Called to recharge AC/DC, Brian Johnson found the switch! PHONE INTERVIEW - Mr. Media Interviews by

Today's Guest: Brian Johnson, lead singer of AC/DC, in a telephone interview recorded on November 26, 1983.

(NOTE FROM MR. MEDIA: I recorded this interview with AC/DC lead singer Brian Johnson on November 26, 1983 for a St. Petersburg Times print interview [published December 4, 1983] when I was the pop music writer for the newspaper. You can read the story below; the conversation itself is not my best work, although maybe it was for 1983 when I was a year out of college. (I could also blame a painful sore throat.) But the future Rock and Roll Hall of Fane inductee was a prince through it all, and even through the less-than-optimal recording quality, I think that still comes across. Stick around – the first music my son, Charlie, ever heard was “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC as we drove home from the hospital! No kidding. -- Bob Andelman)

Brian Johnson faced more than the usual challenges when he joined the rock band AC/DC: He was the replacement for singer Bon Scott who had died in an accident.

Since so much of a group's image and sound comes from its singer, Johnson was on the spot.

The surviving members of the band called Johnson one night in 1980. He was an obvious choice for at least an audition because Scott had himself admired the singer's voice.

"It was one of them things," Johnson recalled last week in an interview before AC/DC's concert in Lakeland Nov. 26. "A million to one chance."
BRIAN JOHNSON podcast excerpt: "I came from a big family and couldn't afford to buy a kit of drums or a guitar. It was cheaper to buy a microphone."
You can LISTEN to this 1983 interview with AC/DC lead singer BRIAN JOHNSON by clicking the audio player above!

His longtime band Geordie, which had attained a measure of fame in Britain, had broken up and he was playing around his hometown of Newcastle in semi-professional bands.

"That was one of the lucky circumstances which led to me getting the gig. Bon's band had supporte