AC/DC rock god Brian Johnson may be a bit mean with a microphone, but put a steering wheel in front of him and he’s arguably even more entertaining, as we recently discovered!
Everyone knows AC/DC singer Brian Johnson is one of the greatest frontmen in rock music history, with the spirit of rock and roll coursing through his veins.
But what people might not know is that the 66-year-old also has the need for speed. Johnson is a car fanatic, obsessed not just with how vintage sports cars look, but how fast they can go as well – and with the kind of outgoing personality that you might expect from a singer in a hard-living rock band, the faster the better.
With a collection of expensive motors that include a Lola T70 Mark 1, a Pilbeam, and a Porsche 911, Johnson races on the track as often as he can, which, given that AC/DC haven’t released an album for six years, has been regularly.
He even called his autobiography Rockers and Rollers in reference to his passion for the road and his music of choice. It’s an obsession with cars that started when Johnson was a young boy growing up near Newcastle, a poor area in the northeast of England.
“Writing the book finally gave me the chance to express how much rock ‘n’ roll and cars automatically went together, and I think plenty of people agree with me. But it was from all the old Elvis Pressley movies – there were always cool cars in there, and stuff like that. It was a world that didn’t exist in the northeast of England. And then when The Beatles and the Rolling Stones came along, the Mini came out – suddenly having a Mini was cool. You’d see movie stars with them, royalty, pop stars, and your dad might have one as well. It was the ultimate car.”
The exoticism of cars for Johnson was exacerbated by the era he grew up in – you didn’t see many of them in the poor, working class town of 1950’s Gateshead, and Johnson can still summon up the feeling of excitement he felt on the few occasions he came into contact with one.
“Yeah, I was interested in cars because there weren’t any in our street!” he says. “There were actually two on our street – one guy was a foreman, and the other guy was a foreman! Regular guys didn’t have cars. This was the early 1950’s – there was petrol rationing, so cars were expensive things. But, as I grew up, slowly but surely there were more cars… O’Reilly’s, Austin’s, Morrison’s… It started to get exciting seeing all these new motors appearing, because before then the only way to get around was by bus.”
With all the naïve, wide-eyed wonder of a child, Johnson recalls vividly what it felt like the first time he took a ride in a car.
“The first time was with my uncle Bill. He had an old Vauxhall – it was black like all the other cars! He took us on our first caravan holiday. I remember the journey, it must have been 23 miles and it took about seven hours! That’s a slight exaggeration, but cars weren’t very quick then. But it was the most exciting time, the smell of the engine and the fumes. It was wonderful, and it stuck with me ever since.”
Like most people, he remembers his first motor, “a Ford Popular – ‘sit up and beg’ as they were called, because they looked like dogs! It was in 1959, and I think it was the last year that they made them, and the car was a 17th birthday present from my father.
“He was not a loveable kind of guy – you know, a good firm handshake was enough for him. He just said on my 17th birthday ‘here you go’” and threw a set of keys my way. There was no ‘happy birthday son’ or anything, just ‘here you go’ like a Sgt Major. And I just died… it was the worst colour of car – beige, with a salmon pink interior. It was horrible, but I didn’t care. To me, that was freedom. And boy-oh-boy, I just loved that car so much.”
At that point, Johnson had become obsessed with racing, which was as popular in 1960’s Britain as The Beatles.
“I think it was the same for any young kid, especially in the early 1960’s. The place was becoming really exciting – Stirling Moss was about, and the Brits were just the best. We had the best pop music with The Beatles, we had the best cars with the Mini, and everybody loved Britain and wanted to be in England. It was very exciting. I think we still had a space programme then too!
“So it was exciting – there was a lot of coverage of the racing, and it fascinated me, these real world heroes. They were knights in shining armour, but they had just a helmet on. It was so exciting to watch, and I think every kid in the world wanted to be a racing driver.”
Leading from the front with AC/DC – who’ve sold over 200 million albums worldwide – might be the day job, but Johnson is now a racing driver of some repute, winning podiums all over Europe and America.
Yet, his driving career nearly careered off course permanently. After qualifying to drive at a high-speed event at Sears Point in California (“it was a present from my wife, the best one I’ve ever had!”) his first taste of racing on his own nearly ended in disaster. He bought his first car, a Lotus Cortina Mark 1, when he saw it “lying on somebody’s lawn in Florida, and I give him $200 for it. He was stunned – he was going to give me $20 to take it away,” he laughs.
Johnson built it up into his first racecar, but it was almost his last. “I took it out for the first time in Road Atlanta and crashed, at 90mph. I rolled over, and had to get cut out.” With trademark humour and a devil-may-care attitude, he can laugh the incident off. “But I did get a helicopter ride to the medical centre, which was fun! But really, the rain came down and we were so unprepared. We didn’t have rain tyres, we didn’t even have a wiper on the bloody thing! A Georgia downpour is a vicious thing – I couldn’t see a thing”.
Undeterred, Johnson continued to follow his childhood dream and, to this day, is still in his element when it comes to motors. His favourite machine to race at present is a Mini Austin Cooper S, a classic car he bought only last year.
“Well, at the minute, I am loving that little motor. I only bought it last year, but it’s so much fun. It shouldn’t be that much fun, it’s ridiculous. I raced about five races in it last year around Europe, and god damn it’s just so much fun. It makes me smile, my jaws are aching when I get out of the car.”
And even though singing live in front of tens of thousands of people will always be the pinnacle for Johnson, he says that the thrill of the racetrack comes a close second, and that his two passions – hard rock and fast cars – go hand-in-hand.
“To me, it seems so bloody obvious,” he smiles. “Everybody else is only just getting it – the crowd, the noise, the excitement, the finish line, the end of the show. It all goes together. When there are 100,000 cheering fans, it’s such a rush. When they are cheering for you, and it’s a personal, special thing, there’s nothing that can beat it. But it comes a close second when you’re standing at the starting line with about 40 V6’s and V8’s from the 1960’s and 70’s – I mean, big stonking roaring gits like McLaren’s and Lola’s and Chevron’s. And when that flag drops, oh, it’s like Zeus breaking wind. It’s just ridiculous!”
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