AC/DC Star Opted Out Of Retirement To Make Album With Malcolm In Mind

Keavin Wiggins | 01-28-2021

AC/DC bassist Cliff Williams had said that he was going to retire from the band after the Rock Or Bust Tour, but he explains in a new interview why he decided to return to the group for their new album "Power Up."

Bass Player magazine's Joel McIver joked with Cliff in the interview that fans thought they had seen the last of him and Williams responded, "I thought I'd seen the last of me too.

"Look, I spoke to Angus on the 'Rock Or Bust' tour, I said that I felt that I was done. It was my time, I guess. Phil [Rudd] had done the recording and then never did come on the road with us.

"He had his issues, and that's that, you know, so we had Chris Slade come in to replace Phil. And then, of course, we had that terrible thing with Brian. He really needed to stop, so Axl came in and did a bang-up job - God bless him - and got us through to the end of it."

He went on to explain that he returned in part to help pay tribute to late rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young. "As Angus said, you can't have a tour called 'Rock Or Bust' and [then go] bust, so we wanted to finish it, which we did.

"And then that was it. We all went home and I was pretty much done. But Angus and Sony reached out a couple of years ago, asking if we would have any interest in getting together to do an album with Malcolm in mind."