You take Journey and that guy from The Philippines [Arnel Pineda] who sounds like Steve Perry. Identical, you know what I mean? Some bands go down that road. Judas Priest when Rob Halford dropped out and Tim “Ripper” Owens got the gig. You’d close your eyes and think it was Rob singing.
“I really wish I had a tape of some of the stuff I did for Alberts but I know that wasn’t to be expected. The only thing I can really tell anybody is that it was just the real deal. We did so much good stuff, like ‘Whole Lotta Rosie.’ George and Harry were ecstatic. They were happy as a pig in shit and were going to give [the tapes] to Angus and Malcolm in London. They loved it. Down the road it came about [George and Harry] really wanted me in the band. But, you know, [Angus and Malcolm] went with Brian.”
Even though Fryer had the backing of Leber-Krebs, who he’d go on to sign with after eventually parting ways with Browning.
“Heaven was virtually the last band they did before that organization started to break up after history-making things,” he says. “David and [his assistant] Paul O’Neill wanted me in the band. They wanted me in AC/DC. That was another reason why Leber-Krebs signed Heaven, apart from doing the [1985] Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door album. To this day David swears black and blue that he would have had me frontin’ AC/DC.”
“Absolutely right, no question,” says Krebs. “Brian Johnson was the antithesis of Bon Scott as a singer. I thought Allan Fryer was very much in the tradition of Bon Scott.”
Steve Leber is less committal and insists the decision wasn’t his and Krebs’s to make anyway: “David may have suggested that during that time. We were all looking for a lead singer. But [the Youngs] picked their own person.”
Ultimately, Fryer puts his rejection down to politics.
“There was bad blood between Michael Browning and the Young brothers, to hit the nail on the head. They didn’t like Michael. I was naïve. Michael wanted to get [Fat Lip] and sign us. And once we’d signed on the dotted line, it was virtually my death notice with the Youngs.
“When they played with Brian on the Back in Black tour, I got together with Brian and everything was cordial. In LA I met up with Angus and Malcolm down at the Rainbow [Bar & Grill in West Hollywood] one night, when we were playing, and the very first words out of fucking Angus’s mouth, he goes [adopting a knuckle-dragging Scottish accent], ‘So you’re still with Browning, are ya?’ There was really bad blood between Browning and AC/DC. I think it’s known history. It took me so much heartache getting out of my contract with Browning. He was like a moray eel. Once he got his jaws on you, that was it. It took a lot of dollars.”
But Mark Evans dismisses the notion that the Youngs hated Browning.
“No, that’s not true,” he says. “I’m not sure where Allan would have got that from. But I know there was always a very healthy wariness of all management because the folklore was George and The Easybeats got burned by Mike Vaughan.”
Management, he says, was viewed inside AC/DC as a case of “Who’s going to take us to the next step?” and adds: “Management ultimately would have been very, very disposable.”
Like a lot of people involved in the rise of AC/DC.
* * *
The choice of Brian Johnson as Bon Scott’s replacement proved to be a shrewd one by the Youngs. It was a decision that stood in stark contrast to the one made by INXS, who many years later dealt with the death of their own resident “gypsy,” Michael Hutchence, spectacularly poorly.
AC/DC got it right for one simple reason: they didn’t piss about. After the death of Scott, they released a new album full of great songs that their new singer made his own. Not only would it remake the band in terms of image and sound but it gave them a platform for the next 30 years of playing live. INXS didn’t cut that big new record, that statement they needed. They couldn’t settle on a replacement and kept playing live shows thinking people were going to be all right with the fact that Hutchence wasn’t there. They weren’t. It took eight years for them to record a new album with a new singer.
No replacement vocalist has given a band a better second act than Johnson did for AC/DC. Not even Sammy Hagar with Van Halen for the near 11 years he lasted.
But not everybody was convinced by the change.
“Johnson, he’s got a higher voice, but with Bon at least you could understand the lyric,” says Stevie Wright. “Bon was more like me, and Brian wasn’t. Bon was clear in his diction. With Johnson, I thought, ‘Oh no, this is terrible. I can’t understand his diction.’ He came [not far] from where I come from in England. And I couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me.”
Johnson’s vocal cords also really only held out for five years. Three decades on they sound feeble, constricted, like a tight little fist, muted and phlegmy. Or as Mick Wall describes it adroitly, “cindered.”
Mike Fraser, though, takes an alternative view: “For Black Ice, Brendan O’Brien was the producer. While we were tracking the songs and working on solos, Brendan would take Brian to another room to do vocals. Brian was in tiptop shape coming in to do the record. He loves racing cars as a hobby and because of a busy racing schedule prior to the recording we caught him at a peak. Brendan did an awesome job bringing out the best of Brian as well and really pushed him.”
Maybe so. But in the Back in Black and For Those About to Rock era, Johnson’s prime, the man was so on fire he was Ghost Rider. He’s been using a teleprompter for live shows. AC/DC’s most recent live album, Live at River Plate, was almost unlistenable at times because of his vocals.
But there are other factors that need to be considered. Johnson is closing in on 70. The AC/DC singer revealed in 2009 he’d been diagnosed with Barrett’s Syndro
me, a condition caused by chronic reflux that can lead to vocal-cord inflammation and dysphonia. As a learned doctor friend explained: “Pathologically it is defined as squamous metaplasia of the distal oesophagus. Metaplasia of the oesophagus does not cause vocal-cord problems. What affects the voice is actually the underlying condition of severe, chronic gastroesophageal reflux.”
It’s a condition that also affects Journey’s Arnel Pineda. So is Johnson paying for 30 years of screaming like a banshee, smoking cigarettes and drinking ale?
“Environment. Age. Reflux. All of it. Cumulative.”
That he survives and hasn’t been fired by the normally ruthless Youngs, then, is something of a miracle: testament to his good nature and enduring popularity not just with his bandmates but the music-buying public. AC/DC are a much bigger band with Johnson out front than they ever were with Scott. They could easily go down the road taken by Journey with Pineda and get themselves a younger clone of their best singer. But commendably they have stuck by Johnson.
Rhino Bucket’s Georg Dolivo is a fan: “Bon was always a hero of mine but hats off to Brian, who must have balls of steel to be able to front that band for so long.”
“Brian Johnson is more streety and not the singer that Bon was, but he’s as much a part of AC/DC as anybody,” says Rob Riley. “Bon was only there for six years. Brian’s been there for 30. The Youngs made a good choice. They keep making great records.”
Ken Casey from Dropkick Murphys agrees: “Bon was an icon. Commanding stage presence. You listen to one song, you say, ‘I want to hang out with that fucking guy.’ Same for Brian. To be able to step in and fill those shoes; boy, I give that guy all the credit in the world. Their legacy is immense.”
Or, as Tony Platt points out, “Brian’s got the most difficult job of all of them. He’s still managing to kind of get the notes. It’s a really tough call to get there. But they don’t have to persuade anybody now, do they?”