AC/DC Frontman Goes Home; Interview Available
December 18, 2008, 15 years ago
HeraldTribune.com has issued the following report from Gerry Galipault:
There are many sides to Brian Johnson, AC/DC’s affable frontman and Sarasota’s most-famous rockin’ resident.
There’s obviously Johnson the Showman, the one Tampa Bay-area fans will see front and center Sunday night during the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s show at St. Pete Times Forum.
“The opening two minutes of the show are probably the most exciting opening to a rock ’n’ roll show ever,” Johnson says over the phone during a recent tour stop in Cleveland. “We got the guy who did much of the opening of the Beijing Summer Olympics. It cost us $6.3 million.”For those about to rock, we salute Johnson.
The Singer...
Black Ice, AC/DC’s first album in eight years, was released October 17th exclusively at Wal-Mart stores in the United States. It sold nearly 800,000 copies in its debut week and has since topped 1.6 million in the United States and millions more worldwide.
It’s all beyond Johnson’s comprehension.
“We’ve always had success, and we’ve been successful all over the world. All of our tours have been sold out, in huge stadiums,” the 61-year-old English-born singer said. “Well, you think, ‘That’s about as far as you can go.’ We’ve got a fantastic fan base, but then this bloody album comes out. People have been waiting six years for a tour, eight years for an album.“It sold 5 million in five days around the world. To be No. 1 in 29 countries in one week, it’s a bit overwhelming. You can’t take it all in. Some of them must be break-away republics,” he said, with a laugh, “because I didn’t know there were so many countries - none with an economy to speak of.”
It’s a massive seller, despite the lack of digital downloads. “An album can get cherry-picked on iTunes,” Johnson said of the band’s decision to go with Wal-Mart.
Even a tech-savvy entrepreneur couldn’t derail Black Ice and its hit single, 'Rock ’n’ Roll Train'.
“Some dirty little git in Europe had recorded a copy of the album - he was arrested, by the way - and at some pressing plant in Germany, thousands of copies had gotten out,” Johnson said. “We thought, ‘Well, that’s it. Once it gets out on the Internet, it’s like a feeding frenzy.’ But it didn’t happen; fans went out and bought the album. They wanted the album; they wanted a physical body of work in their hands.”Read the full report at HeraldTribune.com.
