Founding member and main songwriter Malcolm Young had been lost a year earlier to dementia, and long-serving drummer Phil Rudd was being kept at home by the New Zealand constabulary, and that seemed a good time to end. Tragic selection ... Axl Rose is the new AC/DC lead singer. Credit:Getty Images But Malcolm's brother, Angus, and long-time singer, Brian Johnson, were still at the core of the band, there was one last album and maybe those rhythm guitar parts and four-square riffs of Malcolm's could be repeated, on stage at least, in this case by his nephew. It felt a little wrong, but there was such a core of affection for the group that few were likely to begrudge them that last gesture. But when Johnson was told by his doctors to quit or go deaf, ending his 36 years as the "new" singer who had replaced the iconic Bon Scott and helped turn the band into one of the behemoths of rock, everyone expected – everyone knew – this meant AC/DC had reached a natural end. Then the stories appeared that maybe a stand-in singer would help finish the tour. Contractual obligation? Surely not. An inability to say enough is enough? Maybe, but even if that were so, who could they draft who wouldn't be a weak alternative or a feeble joke?

Go the INXS route with one-time-singers-for-hire Terence Trent D'Arby​ or Jon Stevens? Stevens, after all, could complete his set of signature Australian bands as a stand-in with this and Powderfinger. And maybe Chantoozies. This does not compute – Angus Young and Axl Rose John Farnham? Well it sorta worked with Little River Band. Even Dave Evans, who has made a semi-living out of being the bloke no one remembers being the frontman in AC/DC before Scott, but will talk to you endlessly about the band he hasn't known for 40 years, popped up, inevitably, to offer his services. OK, that was actually laughable, especially the people who took his calls and wrote up his offer. That Axl Rose, of Guns N' Roses, came out of nowhere as an option interested the more excitable in the world of "celebrity journalism", but no one who took this business seriously thought AC/DC would sink that low. The guy had destroyed his own band of reprobates, had become a byword for unfulfilled promises, bad clothing choices and far worse use of a bandanna than Peter FitzSimons. No way would they do that. Singer Brian Johnson had to step down from AC/DC due to hearing loss. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Well, weren't we idiots? No way? Yes way. Now that AC/DC – who coolly brushed aside Johnson's near-four decades with a thank-you for "his contribution and dedication to the band" – have said Rose "has kindly offered his support to help us fulfil this commitment" on their current tour, there is no going back. And that is a tragedy. Of course, that's over the top: a tragedy. It's a bunch of guys plugging in and playing loud. So what? Well, firstly AC/DC aren't just a band. They're an investment of dedication and idealism for themselves and two or three generations of fans, representing a series of standards, good and bad. They do things simply. They do things repetitively. They do things the same way they've always done them and they do it without fuss. They respect each other and they respect the fans. They haven't written a different song in nearly 40 years and I long ago grew tired of hearing them, but they never wavered from what they set themselves to do.

None of those things have ever been associated with Axl Rose. Whatever you think of Guns N' Roses – and I think they were, and will be again, a severely limited bit of rock's afterthoughts with, at best, five good songs and several of those "good" because they're almost comically cliched – you would never confuse their standards and their performance with AC/DC. It says something to your fans when the person you choose to stand in is, in many ways, anathema to what you say you believe in and what your fans have come to believe in. And that's the other reason why this wrong-headed decision is a "tragedy". Because they won't just remodel a band, they will remake what it stands for. AC/DC with Axl Rose is comic without a laugh, stupid without the clarity of simplicity, and crass without even a single entendre. If this is to be their last gesture, the last memory many thousands will have of them, it will be one long insult.