15 November 2020
Newsdesk
AC/DC singer Brian Johnson believes the “magical” medical treatment he’s been receiving has saved his hearing.
The 73-year-old rocker was ordered to stop performing live four years ago or end up going completely deaf but after undergoing an undisclosed “brand new” course of treatment, he’s back with the band, who have just released new album ‘Power Up’, and he’s hopeful that the sense has been restored.
He said: "It's non-disclosure stuff because it's brand new. What I can tell you is I worked for three years with this lovely old fellas and thankfully it worked, I think.
"It took a while. But it was just magical. It could have been smoke and mirrors, but it wasn't, it was the real deal.
"So we'll go forward with him. I'm still working with him. And I've got my fingers crossed.”
The ‘Shoot To Thrill’ singer recalled how he felt he was “letting the band down” when his hearing first started to deteriorate and he worried about becoming a “dead weight” to the group.
He said: “At the time it was horrible. I really felt I was letting the band down on stage. Because I couldn't hear the tone of the guitars, I couldn't get my pitch or key. You felt helpless.
“And of course, the band's being let down, the fans are being let down ... It's just not fair. I never wanted to be dead weight."
But the rest of the group didn’t want to put any pressure on Brian.
Bandmate Angus Young said: "Brian got a lot of advice from the medical side and they were pretty much saying, 'If you continue, you're going to go stone deaf,’ so that’s also part of it. We didn’t want that.”
Brian added: “That's what Angus and Cliff said, 'We do not want to be responsible for anything that happens to you. We would feel awful forever."
And the singer admitted he thought his career was over when he first stepped away from the band, prompting him to hit the bottle.
Asked if he thought his career had come to an end, he said: "Initially yeah. And of course it's a difficult time for anybody who has to stop doing what they love. That's not easy. But you do it.
“You've got to man up and just shut your mouth and don't talk to anybody, which I didn't, and just ride it out.
"In my case, I buried my head in a bottle of whisky for the first month. It was quite numbing.
“And I'm not on social media, so I don't read anything, I don't watch anything. I've never been on it and I've stuck off it.
"And I've found that I'm quite a sensible, rounded man who can take things on the chin."
