JUST NOW: Cliff Williams announces his leaving the music industry due to….

Rock and roll comedian Dean Delray, a huge AC/DC fan who has covered the legendary rock act’s songs with a tribute band and who has interviewed members of AC/DC in the past, says that bassist Cliff Williams will not tour with AC/DC later this year.

Cliff announced his retirement at the end of AC/DC’s 2015-2016 “Rock Or Bust” tour, which also saw vocalist Brian Johnson leaving because of hearing problems (he was replaced for the last 22 shows by GUNS N’ ROSES singer Axl Rose). However, Williams — and Johnson — took part in the recording sessions that resulted in AC/DC’s 2020 album “Power Up”. Both of them were also part of the AC/DC lineup that performed at the band’s first concert in more than seven years, which took place last October at the Power Trip festival in Indio, California.

Earlier today (Saturday, January 27),Delray took to his social media to write: “Ok last night I heard from a very reliable source that AC/DC will be touring with a new Bass Player this year. I’m not gonna say who it is I’ll let AC/DC make that announcement but I will say this, 3 year ago I had Cliff Williams on my podcast and he straight up said he would not be touring again and I was surprised that the fans didn’t seem to pick up on that.”

Dean added: “I just want take this time to thank Cliff for absolutely rocking us on the Bass for over 40 years. An absolute killer of Groove. I love you brother”.

During the aforementioned October 2020 interview with Delray’s “Let There Be Talk” podcast, Cliff was asked if Johnson’s departure from the road was what led to his desire to stop touring. Cliff responded: “It was before then. I spoke to Angus [Young, AC/DC guitarist] about it initially. I was at a point — and this is at the beginning of the ‘Rock Or Bust’ tour — that I just felt, for me, it was time to hang it up. I knew that I didn’t wanna keep doing these two-year tours, and I didn’t wanna hold them back, so I made them aware of the fact that this was gonna be my last go-round. It was a tough tour to finish. God bless Axl for coming in and helping us out, finish it up. He did a great job. And at the end of that, I was definitely — that was it for me. Done — just done. That compounded the whole thing.”

According to Williams, he wanted to take part in the recording sessions for “Power Up” as a tribute to Angus’s late brother, founding AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, who died in 2017 from effects of dementia at age 64. Malcolm is credited as a writer on all 12 tracks on “Power Up”.

“If ‘Back In Black’ has [late AC/DC singer] Bon Scott all over it, for me, ‘Power Up’ has got Malcolm Young,” Cliff said. “This is for him. And it’s the band that we played together with for 40-plus years. And I wanted to do that — I wanted to come back and do that.

“We did some rehearsals earlier [in 2020] before this darn COVID thing popped up, and we had great rehearsals,” he continued. “The band was playing really well. So [they asked me], ‘Do you wanna do a few shows? ‘Sure’. A few shows. We were planning on doing that. Everyone goes home to their respective homes, and bang, we’ve been here ever since [because of the coronavirus-related shutdown].”