Quick Take
- Narration: Brian Johnson narrating his own memoir is the only sensible choice and the book’s single greatest asset. His Geordie working-class voice is entirely the point.
- Themes: Working-class persistence, the improbability of stardom, friendship as the ground beneath ambition
- Mood: Warm, funny, occasionally astonishing in its specificity about hardship
- Verdict: One of the most genuinely enjoyable rock memoirs available precisely because it refuses to be a rock memoir, centering instead on the many ordinary lives Brian Johnson lived before the extraordinary one found him.
I started listening to The Lives of Brian on a Sunday morning, intending to get through an hour or so before doing other things. I did not do the other things. The problem, if that is even the right word, is that Brian Johnson narrating his own life is like having someone tell you extraordinary stories while being completely convinced they are ordinary ones, and that combination is nearly impossible to walk away from.
The title is the key to the book’s approach. Johnson is not primarily interested in his life as the voice of AC/DC, the man who recorded Back in Black three months after joining the band following Bon Scott’s death at thirty-three. He is interested in all the lives he lived before that one. The WWII veteran father and the Italian mother in working-class Newcastle. The church choir. The glam rock years with Geordie. The period of disbanding in 1976 and returning to a blue-collar life because music had not worked out. And then, with no warning, the call that changed everything.
Our Take on The Lives of Brian
The memoir’s greatest achievement is that Johnson is a genuinely talented writer with a voice, both on the page and through the speakers, that is entirely his own. One reviewer described it as a normal dude telling his story, which is accurate and also undersells what Johnson accomplishes. He is a working-class man from a town defined by steel and industry describing a childhood that sounds, to an American listener, almost impossible to imagine, and he describes it without self-pity and without the retrospective glamorization that rock memoirs tend toward. The backyard toilets, the absence of hot water, the several siblings to a bed: he presents these as facts of the world he grew up in rather than evidence of his resilience.
The narration itself is irreplaceable. Johnson’s Geordie accent and his way of building a story, the pauses, the digressions, the catch phrases that one reviewer noted are recognizably his own from his spoken manner, make this one of those audiobooks that genuinely cannot be separated from the person reading it. You are not getting the book plus a performance. You are getting the book as performance, which is exactly right for a memoir about a man who turned his voice into one of the most recognizable sounds in rock history.
Why Listen to The Lives of Brian
The Back in Black section of the book, covering Bon Scott’s death, the audition, the three-month sprint to record one of the best-selling albums of all time, and the year-long world tour that followed, is handled with the awe it deserves. Johnson does not sentimentalize Bon Scott’s death or pretend the circumstances of his own entry into the band were uncomplicated. He acknowledges the strangeness of it, the grief in the room alongside the work, and the speed with which everything happened. Within days of auditioning, he was in a studio with Angus and Malcolm Young. Within three months, an album existed. Within a year, he was someone whose name meant something.
But the book does not rush to get there, and that restraint is what makes the arrival matter. By the time Back in Black comes into the story, you have spent hours with the person who made it, understanding what he came from and why the work represented something specific to him rather than simply the next thing that happened. One reviewer described it as by far their favorite rock autobiography, and the reason is that it is not really a rock autobiography. It is a book about what happens before, and about the kind of person who survives the before long enough to get to the after.
What to Watch For in The Lives of Brian
AC/DC fans looking for extensive behind-the-scenes material about the band’s history, the inner workings of the Young brothers’ creative process, or the specifics of touring across decades will find less of that here than they might expect. One reviewer noted that the book is more about Johnson’s life growing up than about AC/DC, and offered this as a mild criticism. It is worth knowing as a descriptor. The band appears primarily at the end, and even there, the emphasis is on Johnson’s experience of the transformation rather than an account of AC/DC as an organization.
The memoir also does not address Johnson’s hearing loss, which led to his temporary departure from AC/DC in 2016, or the subsequent years. This is a memoir up to a particular point in his life, not a complete accounting. Listeners looking for that later material will need to look elsewhere.
Who Should Listen to The Lives of Brian
AC/DC fans who want to understand who Brian Johnson actually is, as distinct from the persona of the man in the flat cap screaming his way through stadium shows, will find this the most complete portrait available. Music memoir readers who appreciate working-class history and the contingency of success, the sense of how easily any of this might not have happened, will find the book rewards their time. The memoir works for general readers who simply enjoy a beautifully told personal story delivered by someone who knows how to tell one.
Listeners who need the memoir to be primarily about the music, the songwriting process, the tour dynamics, the internal band relationships, should know they will get occasional glimpses of those things within a much larger story about a life that existed mostly outside them.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of The Lives of Brian actually covers the AC/DC years versus Johnson’s earlier life?
The majority of the book covers Johnson’s pre-AC/DC years: his Newcastle childhood, the Geordie band era, and the blue-collar period after Geordie disbanded. AC/DC enters the story in the book’s final section. Readers expecting an AC/DC band history will need to adjust their expectations.
Is Brian Johnson’s narration of his own memoir accessible to listeners unfamiliar with his voice or Newcastle English?
Yes. His Geordie accent is present throughout but his storytelling is clear and unhurried. Listeners who have never heard him speak may need a few minutes to settle into the accent, but it is not a barrier to comprehension and it adds significant character to the listening experience.
Does the memoir address the circumstances of Bon Scott’s death and what it was like to step into that role?
Yes, with candor and without sensationalism. Johnson acknowledges the grief in the room and the strange speed of the transition. He does not treat Bon Scott’s death as simply a door opening for him, and the sensitivity with which he handles that section is one of the memoir’s stronger passages.
Does the audiobook address Johnson’s hearing loss and departure from AC/DC in 2016?
No. The memoir covers his life up to the early AC/DC years and does not extend into the later period of his hearing treatment, return to the band, or subsequent touring. Listeners interested in that chapter of his story will need to look at other sources.
