Posted on: June 4, 2011 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Those looking for unpublished secrets about AC/DC or even just a basic backgrounder about Australia’s loudest export are bound to be let down if that’s their sole reason for picking up Rocker’s and Rollers. Yes, Johnson is the front man of the phenomenal successful hard rock band and you know he has a slew of backstage stories that would make Motley Crue’s Dirt read like a Judy Blume book in comparison, but he devotes about 90 percent of this memoir to his real love: cars.

And even if you’re not a gear head (god knows I’m not. I rock a minivan for Christ’s sake), there is something about the way Johnson tells a story that makes even his description of a Volvo sound fascinating. That and his incredibly creative metaphors are worth the price of the book (“clean as a catwalk model’s bum;” “My arse was going like a squirrel eating nuts;” “She had a laugh like a hyena getting its balls chewed off by a not-very-hungry lion”).

He does manage to sneak in a few stories about band mates (mostly talking about the cars they drove), but there is a particularly revealing story about playing a show that was being protested by the PMRC and a number of religious nuts.

So the book is a little bait and switch, but just give it a couple of chapters and you’ll realize it was well worth the ruse.

Rockers and Rollers: A Full-Throttle Memoir by Brian Johnson/224 pages/hardcover/It! Books

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