While being in a successful rock band often means that you’ve got to be respectful of your forefathers and those who laid out the foundations for your artistry, not everyone is going to be willing to praise the legends.
When AC/DC formed in the early 1970s, it was clear that they were paying tribute to plenty of the rock and roll and blues stars of the ‘50s and ‘60s through their simplistic yet raw approach to creating riffs, but despite their infatuation with the likes of both Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones, they weren’t unanimously in support of everyone in that realm.
Rather famously, original vocalist Bon Scott passed away at the age of 32 due to acute alcohol poisoning, leaving a gaping hole in the band and making the remaining members question whether it was possible for them to continue without such a vital member.
While they followed Scott’s wishes and continued with one of his favourite vocalists in Brian Johnson taking the reins, that didn’t mean that his replacement was a complete copy of Scott in terms of his style and personal tastes. Johnson may have been the ideal fit for the band, leading them to even greater success, but it turns out that there was a major disagreement between him and the rest of the band on one of their major influences.
After a 2003 concert, Johnson was candidly captured on camera while signing autographs for fans, and when posed the question of whether he’s ever been in the same position as the fans, asking a hero of his for their signature, he replied with a scathing assessment of someone he’d previously considered to be a hero, who turned out to be a deeply unpleasant individual when he requested his autograph as a youngster.
“I asked Chuck Berry once in 1975,” Johnson responded to the querying fan. “He was the biggest piece of shit I ever met in my life. The rudest man I ever met.”
At this point, Johnson would have been five years away from joining AC/DC’s lineup, and was fronting the British heavy metal act Geordie, and given the Australian band’s love of Berry, you would imagine that Johnson would have had to keep this damning indictment of the rock and roll legend to himself in order to secure his position as their new frontman.
The fans continued to press Johnson after the shocking revelation, asking whether the interaction he had had with Berry was what persuaded him to behave differently with his own fanbase, to which his response was: “Well, I don’t want to be an asshole like he was.”
Of course, calling Berry a “piece of shit” doesn’t mean that Johnson necessarily stopped being a fan of his work, but for him to have made such a disparaging remark about him must mean that he did something to deeply upset him and change his view of one of his idols. As the old adage goes, you should never meet your heroes, and Johnson certainly fell foul of this during his unfortunate encounter.
