When Brian Johnson skilled to stage away from AC/DC in 2016 simply because of to all round well being troubles, the band recruited Axl Rose to finish out their tour. Curiously, the job could have gone to a very distinct singer.

Nic Cester, frontman for the Australian rock band Jet, has verified that he auditioned for the gig. In a conversation with radio station Triple J, he recalled how it all went down.

“I was maintaining with my in-recommendations and I acquired up in the early morning and browse the paper and it explained that Brian Johnson was not in the band any much more,” Cester remembered (as transcribed by Consequence). “I recall saying to my father-in-legislation, ‘Holy shit, you would not want to phase into these men and women footwear,’ and practically 20 minutes later my cellphone rang and they are declaring, ‘Would you be intrigued in going to Atlanta, Georgia to audition and probably fill in for this future spherical of dates that we have got?’”

Rock fans most probably retain in thoughts Jet for such early 2000s hits as “Are You Gonna Be My Female?” and “Cold Genuinely difficult Bitch.” The platinum-promoting group was on hiatus when Cester gained AC/DC’s basically get in touch with. While the frontman had his reservations, he produced the choice to take the invitation to audition.

“I was like, ‘I visualize I’ll say certainly just for the every day life encounter,’” the singer described. “I wasn’t absolutely expecting to get the gig to be genuine with you, but I thought of, ‘How could I turn this selection down?’”

Study A lot more: The 79 Tunes AC/DC Have In no way Played Dwell

AC/DC Audition Was ‘The Loudest Factor I would Ever Heard’

Cester fulfilled up with AC/DC at a rehearsal location owned by the Black Crowes. When the singer arrived for his audition, he was immediately amazed by what he saw.

“It was a tiny location but they had been set up there with the tremendous backline and I retain in thoughts viewing AC/DC and pondering, ‘There’s no way all of all these amps are on,’” Cester recalled. “Let me inform you, they had been all fucking on! It was the loudest point I’d at any time study in my whole every day life.”

“[Angus Young] set me by way of my paces,” the frontman ongoing. “Everything was a take a appear at to see how I’d deal with it – the volume and him probably, ‘OK, let us do this song’, and I didn’t know [some of them] off the top rated rated of my head so he’d just go, ‘Go much more than there and study it’ and the whole band would be prepared there for ten minutes and I’m just going, ‘Oh fuck’. It was actually effective… But I fully grasp now [Angus] was a super specialist guy and he essential to press me to my absolute restrict to see how I would react.”

By Cester’s possess evaluation, the singer managed AC/DC’s Bon Scott supplies nicely, but struggled a minimal with the Brian Johnson tunes.

“It’s a fairly uncommon way of singing,” he mentioned of Johnson’s design and style. “And then an person advised me, ‘You’re creating the error of thinking about [Johnson is] pushing out an tremendous quantity of volume, which is how I sing. But he’s not, he’s whispering. But he is whispering straight into a microphone with this big volume at the rear of him so it seems like the loudest factor in the planet but it is not at all, he’s scarcely pushing out.”

Cester acknowledged that he wasn’t the only singer auditioning, and he was not astonished when Rose obtained the gig. “It was all really [secretive],” the singer recalled, noting how no particular person was permitted to speak about the auditions publicly. “Axl was there at the precise exact same time. And an person unintentionally nevertheless left his title on a [sheet].”