Don’t believe the hype: Angus Young has quashed the rumours, revealing that Axl Rose never recorded music with AC/DC. 

In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, the legendary rock band’s lead guitarist Young paid tribute to his Guns N’ Roses counterpart Rose for covering for Brian Johnson when he was forced to quit touring with AC/DC as a result of his hearing. Rose joined the lineup for some spots on the Rock or Bust tour in 2016. Johnson was fortunately able to return to the band in 2018.

“Sometimes when you’re in the thick of something, it is hard to make decisions,” said Young, “but you try and go, ‘Well, I’ll try and do the best with a bad situation.’ And when Brian got his hearing problem, he was advised he shouldn’t be continuing (touring). We had a few commitments that we were locked into and I didn’t want to sit in a room full of lawyers and battle (cancellations) out with a lot of people.

So the suggestion was, ‘OK, maybe somebody might be able to fill in and do those dates.’ And Axl Rose contacted us. I’ll be forever grateful for him for doing that. He was very pro about doing it. He really gave a great performance.”

The bad news is that Young revealed later that Rose never recorded any new music with the Australian icons, despite some whispers about a collaboration. “No, no. That never happened,” Young stated.

“Nothing really came out solid,” the guitarist continued. “I know that he (Axl) has a lot of things he’s involved in. I don’t even know if you would say it was music.”

Young also didn’t shy away from calling the period of Johnson’s departure and Rose’s arrival as “a trainwreck.”

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“We were just trying to inform people of what we knew, and we didn’t want to put anyone under an illusion,” he said. “To be honest with you, Cliff (Williams, ’DC bassist) and I thought, ‘Well, at least we can end what we had signed on to do.’ I get it that a lot of people would be looking at something like this as a train wreck (laughs).”

Check out ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC featuring Axl Rose:

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