Angus Young called an AC/DC bandmate ‘irreplaceable’ in a new BBC Radio interview. Angus Young Breaks Silence On AC/DC ‘Retirement.’
The interviewer asked, “When you released ‘Back in Black’ [in 1980], could you have in your wildest dreams imagined that it would go on to sell in excess of 50 million copies, and currently be the third biggest-selling album in music history?”
“No. At the time, for us, it was coming off a hard thing because we’d lost Bon [Scot, vocals], and it was like, ‘Do we continue?’ And so I suppose in a little way that album was probably… We didn’t know how it would be received because we had a new frontman, which was Brian Johnson singing.
“And so we really didn’t know if it would be accepted because it’s a hard thing as they say for anyone to come back after losing somebody. Bon was a unique character, irreplaceable, and it’s very hard to envision in your head how the fan base you’ve built up will accept having a new frontman there.
“It took a while actually when it came out, it got bigger and it got bigger that album. And we really didn’t realize how big it got, I even remember even touring the US, we were doing shows, and it was really after that tour that somebody said to us, ‘You’ve sold a million and a half of your album.’
“And I went, ‘Well, that’s really good!’ I thought it was great, and then he said, ‘No, you don’t understand, that’s just in Los Angeles. You’ve still got the rest of the country to come in.’
“It was a shock to me because everyone had said to us for a rock album, it’s pretty hard to sell. If you sell a couple of million, you’re doing well. If you sell a million you’re doing well! To sell in that much at that time was a shock.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
