As a sometime AC/DC fan, I have enjoyed both versions of the band. The Bon Scott version until 1980 and then the Brian Johnson version to date. Somehow, the band survived and even flourished with Johnson as lead vocalist, but now he has left the band because of increasing deafness (like so many of the fans, then) he has been replaced by…er…Axl Rose. Now pardon me for being a bit pernickety, but old Axl is more well known for being the frontman of Guns N’Roses, not AC/DC. Can this really work?
I always think that with a band, there are key components, irreplaceable members. For example, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will always be Beatles, but in the unlikely event they went out on the road, they would not be the Beatles. However, the Rolling Stones have played as the Stones because Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts have survived the departures of Brian Jones and Bill Wyman with relative ease. We just know they are the Stones. The Who, less so in my opinion, without Entwistle and Moon, but they more than get away with it thanks to the enduring talents of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. Sometimes it just doesn’t work at all.
The Undertones still tour without Feargal Sharkey so to me they aren’t the Undertones. The same goes for Big Country without Stuart Adamson and the Beach Boys who these days tour the nostalgia circuit with not a single Wilson and only one original member. (Oddly enough, Simply Red still tour as a band, even though we know it’s Mick Hucknall and some backing musicians because he can’t carry it off with his own name alone.)
Most of these bands tour for one reason: it’s a job. They don’t, in the main, make new music, just run through the old songs, which is fair enough since there is an enormous market for old music. In Bristol, we have a three day festival every year so people can listen to someone who used to be in the Thompson Twins or part of Buck’s Fizz.
AC/DC have been a real band, bringing out new music on a regular basis. Granted there will never be another Highway To Hell, but at least they tried to keep it real, until now.
Axl Rose is there to make up the numbers, a big star who can probably still hit the high notes and still hear what the rest of the band is playing. Fair enough. He will be belting out You Shook Me All Night Long like the best of them but it won’t be AC/DC: it will be a business arrangement to ensure that the band’s lucrative world tour can go ahead and nothing more. I do not expect Rose to stick around for long afterwards because he has another date soon with the rock and roll nostalgia trip Guns N’Roses who are, themselves, getting back together, presumably because of the music, nothing else. Yeah, right.
With Axl replacing Johnson, perhaps Motorhead could make a comeback with, say, Les McKeown on lead vocals. Stranger things have happened, but not many.
It’s fair enough, I reckon, to replace dead members of bands, provided at least a semblance of the original line up remains, as with Led Zeppelin and you can get away with carrying on without a number of the originals, like the Eagles did, but when a main man has gone, like Glenn Frey, that’s got to be it.
AC/DC without Scott and with Johnson was still pretty good, but if you ask me AC/DC with Axl Rose is simply extracting the urine and if I had a ticket I’d be asking for my money back.
