Rock, roll and '2.5 tons of hand-built sex'

Brian Johnson truly is a car lover first and rock star second, as his collection attests, writes Ronan McGreevy

A COUPLE OF years ago, AC/DC’s lead singer Brian Johnson was pottering around his Florida mansion – as you do – when he got a phonecall from his car dealer in Orlando.

The dealer knew Johnson enough to call him as a friend. Would he, by any chance, be interested in test driving an almost new Rolls Royce Phantom, one careful lady owner, hardly driven?

Johnson replied that he had more than enough cars, thank you. The Bentley Continental in his cavernous garage, with only 14,000 miles on the clock, would suffice as far as luxury British marques were concerned. But the dealer knew Johnson too well. As they spoke, the Rolls Royce was already on the back of a trailer from the garage to Johnson’s home in Sarasota, a three-hour journey.

Johnson was smitten by “2.5 tons of hand-built sex” as he memorably described it. “So you want it, don’t you?” said his dealer. “Course, I want it, you rotten git.”

When it comes to cars, Brian Johnson is the biggest kid in the world’s biggest sweet shop.

He grew up with nothing in post-war Britain where his sergeant major father could not afford to buy a car until Johnson was 12 (it was a Wolsely 6/90) and had to give it up after two years because he could not afford the petrol or the repairs.

As frontman of the world's largest hard rock band (200 million albums and counting), Johnson can buy whatever car he wants – and frequently does. He chronicles every one of them in his "automotive autobiography", Rockers and Rollers.

Along with his beloved Rolls Royce Phantom, he has a Hummer 8, a Pilbeam MP84, a Land Rover Discovery, a 2007 Lotus Exige S and a 1973 Citroën DS23 Pallas, all lovingly detailed in his book. He also has or recently had a 1973 Jaguar XKE, which he has since given away, a 2008 Audi Q7, a Fiat 500 and a Plymouth Prowler.

With such a collection, Johnson is unlikely to be offered honorary membership of the Green party. But he is unabashed. Not for him the agonising over the environment professed by bands such as Radiohead and Coldplay. Unlike Jeremy Clarkson, who delights in antagonising environmentalists, Johnson simply ignores them, although he reflects nostalgically that his generation will be the last to enjoy big cars without feeling guilty about it.

He was born in a council house in Dunston outside Newcastle in 1947, the eldest of four children. His father Alan was in the Durham Light Infantry during the second World War and took a job in a foundry after the war. His wife was an Italian woman from Frascati.

In an otherwise laddish tome, Johnson speaks lovingly of both parents. When his mother Ester, who spoiled him and his siblings with nothing but love because she didn’t have anything else, died of an aneurism, Johnson says he was sick of crying.

His father, like so many fathers of his generation, was hard and distant but did his best to indulge his son’s love of cars.

He bought young Brian a steering wheel when he was a child and then his first car, a 1959 Ford Popular costing £50, even when he couldn’t afford one for himself.

After leaving school at an early age, Johnson founded glam rock band Geordie that had a number of hits in the 1970s. He was “stony broke” and his marriage was over when AC/DC came calling, asking for Johnson to replace Bon Scott, who died in 1980 after a night out in London. AC/DC was a band on the up, but the shock and trauma of Scott’s death left them with an uncertain future.

Neither they nor Johnson could ever countenance how big they would become. Back in Black, his first record with the band, is, 30 years later, the second biggest-selling album of all time, after Michael Jackson's Thriller. Their current Black Ice tour, too, is on course to overtake the Rolling Stones as the highest grossing stadium tour of all time.

Johnson went to the AC/DC audition in a Toyota Crown, which broke down along the way – but there is little chance of that happening with the marques he now favours.

AC/DC have achieved a degree of anonymity completely disproportional to their success, though it is not true, as Clarkson said when introducing Johnson recently on Top Gearto the audience, that "almost none of you have heard of him".

Clarkson only had to ask James May, who is a huge fan and wrote of the band: “I sometimes wonder if the world would be a better and more peaceful place if AC/DC could stride onto a giant cosmic stage and say ‘good evening, Earth’.”

Though AC/DC inspire a near fanatical level of devotion in their fans, Johnson regards himself as a car lover first and a rock star second.

Rockers and Rollersis a book for petrolheads, not metalheads, and will ultimately disappoint AC/DC fans looking for an insiders' perspective on this most inscrutable of bands.

He has nothing to say about the enigmatic Young brothers other than to say that Malcolm “doesn’t give a shit about cars”, and Angus cannot drive.

He has, however, a great story about bass player Cliff Williams, who shares his devotion to all things automotive.

Williams was visiting Johnson in Newcastle in the 1980s when he came across a second-hand dark blue Aston Martin DB5 in a showroom window. “I’ve got to have it,” said Williams. “But, Cliff,” replied Johnson, “you live in Hawaii.”

Johnson then offers the most perfect description of how a filthy rich rock star and his money can be soon parted. “He was gone, car brain freeze. He hadn’t even asked how much it was, and had already written out the cheque.”

It proceeded to break down on the way to a gig in Glasgow. They had to get a taxi and Williams swore he would never buy another Aston Martin. He now owns a DB9, by Aston Martin.

Brian Johnson,Rockers and Rollers: An Automotive Autobiography , is published by Penguin priced €24.70 in hardback and €13.99 in paperback