AC/DC’s Brian Johnson Will Appear on Jim Breuer’s Album
AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson recorded vocals for a song on Jim Breuer’s upcoming rock album, the comedian giddily revealed during an interview on SiriusXM’s Opie and Jim Norton Show.
Breuer delivered his dead-on impression of Johnson throughout the story, relaying his grumblings about drummer Phil Rudd — who recently pleaded guilty to drug charges and threatening to kill a former assistant — and casual, masterful recording process.
At their initial meeting, Breuer recalled playing the rocker a handful of tracks from the album before the producer presented the song he’d been slaving over for months in anticipation: “Brian turns on the music for like three seconds, says, ‘What’s the lyrics?’ He shows the lyrics and [Johnson] goes, ‘Eh! Bread and butter! See ya tomorrow.'”
When Johnson and Breuer reconvened in the studio, instead of going into an isolated booth to record, Johnson set up in the room with the mixing board and just a microphone. “‘I don’t want no headphones — that’s fucking cheating!”‘ Breuer, as Johnson, said. “‘I’ll just stand here with a mic like I’m onstage.'”
Breuer’s impression of Johnson did ultimately cause some confusion. Before Johnson came into the studio, Breuer said he recorded the entire song himself (the pair will trade lead vocals on the final version) in order to give Johnson a sense of the song. But as Breuer admitted, while he’s great at impressions — he quickly rattled off his Ozzy Osbourne and James Hetfield — he doesn’t know his own voice.
“So what the producer would do, ‘Breuer, you need to hit this note’ — he would go in and sing it, I’d listen and copy,” Breuer said. “So that’s what we did for Brian. And he comes in, he’s listening over and at one point it was me, him, the producer and one other guy, and we’re listening to the feedback and none of us knew who was doing it!”
This isn’t the first time Breuer and Johnson have collaborated: When the rocker appeared on Breuer Unleashed (the old name of his SiriusXM show Fridays with Jim Breuer) the comedian and his band prepped a cover of AC/DC‘s “Rock N’ Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.” Johnson gladly assisted on the vocals, and in return Breuer later joined him onstage for a performance of his AC/DC hokey-pokey bit.