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The Best of Brian
What is it in Geordie that pulls out an alternate, more clean sounding voice from Brian Johnson?? Or is it just that with AC/DC's raw sounding rock that Brian's voice gets distorted... Because I think that when he's with Geordie, he's an absolutely different singer. Anyone got an idea??
It could be that when he's singing with AC/DC, he's just going more "all out" than he did with Geordie. Just listen to how he sounds live in the early 80s compared to the studio recordings from the same era.
I hear it in the styles of each band. Brian has to go all out (and it works perfectly) with AC/DC to match the guitars. Geordie works, but it lacks energy a bit.
Yeah.... It would be awesome if he could go all out with Geordie and vice versa with AC/DC, even if it wasn't as good just to see how it would work out. And it would sound good anyways with him.
I think Brian probably pushed himself a bit too hard in the 80s playing all of those live shows. If you listen to bootlegs from between 1981 and 1984 (after Brian had gotten over his stage fright), everything he sings comes across as an unrelenting scream. Sometime around 84-85 his voice begins to crack and break into a growl, which the Youngs tried to cover up in production with loads of reverb and other production hackery on what amounted to probably what could have been their best 80s album barring Back in Black. Luckily, they reacquainted themselves with competent producers again (even Vanda and Young) and these producers have been taking advantage of Johnson's waning dynamic range and growing growl so that he is properly expressive and dynamic on an emotional level (all of Ballbreaker, the spoken intro to SUL, the growls which make up Black Ice). I'd say he has circled around again to sounding more like he did when he was in Geordie (ie - soulful), but he now works his blues growl while before he worked his range. For comparison, listen to Geordie's House of the Rising Sun against RnR Dream.
As a sidenote, I wonder if the Youngs applied the reverb, etc to Brian's voice before or after he recorded the vocal tracks for FOTW. If they added all the effects afterward, there's still hope that they will someday release a proper remaster of the album with Brian's vocals in the raw and upfront. I'm sure that would give the album a major boost when it comes time for a critical reappraisal of AC/DC's 80s output. Maybe if some critics (rather than just the fans who pay their wages and buy every piece of crap the marketers tell us to buy) came out and said, "You know what? FOTW is kind of awesome!" they'd actually begin playing those songs live again.
Just listened to the Fly tracks from "Flies On The Soundboard" and agree with RnRDamnation...Angus and Malcolm may be great guitar players, and can actually produce good instrumental stuff, but vocal producers they ain't. Even though Fly On The Wall, Shake Your Foundations, and Sink The Pink are the only tracks on there, they sound more incredible than the studio versions. Here's the above mentioned tracks for reference (only live, studio version can be found elsewhere): FOTW: http://www.mediafire.com/?m0mhtksf31ldak3 SYF: http://www.mediafire.com/?j5ccq99gyutxc7b STP: http://www.mediafire.com/?4pw8sh2z8dut4vh
The guitarist in Geordie sang sometimes so the really clean vocals you're hearing are probably not Brian.
"The guitarist in Geordie sang sometimes so the really clean vocals you're hearing are probably not Brian." __________________________________________________________ Yes,but also, You can recognize Brian very easily in Geordie,and he did sing extremely clean and very different from his AC/DC style with them. Geordie's cover of House Of The Rising Sun has Brian on lead Vocals,and he sounds incredible.One of his best vocal performances ever,up there with Back In Black. House Of The Rising Sun:
Man, that song rocks... I mean it rocks...there's no other way to describe it.