Back in ’65, Maurice was the first one to be able to buy something new, a Lambretta scooter. He was a bellboy at the County Hotel in Newcastle. He was apprenticed to become a bellman. Tips flowed in, and he poured them into his piggy bank. After about six months, he was off—he’d heard there were rich pickings to be had bellboying in Jersey. I missed him. He was my younger brother; there was nothing to kick (the cat had left months ago).
He returned a year and a half later. And outside was parked a Triumph Spitfire hardtop, white and gorgeous. It was his. Maurice was dressed smartly and had them proper driving gloves on, the kind that look like someone’s just knitted the back of your hand.
“Wanna come for a drive?”
“Oh yeah!” I said. That’s hard to say with your tongue hanging out. It was a beautiful little car—until some little shit scratched it or kicked one of the panels in a fit of envy. You had to be careful in the northeast in those days.
Later on, I bought a Ford Anglia 100E, with that daft wrong-way-’round back screen. Maurice had moved back to Newcastle and was courting.
“A woman,” he told me.
He sold the Spitfire for a profit and he bought my Anglia. Now this car went from 0 to 60 mph in the time it takes to spit-roast a fair-size bullock. That didn’t faze my bro. If it wasn’t fast, he’d make it look like it was fast. Money no object. He went out and bought a tin of matte-black paint and some yellow electrician’s tape. Oh yeah, and a paintbrush.
But he didn’t actually prepare the car, he just painted over the top of the blue bodywork (some of it missing, I may add—these were the days of the great rust epidemics that swept the length and breadth of Britain). He had that maniacal Johnson look in his eye. He was creating something beautiful. It was a masterpiece. Why was he lucky to be the only person in the world to think of it?
“Wait for the paint to dry? Wait for the paint to dry?! That’s for suckers, that’s for people with too much time on their hands. This is the sixties: peace, love, and shagging.” (Well, once you got out of Gateshead.) “This car’s going to be Psychedelic Moody Maurice’s Manwagon.” Oh shit. While he’s up there talking to Zeus and the other lads up there, asking for tips, his friend Dennis arrives. Dennis is an apprentice plasterer and perfect for the job of helping Maurice put on the stripes.
Dennis always looked a happy man, mainly because his teeth were too big for his mouth, or perhaps because he’d just come from the pub. There they were, Maurice at the front, Dennis at the back.
“Right, Dennis, I’m pulling back the tape now . . . Dennis, Dennis, where the frig are you?”
“I’m here, but I can’t hear you for the traffic.”
(They were doing this on the street and quite a crowd had gathered—there wasn’t much telly then.) Ah yes, the tape. At last they cotton on to the fact that they’re both doing the same job. They pull; they tease; the language was a pretty color purple.
“Done!” went the cry. We stood back to look. Hmm!
“Your line’s not straight, mate,” said Maurice.
“Looks straight to me,” Dennis said.
What they’d tried to do was make it look like a race car with two stripes down the hood, over the roof, and down the boot. Electrician’s tape is known for being bendy, and if you pull it, it gets skinnier and doesn’t stick very well. It looked what it was: an absolute cock-up.
“Ah fuck it,” Maurice said. “C’mon, Dennis, I’ll drive you to the pub.”
Dennis: “I’m not going in that piece of shit!”
What happened next is legend in Dunston. Dennis did get in the car, and Maurice got in, feeling pretty down. His grand plan had failed. He was as low as a lollipop lady’s libido. He started the car, put it into first gear, and drove off. Then his head disappeared, the car swerved and came to a sudden stop. I ran over.
“What the hell?”
There was Maurice, still sitting in his seat. The seat was sitting on the road. The great rust epidemic had claimed another victim in Newcastle. But although the floor had fallen out of Maurice’s cars, his life was pretty solid.
Chapter 37
Angus Young
OCCUPATION: DEVILISH IMP SCHOOLBOY GUITARIST
My workmate Angus smokes tabs and drinks tea, lots and lots of both, so he is usually double-fisted when you are talking to him. He can pick up a guitar, play it, and turn it into a threatening series of events in moments.
He’s quite a remarkable man, but he has a skeleton in his cupboard. And I, Brian Johnson, am about to commit the ultimate in treachery. But wait—I am no Judas! I am a good lad. So why do I have to tell you this?
My body is a cacophony of chaos.
My soul says shout about it.
My heart says howl it.
My scrotum says scroat it.
My inner being is torn between telling the truth and letting it go. But I am a gearhead, a maniacal, mechanically maladjusted fanatic. I could sell my story to Hello! or OK! or any other useless piece-of-shit magazine and become a paparazillionaire—but I can’t do that. So I will tell you instead.
ANGUS DOESN’T HAVE A DRIVING LICENSE. I mean, that’s like being an atheist or something, isn’t it?
There, I’ve said it and got it off my chest.
Well, so much for Angus and cars.
Chapter 38
Cars and Music
YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER
Rock ’n’ rollers have been writing about cars since cars started looking like rock ’n’ roll. Ike Turner, in between going ten rounds with Tina every night, wrote “Rocket 88” about an Oldsmobile Rocket V8. And how about “Little Deuce Coupe” by the Beach Boys?
Just a little Deuce Coupe with a flathead mill
But she’ll walk a Thunderbird like it’s standing still.
Jeez. I don’t know whether to sing it or build it.
Then there’s Chuck Berry. In between looking through peepholes into his guest bathrooms and going to jail, he wrote some crackers: “No Particular Place to Go,” “Route 66.” I remember Geordie supported Chuck for a week of gigs in Germany in 1975. He used all of our equipment and we didn’t charge him a penny. After the last gig, he was sitting in his car, and I said, “ ’Scuse me, Mr. Berry, can I have your autograph?” He said, “I only sign one a day and I’ve already done it.” Then he said, “You’re from Scotland.” I told him I was English, and then he said, “You are what I say you are.” It was then I told him to piss off in Scottish, English, and a Cornwall accent, just for the fuck of it. Oh yeah, and I told him he was a cunt.
The Beatles’ “Baby, You Can Drive My Car” was another cracker. And how about Flanders and Swann’s “Transport of Delight,” that song about London buses: “The big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted, London Transport, diesel-engined, ninety-seven-horsepower omnibus.” Well, it’s not exactly rock ’n’ roll, but it’s clever. “Prince,” who shall not be called an artist unless he’s not called Prince, wrote “Little Red Corvette” in the eighties, and Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” is another great one. The New Romantics had Gary Numan’s “Cars.” To be honest, there’re so many great car songs that I could actually write a separate book about them.
What is it about cars that makes you want to write songs about them? I guess women and cars get mixed up in your head. They’re sexy, they’re expensive, they carry luggage and big headlights, and they’re sometimes a little loose. I mean, when I wrote: “She was a fast machine / She kept her motor clean / She was the best damn woman that I ever seen,” for “Shook Me All Night Long,” I thought it was perfectly natural, and, thankfully, so did everyone else. So, there’s the recipe: cars + women + rock ’n’ roll = great songs.
Chapter 39
Tour Bus Tippy-Toe
TAKING ON THE MENTALLY CHALLENGED MORAL MINORITY
In the mid-’80s, the right-wing Christian Moral Majority (who are indeed a minority) decided they’d had enough. Rock ’n’ roll was from Satan and they were gonna wipe it out, all songs with unseeml
y lyrics, i.e., “Highway to Hell,” were to be banished forever, no more would there be rock concerts—which were the real cause of their kids going off the rails, it was our fault, all of it. Of course, American parents blamed rock music in the fifties, and Elvis was indeed a Satan Singer, and then, when our lord of Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, they burned Beatles’ albums, just like the Nazis burned books in Germany, now you must remember this is America we’re talking about, not some far-off European Backwater. Frank Zappa went to Congress to plead our case and he came away “looking more like Jesus than anyone,” knowing no one listened to a word he said.
Well, in the middle of this, we, AC/DC, were heading to Springfield, to play the arena. On the way there, Big John, our security man, said, “Listen up, lads. We’ve got reports that a couple of guys out there are gonna shoot at the bus.”
Me: “Are you fucking kidding?”
Him: “Wish I was, but they’re religious fanatics.”
Holy shit, he wasn’t kidding. These guys were the forerunners of the Taliban.
Me: “I think we should bravely turn around and bugger off.”
Mal and Angus: “No, we can’t let them beat us. We gotta do the show for the kids who bought the tickets.”
Me: “But I don’t wanna die in a tour bus, of bullet wounds.”
Big John: “Well, why don’t we all lie on the floor?” Thoughts of Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet came to mind.
The driver said, “I got an idea, why don’t I scroll the name signs on the front of the bus? I think there’s a one saying ‘Young Singers of Jesus.’ ” We stopped the bus and he jiggled the levers, and lo we became singers for the Lord.
(We still crouched behind the seats.)
We had also learned that the arena had been ringed by the aforementioned Mentally Challenged Minority, all holding hands and chanting in “tongues,” which, translated into English, means “Bullshit.” I mean, do these people actually think that we think they think they actually know what they think they’re talking about? Anyway, the chorus sounded shit, because nobody knew the same words in Tongues.
The ringleader of this messy band of malcontents was none other than the She God Tipper Gore, Wife of Al, Mother of All. She wanted us banned, but more worryingly, she wanted Angus arrested for lewd behavior, because Angus always dropped his shorts and showed his bum to the audience for a split second. So, with her political clout, she had police officers placed in the audience, ready to arrest Angus the minute he displayed his ass.
We managed to get through the cordon by a rear loading bay, and our first decision was to really spoil the Tipper’s night by simply not dropping said shorts. I couldn’t get this thing out of my mind. I had to see what was happening, so I slipped out the back door and went to see the action in the flesh, so to speak.
I went up to some of the women standing near Tipper Gore, and they said, “Join us. We are going to stop the Anti-Christ Devil Children from performing.” They meant AC/DC. Jeez, even I couldn’t have thought of that one. What would my mom think of her Brian, an ex–choir boy, being called Anti-Christ? Of course, I’ve never been a fan of any religion; as far as I’m concerned, it was all started by two hippies and a snake, but that Jesus fella always sounded cool, and would probably have come to the show.
Tipper the Family Woman is now getting divorced, and her kids, it seems, never followed her advice, and Al’s well out of it. To the people of Springfield, thanks for a brilliant show and a great night. To Tipper Gore: Don’t throw stones.
Chapter 40
Marital Blues 1968
RIDING SHOTGUN
The shotgun wounds were healing nicely. Yes, it was that kind of marriage. It is no wonder that those years are remembered by cars, not moments.
We went to Durham on honeymoon, two nights in the wife’s uncle’s three-bed semi, in a used Cortina Mk1 with a dodgy powder-blue paint job. It bubbled in ten days.
I was driving the same car bought on HP on a windy Sunday afternoon in North Shields (not a nice place to be) when the hood flew off. It sailed up into the air in slow motion and floated down again, nice and gentle, like a gossamer wing. I got out to pick it up. But as I reached it, the wind picked it up and blew the bastard down the road, scraping the shit out of it.
It’s funny how when you have no money you have no luck with cars.
Chapter 41
Jerry Wexler (Rock in Peace)
RHYTHM AND BLUES AND SAABS
Jerry Wexler is probably the greatest music man of the last century. It was he, with his partner, Ahmet Ertegun, who signed Ray Charles, Sam & Dave, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and so many others to Atlantic Records. He was the man who coined the phrase “rhythm and blues.” And he was the man who took Dusty Springfield to Memphis, to produce the best album she ever made. Oh, and loads of other good shit.
He was also my mate. I met him in 1992 in Sarasota, Florida, where we both live. So why, oh why, did he drive that same old blue Saab? You see, I don’t understand Saabs. They’re a bit like U2: you know they’re good but you just don’t get it. And if you have a lisp, you can’t even buy one.
I phoned Jerry in the summer of 2008.
“Hey, Jerry, it’s Brian here. I’m off to England for four days to shoot a video [‘Rock ’n’ Roll Train,’ for those among you with an interest in these things]. When I’m back, I’ll come see ya.”
Jerry had been very ill. He was ninety-one years old, but he was the most lucid and brilliant man I’d ever met. His stories were legend—read his book Rhythm and the Blues.
And even in his final days, the man had brass. He told me about being driven home one day, after one of his many visits to the hospital, by a very attractive young lady with beautiful breasts. He was curled up in the passenger seat and she asked him, “Tell me if there’s anything you need, Jerry.”
He said, “Oh yeah! Just let me feel one of those titties.”
After the initial shock, she said, “Well, okay.”
She actually got one out, and Jerry paused, looking at her.
“Shit,” said Jerry. “I don’t even have the strength to reach out and touch it.”
True story.
Now, back to our call. “Brian,” he said. “I’m checking out, kid, I’ve had enough. I got tubes up my ass, up my nose, in my arms. I can’t taste my wine and I’m being fed through a fucking tube. It ain’t living, man, do ya dig it? I’m checking out.”
“Oh, shit, Jerry, don’t talk like that. Hang in there.”
“There’s nothing to hang on with. Stay cool, kid. I’ll see you on the other side.”
The phone went dead and so did I. Jerry took two more days.
See ya, Jerry.
Love, Brian.
* * *
P.S.: I don’t know where the Saab is. He probably left it to someone he didn’t like.
Chapter 42
Tour Bus II
“NO SHITTING ALLOWED. SHAGGING EXPECTED.”
Cliff Williams was sleeping in the bunk above me on the bus one night. I was reading my book, because I’d seen all the fucking DVDs, when suddenly Cliff came flying past me and hit the floor with a tremendous thud. He also hit the air-conditioning grating, which was built into the floor. I shouted, “Wow, mate, are you okay?” Nothing. “Mate, Cliff, are you fucking alive?” Nothing. Holy shit, Cliff’s dead by falling out of his bunk—this ain’t gonna look good in the annals of rock ’n’ roll history.
Then I heard him snoring. The fucker had fallen six feet onto his face and never even changed beat. I was very worried, so worried that I fell asleep, too. In the morning, Cliff woke with a huge bruise on his cheek the size of a good-size plum and the shape of a good-size air-conditioning unit. He looked at me seriously and said, “Hey, Jonna, did you punch me while I was asleep last night?” That’s why I love Cliff.
One of the more subtle differences between American and European buses is the toilets. You can’t snap one off in either, but in America, the signs on the door
read: PLEASE NO SOLIDS. On one English tour bus, the sign read: no shitting allowed. shagging expected.
“Shagging Expected,” though. Usually, the back lounge in any tour bus is the scene of serious shagfests. Whatever Caligula and the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah got up to, they were amateurs in comparison to what went on in these highly charged orgies, usually orchestrated by very experienced road crew. The smell of the Lord’s lettuce hangs like a shroud over the contestants in the Last Willy Standing competition, usually about five in the morning. The trouble is nobody remembers much about it the next day. It’s a pisser all those great times go unremembered.
Sad to say, after the great AIDS scare back in the eighties, things changed. There was terror in the eyes of the road crew and band members; those who still had members were very grateful.
Chapter 43
The Things You Do for Vans
PARACHUTE JUMPING AIN’T FUN
It was around 1968. I was newly married, with a daughter (Joanne); I wanted transport badly, but I also needed a PA system so I could continue singing in bands. My wages from C. A. Parsons, where I was working as an apprentice, were, to put it mildly, useless. What to do? Who to turn to? My dad had nothing to spare, and my wife’s dad didn’t care. Then I saw it, a recruiting poster for the Territorial Army Parachute Regiment, monthly pay and extra for every jump you did, eight whole pounds extra. I was only getting five pounds a week at Parsons, and all I had to do was jump out of airplanes as a part-time job. Okay, there was the danger of falling two thousand feet and getting light bruising, but the money, son, the money.
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