Slash recently talked about Axl Rose replacing Brian Johnson in AC/DC and managing to be in both AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses simultaneously. He revealed what he thinks about the singer’s vocals and talked about how proud he was of his bandmate for pulling off some songs of Bon Scott.
AC/DC went through many lineup changes before releasing their album, ‘High Voltage,’ which carried them to fame. In six years, they became an essential act in the rock and roll scene with Bon Scott on lead vocals. After Scott sadly passed away from alcohol poisoning in 1980, the band replaced him with Brian Johnson and continued their journey.
With Brian Johnson, they released 13 studio albums and maintained their rock and roll success. They released the album ‘Rock or Bust’ in 2014 and followed it up with a tour. However, in 2016 amid the tour, Johnson suffered from hearing problems and couldn’t continue. The band hired Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses to temporarily replace Johnson. Even though there were rumors about Rose joining the band permanently, this didn’t happen, and Johnson returned to GN’R after the tour.
If Rose had joined the band for good, he would have had to maintain the two iconic bands, Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC, at the same time, which would have been a difficult task. His GN’R bandmate Slash recently talked about Rose replacing Johnson for a while. He stated that it wasn’t weird seeing him in another band. He was proud because he could sing Bon Scott’s parts very well and pulled being the vocalist of AC/DC off.
Here is what Slash said about Rose replacing Johnson:
“Yeah, he did. I came out to a gig in London, and it was phenomenal. I was blown away, especially when he sang the Bon Scott stuff. That was a very proud moment, actually. You didn’t feel weird seeing your singer with another band? Not at all. It was AC/DC, man! The fact that he got asked to do that was very cool. And he worked his ass off doing it, too. He really adhered to the whole AC/DC regimen and pulled it off.“
Slash is also familiar with managing performances with two bands at once. He keeps his band with the Conspirators on the side while he is active with GN’R. Hence, his understanding of the immensity of this job is pretty high. Even though it was two big bands in Rose’s case and not a smaller one like Slash is managing, he managed to go back and forth and put effort into both of them.
