For one brief moment in 1980, the future of AC/DC depended on Brian Johnson answering—and most importantly, listening to—a mysterious phone call he received at work. Strapped for cash, living with his parents, and on the cusp of hanging up music for good to start an automotive business, the then-33-year-old Johnson was ready to write off the whole vague interaction.
Luckily, he didn’t hang up before the woman on the other end of the line convinced him to go to London for an audition. The rest, as they say, is rock ‘n’ roll history.
Brian Johnson Got a Phone Call Inviting Him to London
Brian Johnson’s claim to fame might be as the lead vocalist for Australian rock band AC/DC, but that wasn’t his first foray into rock ‘n’ roll. Around the time he received that fateful, mysterious phone call, Johnson had already been with a Newcastle rock band called Geordie. They had achieved moderate success but not enough to keep Johnson financially stable.
One day at work, Johnson’s phone rings. “She said, ‘You are Brian Johnson? This is you?’” The singer recalled in an AXS TV interview, imitating the woman’s German accent. “I went, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ ‘You must come to London and sing for this group.’ And I said, ‘Which group?’ She wouldn’t tell me. I said, ‘Well, I’m not coming down.’ She said, ‘You must come.’”
Johnson said he insisted he wouldn’t drive five to six hours to London for an audition if he didn’t know who the band was. “She said, ‘I can give you the initials. AC unser DC.’ I said, ‘You mean AC/DC?’” Johnson recalled the woman cursing in German before saying, “‘I have said too much.’”
How That Mysterious Interaction Came to Be
So, how did that anonymous German woman know who to call? In a 2011 interview with Howard Stern, Brian Johnson revealed that multiple people had tipped off AC/DC to his presence. (He also gave the woman’s nickname: Olga from the Volga.) According to Johnson, both producer Mutt Lange and AC/DC’s former vocalist, Bon Scott, told the rest of the band about the man with the incredible vocal chops from northeastern England.
“Bon Scott himself unwittingly told the boys,” Johnson said. “He said, ‘There’s this kid called Brian Johnson who played with [Geordie].’ We got on well, me and Bon. We just had a pint, and then we went our separate ways, and I never saw him again.” Lange’s recommendation held quite a bit of sway as well, as he had already produced AC/DC’s 1979 record Highway to Hell.
Of course, hindsight makes Johnson’s mysterious phone call not so mysterious after all. The singer drove to London, auditioned for AC/DC, and it was an instant fit. Even after suffering the loss of their former vocalist, AC/DC continued their legacy of being one of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world, this time with Johnson at the helm. Indeed, it would appear we have Bon, Mutt, and Olga to thank for some of rock’s greatest musical contributions, including “You Shook Me All Night Long” and his first album with AC/DC’s title track, “Back in Black.”
Photo by SADAKA EDMOND/SIPA/Shutterstock
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