AC/DC Members Discuss The Making Of 'Black Ice'

AC/DC members Angus Young (guitar) and Brian Johnson (vocals) recently spoke to UK's The Sun about the band's forthcoming album, "Black Ice", due out October 20. "It had to be representative of how we are," Angus says of the new CD. "We had other songs but they weren't right. Every one of the 15 tracks on 'Black Ice', you will say, 'That is AC/DC.'"

For "Black Ice" they teamed up with producer and fan Brendan O'Brien, who said "I'd missed AC/DC and wanted the same band back."

Angus adds: "I was impressed by him because he is a musician first and has great production skills. We told him to be brutal. Critics can shoot us full of arrows but I don't worry about it. When we started, we never had great reviews. I can show you some of them, they were never pretty. We were called colonial hicks, the Chunder From Down Under, and told we should be on the first boat home."

Brian credits working with Brendan as an important factor in the making of the album. He says: "Brendan was fantastic. We hadn't met him before so there's a little awkwardness when you first get in the studio with a new guy because he's butting into your little gang. But, by Christ, after five minutes with this guy we could see how wonderful he was. He would never call you by your first name but by both names. He goes (puts on an American accent),'Brian Johnson — are you ready to sing?' Well, yeah, sure I am Brendan. He goes, 'OK, let's go down there, see what you got, big boy.' Then looking at me, he said, 'Brian Johnson, you don't like singing in studios do ya?' and I said, 'No, I frickin' hate it'. He said, 'What's wrong?' I said, 'It's the buttons, it's the microphone hanging down, it's the headphones and then it's the 123 and sing.' So, he said, 'Just give me a night to think about it.' The next day, I come in and he said, 'OK, this is the room you're gonna sing in'. I went, 'But this is the office behind the reception desk in the studio.' He said, 'Yeah, well you said you didn't like to be alone.' And so he put a couple of speakers and a little mixing desk in there and gave me this huge microphone, this big old Shure 56, which weighed about seven pounds and he said, 'OK, let's rock.' He played the backing track the boys had done the night before and I started singing...and the receptionist resigned immediately. The receptionist, the poor little girl, she got the shock of her life and she had a German Shepherd dog which started howling. I don't know if he was joining in or he was protesting about the whole thing."

Read more from The Sun.