Photo: CBS ENTERTAINMENT
Justin Hawkins was a big part of the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert over the weekend. The Darkness singer took on vocal duties during both the Coattails' and Wolfgang Van Halen's sets and sang Freddie Mercury's part on "Under Pressure" during Queen's set, but his most talked about appearance was during AC/DC's set, when Justin seemingly grabbed the mic from Brian Johnson and started singing "Back In Black."
The stunt caused some backlash, with Twitter users accusing Justin of "stealing the mic" from the AC/DC frontman. But he set the record straight with a lengthy explanation of what happened.
"10 minutes before the AC/DC segment of the tribute, Brian Johnson asked me to come up and sing the second verse of Back In Black. I initially refused, I’ve never sung it before and I didn’t want it to seem like I was gatecrashing. However, Brian really was insistent and Dave Grohl told me that ‘if Brian tells you to do something, you f**king do it,’" Justin wrote.
"I had Rufus pull up the lyrics on his phone and I gave it a go, but in all honestly I think Brian just wanted to create a memorable spontaneous moment and have a laugh so he could really push on and smash the rest of his set. The stage manager scrambled to prepare the microphone for me, but I didn’t know which one I was supposed to take and I ended up having to steal Brian’s, which looked a bit awkward," he continued. "Brian Johnson is an absolute legend and Dave was right, I couldn’t turn it down."
See Justin Hawkins' full statement below.
Warning: Explicit language