The Starship Hit AC/DC’s Brian Johnson Couldn’t Stand Hearing

Besides Woodstock, ageing rockers still performing on stage, and some of Joni Mitchell’s songs, there are plenty of things Grace Slick hasn’t been a fan of. You see, Slick has never been one to shy away from conflict or disputes with others, and it is probably safe to say that she doesn’t care about pissing people off.

So, when someone else criticizes a song by Grace Slick and Starship, it’s a bit fun to see how the tables get turned every once in a while. As it turns out, there was a Starship hit that AC/DC’s Brian Johnson hated so much that the song made him want to puke whenever he got unlucky enough to hear it.

Brian was also quite generous with his criticism and hatred of the song, and well, his comments might have pissed Grace off a bit, but like we just stated, Slick probably wouldn’t care and laugh off Johnson’s slagging. So, without further ado, let’s get into which Starship song Brian Johnson hated to his guts and why.

So, Brian was chatting with Westword in 2008, and the frontman discussed his recruitment to AC/DC, the effect of fame and excessive wealth, and what it was like to front a cult rock band. You know, the usual stuff you can ask your average rocker. However, Johnson had some confessions to make when the host asked if any record executives had ever asked AC/DC to change their sound or cover a popular song of the period.

“Yeah, back in the mid-’80s, when there were horrible things like ‘We built this city on rock and roll,’” said the AC/DC frontman as he targeted Starship’s ‘We Built This City.’ He continued, “That still makes me puke to this day. But anyway, we had a visit from one of the big boys who said, ‘Maybe ya should think about changin’ the image.’”

Then, the label named a few other rockers as examples since they wished that AC/DC would change their usual image and rebrand. Johnson recalled, “And we looked at this guy and said, ‘What do ya know about image?’ And he said, ‘We got this band and that band.’ Like that English band had a guy named Rob as the singer. Baldin’ guy…”

Brian couldn’t recall which bald guy named Rob fronted an English band, so the host was generous enough to remind him that it might be Judas Priest. Still, it was pretty funny to hear that people had asked AC/DC to rebrand themselves and cover some hot hits of the period like ‘We Built This City,’ and Johnson still hated the song even decades after its initial release.

However, we should also tell you that the frontman’s statements probably did not piss off our one and only Grace Slick since the singer also wasn’t much of a fan of ‘We Built This City’ and had similar feelings with Brian about it. The frontwoman had even once said that she wanted to puke whenever she had to perform the song.