AC/DC goes ballet

From The Sunday Times' Maurice Chittenden
September 2, 2003

IT is less head-banger, more Nutcracker. Brian Johnson, the gravel-voiced singer with hard rock group AC/DC, has composed an orchestral piece of music that is being developed for the stage as both a ballet and a West End musical.

The Tyneside-born Johnson, 55, who credits his talent for screaming out rock lyrics to his army sergeant-major father, began writing Helen of Troy as a distraction from performing such heavy-metal anthems as Given the Dog a Bone and Rock'n'Roll Ain't Noise Pollution.

The singer, famous for never removing his cap in public, says he got the idea while watching a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats.

"One day I was sitting through a boring musical and thought: 'I can do better than this.' I thumbed through the program and there was an advertisement for a bank with gold coins tumbling out of a wooden horse.

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