(Credits: Far Out / Jaguar MENA / NDLA)
Fri 17 April 2026 19:58, UK
I recently had a plumber around to perform some alchemy on the boiler. Upon hearing that I was a music journalist, he excitedly decided to embarrass his young apprentice by regaling a tale regarding AC/DC’s growling frontman Brian Johnson.
The young lad had no idea who Johnson was, and when they were working on his palatial pad a few months back, he mistook the casually dressed rocker wandering down the drive for the groundskeeper.
He asked this humble-looking gent where the toilet was, and, making small talk, the apprentice remarked, gesturing to the grand home behind him, that somebody had done well for themselves. To which Johnson quipped, deadpan, “Aye, and I’ve never made much of the bastard’s music either,” hopped on his motorbike and drove off.
By nature, this story is impossible to corroborate. I have no idea whether it really happened, and I struggled to pick up cues of fidelity from the telling of it, but the mere fact that it seems entirely plausible says a lot about the unassuming nature of Johnson. With his flat cap and rolled-up sleeves, he’s a roving edifice of the proletariat. And it just so happens that he’s a bloody good chanter to boot.
The writer George Orwell once said there are four reasons people get into the arts: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. Johnson seems to defy all of these. More so than any other rockstar I can think of, he seems to have simply been in it for a laugh.
(Credits: Far Out / Michael Joseph)
That is not to besmirch his considerable talents or passion for music, but it also seems apparent that the artistry was deployed as an engine to fuel fun. It made the frontman very refreshing and a perfect fit for the manic, maurading AC/DC when they came looking for a singer.
The great Nessie hunt
This outlook also makes him a repository of amazing anecdotes. One of which arrived on the night he went hunting for the Loch Ness monster. Recalling his time stalking mythical creatures with the late Malcolm Young, Johnson fondly explained: “We both had these Land Rovers, and we’d taken them for a trip around Scotland – Malcolm loved his fireworks, and he’d taken a big box with him.”
Not every international rockstar travels with their personal bounty of performative explosives, but Young liked thrills in all of their forms. As Johnson continued, “One night, we were four sheets to the wind and staying at this hotel right on the side of the loch. Mal just said, ‘C’mon, let’s go and find the Loch Ness monster! I’ve got fireworks, and it might attract it,“ he told NME.
As we all know, pyrotechnics famously lure and calm skittish animals. Massive bangs and flashing lights are like a moth to a flame for the rarely seen creatures of this world. Safe in this knowledge, they waded in. “There we were, going straight into the water in our shoes, up to our knees, and it was freezing,” Johnson continues.
“Mal had a drink in one hand, a box of fireworks in the other, and was trying to set fire to the loch. We were just howling. By the time we got back to our wives, we had straw in our hair and were covered in mud. What a night,” he concluded, never really offering an explanation for the straw.
He reflected further on this story with 60 Minutes Australia: “It was just nights like that when you just thought, how daft and fun was that? That was Malcolm with his fireworks. It was just hilarious. Well, at least I laughed.” The locals, drawn to the Loch for its peace and spiritualism, might have had other ideas.
This simple tenet of holding laughter dear made AC/DC one of the premier bands of their era. Or as Slash puts it, “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band ever”. As Johnson explains, “I’m an out-and-out basic man, and AC/DC are one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world, doing things just to the basics, you know.“ Basic things like conjuring cryptid eels with roman candles.
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