AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson has recalled how he and the late Malcolm Young embarked on a Brian Johnson Malcolm Young Loch Ness monster hunt, wading into a freezing Scottish loch in their shoes, armed with fireworks and a drink, during a road trip through Scotland with their wives.
Johnson told the story in a 2020 interview with NME, painting a picture of two bandmates at the absolute peak of a very particular kind of ambition. The kind that arrives around midnight, somewhere between the third and fourth drink, and seems completely watertight until the mud dries on your trousers the next morning.
Land Rovers, fireworks and four sheets to the wind
The trip itself sounds like a proper adventure. Johnson recalled that he and Young had both taken their Land Rovers on a tour of Scotland with their respective wives, during an unspecified period of downtime from the band. Malcolm, Johnson noted, had brought a large box of fireworks with him, because of course he had.
‘We both had these Land Rovers and we’d taken them for a trip around Scotland, Malcolm loved his fireworks and he’d taken a big box with him,’ Johnson remembered. ‘One night, we were four sheets to the wind and staying at this hotel right on the side of the loch. Mal just said, “C’mon, let’s go and find the Loch Ness monster! I’ve got fireworks and it might attract it!”‘
The logic, in the cold light of day, is questionable. In the warm glow of a lochside hotel bar at an unspecified late hour, it was apparently airtight. The two of them headed straight for the water.
‘There we were, going straight into the water in our shoes, up to our knees, and it was freezing!’ Johnson continued. ‘Mal had a drink in one hand, a box of fireworks in the other, and was trying to set fire to the loch. We were just howling. By the time we got back to our wives we had straw in our hair and were covered in mud. What a night!’
No Nessie appeared. The Brian Johnson Malcolm Young Loch Ness mission ended, as these things tend to, in sodden shoes, inexplicable straw, and the kind of laughter that probably woke at least one other hotel guest.
The song that never was, and the one that did exist
AC/DC have form for turning life’s more chaotic incidents into records. Whole Lotta Rosie and Bedlam In Belgium both drew from real events. The loch, however, did not make the cut. No track exists commemorating Young’s fireworks-based cryptozoology. Given that the man reportedly tried to set fire to a Scottish loch at midnight, that feels like a missed opportunity of some magnitude.
Judas Priest, who shared touring history with AC/DC, did pick up the baton. Their track Lochness goes fully epic on the subject, with Rob Halford delivering lines like ‘A beastly head of onyx, with eyes set coals of fire. It’s leathered hide glides glistening, ascends the heathered briar.’ The chorus pushes further: ‘Lochness confess your terror of the deep. Lochness distress malingers what you keep. Lochness protects monstrosity. Lochness confess to me.’
Heavy metal, it turns out, has always taken the Brian Johnson Malcolm Young Loch Ness question more seriously than mainstream cryptozoology ever managed. Johnson’s anecdote only confirms that the real tragedy is not that Nessie remains elusive, but that nobody recorded what Young’s fireworks actually sounded like bouncing off a Scottish loch at midnight. That, genuinely, could have been something.
The NME interview in which Johnson shared the story was published in 2020, and remains one of the more vivid windows into the friendship at the heart of AC/DC during their peak years on the road.
