AC/DC’s Brian Johnson reveals in memoir he ‘wouldn’t have minded’ dying at 180 mph
There was a time when singer Brian Johnson might have felt better crashing into a wall at 180 mph than living the rest of his life without being able to perform anymore with legendary rock band AC/DC.
After Johnson was forced to leave the band — and its large-venue performances — in 2016 due to a risk of total hearing loss, the “Back in Black” singer turned to the second love of his life after music. That was racing cars, and he found himself winning more than he had in the past.
“People would come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Brian, you’re fearless!,’ but I wasn’t fearless,” Johnson writes in “The Lives of Brian,” his new memoir, via Ultimate Classic Rock. “I just didn’t f— care any more. I’d always thought that the best way to go out would be at 180 mph, flat-out around a corner. You’d hit the wall and boom, it would be over, just like that.”
In 2016, Johnson said in a press release that the day of his hearing-loss diagnosis was “the darkest day of my professional life.” He had been advised that if he continued to perform with what he called “the loudest band in the world,” he risked losing what was left of his hearing.