Jimmy Barnes – The Working Class Man

By Dan Hutton on August 28, 2014 in People

You’re originally from Scotland; how old were you when you first moved to Australia?

I emigrated when I was about four and a half. I came here in the summer of 1961 and I’m 58 now. I moved to Adelaide, came by boat, which was 10 pounds for tourists, and I lived in a place called Elizabeth, which is a satellite city down there where they stuck all the immigrants.

How did Scottish life as a young kid influence your career and your voice?

The Scots are pretty tenacious; they’re pretty boisterous, pretty outgoing and they like a good time. It obviously affected my life. My dad was a boxer and the featherweight champion of Britain, so I’ve got a great set of genes from him and my mum. They both sing well. The other thing about the Scots is when I was young – even when I was about 10 years old – I remember my parents on a Saturday night sat around having a drink and sang. As long as I can remember everybody in the family sang, and from as long as I can remember I’ve been singing.

Where are you living these days?

I’ve got a place in Botany, which is a big warehouse with a recording studio – all the family go and record there. And I’ve also got a place down in the Southern Highlands.

Do you spend your time between Sydney and the Southern Highlands?

Yeah, and I’ve spent the last couple of years living in Bondi as well, but I just find that it gets too hectic. Being in the music business and being constantly surrounded by millions of people – whether it’s fans or punters or bands or whatever – when I get a break I want to go to the country and just sit and hang with my kids, my dogs and my wife, and take it easy for a bit.

How long have you been living around the Eastern Suburbs?

Most of the time I’ve been in Sydney. I moved to Sydney in about 1978/79 and I’ve always been here since, and apart for the odd few months where I lived on the North Shore with my wife Jane when we were young, we’ve been in the Eastern Suburbs most of the time. I think I lived over the bridge for about six months, but that’s about it; the rest of time it’s been here. I know my way around the Eastern Suburbs; I’ve drank and been thrown out of most of the places here.

Is there anything you don’t like about the Eastern Suburbs?

There are a couple of things I don’t like. Old South Head Road and New South Head Road can be bottlenecks. I hate peak hour school time, but I hate that anywhere. I think the Eastern Suburbs has got a lot going on.

Your new album is about to come out celebrating 30 years of Jimmy Barnes as a solo artist; what can your fans expect from the album?

The record company first-off suggested that I have a tribute album, where everybody else does my songs. But I said, “Why would I want my mates to do my songs? If my mates are going to come and play my songs, I want to sing with them.” So basically it’s me with a bunch of pals doing these songs and breathing a bit of new life into them. It’s sort of summing up 30 years on the road. It’s not just about the songs. For 30 years on the road we’ve played to bloody nearly everybody in this country. We’ve lost mates on the road; there’s been a lot of sweat, blood and bloody great times. There have been a lot of tough times out on the road and it’s looking back on all that and drawing that line in the sand, and saying, “That’s work that I’m really proud of and now I can look forwards”. That’s basically what this album is about. It’s about moving forward, but in the process of doing that I’ve done duets with Jon Stevens, Bernard Fanning, The Living End, Stevie Van Zandt, my daughter Mahalia, my son David, Shihad and Diesel. There’s some really great stuff on there. I look back at it and a lot of the songs have come together a lot harder than they were with the original. It’s kicked some new life into these songs; I made them a bit tougher, I think.

Is there any new material on there?

It’s all new material. I’ve recut the songs with these new bands, but they’re old songs. It’s a greatest hits package, but these are new recordings and they sound like new tunes to me. I think the songs sound better than they did in the originals, so people can be the best judge of that, I guess.

Are you taking it out on the road?

Absolutely. It’s the 30th anniversary. We’re going out and doing 30 shows, and we’re going to do 30 songs in the set.

How does your voice hold up these days?

My voice is like a Mack Truck; it’s hard to start but once you get it started, you f**king can’t stop it.

Do you have a routine to warm up and relax the vocal cords?

When I get to a gig, I’m a creature of habit. I get to the show an hour and a half beforehand. I gargle with hot water, honey and apple cider vinegar, and a bit of lemon. It’s an old opera trick. I gargle it, spit it out and then I scream like one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s house guests for an hour. People say I should warm up softer, but I sing hard. I warm up hard so when I go on stage it’s ready to tear. I do that every night and after a half an hour my voice is back. Sometimes I’ve played gigs where I can’t speak, but I can still sing.

When did you first discover that you could basically belt your lungs out?

I joined Cold Chisel when I was 16. Don Walker, the piano player, was the main songwriter and he found that he liked me singing high. Every time he’d write a song, he’d write it a tone higher, so I kept getting higher and higher. He got to the point where he couldn’t write any songs any higher because only dogs would hear it. I would just sing with Cold Chisel and we did eight shows a week. We’d sometimes do three gigs on a Saturday. The voice had to get tough, quick.

Are there any benefits to a couple of bottles of vodka before a show?

I used to think that that was a big help, but whether that was psychological or not, I’m still not sure. It worked for me though.

Has there been any long lasting side-effects from your hard-partying days?

No, just a bad short term memory. I’m surprisingly healthy. One of the things people don’t realise is they see me at shows and see me going hard, but over the years it’s always been fairly balanced. There have been a couple of times where I tipped over the other way, but I’ve done martial arts for years and I have my black belt, I’ve done yoga for years, I go up in the mountains of Thailand and meditate with monks and stuff, and then I go out on the road and go hard. It’s a balanced life. I think if you can keep a good balance, you can sort of keep a handle on things a bit more.

How did Cold Chisel originally form? How did you guys actually meet each other?

When Cold Chisel was getting together, they wanted my brother to go and sing with them. They rang a roadie who worked with him, but he was in this band that was making a shitload of money at the time. Chisel was just a bunch young guys doing no gigs and no songs. He just sort of dismissed it, so the roadie said, “Look, he’s got a young brother,” and they asked me to come and have a go. Mossy (Ian Moss), even at 18 years old, played like he does now. He played like a demon. I walked in, heard him playing and it was just beautiful. Someone played a couple of songs of his that showed a lot of potential and I hadn’t even thought about writing a song at that point in my life. I thought, “Well, this is a big step up from the garage band I’m in; this band is actually taking it pretty seriously.” So I joined the band. It took about 12 months, but suddenly the five of us got together. I got Steve (Prestwich), the drummer, to come and join us; then Phil (Small) joined us and suddenly it was us against the world. We were in the back of a station wagon, driving all over the country and we were taking on the world.

Did you realise pretty quickly that you guys had something special?

Even as a young band we thought we had something really special. We did a lot of gigs; it probably took us two, three, maybe four years before we started playing and the gigs were full, but people were coming back regularly and there were punters who were coming every night. he band just has this chemistry, which was partly built from tension; there really is a lot of aggression in the band, as well as this smooth blues thing we’ve got going on. Every member of the band had his own thing to do. Ian was a beautiful guitar player, Don wrote really great songs, the rhythm section kept them there, and my job was just to make them play loud, hard and fast. I’d jump all over them if they didn’t do it. The chemistry of the band became really apparent. I think people quite liked the band just because they were waiting for it to explode or implode. We couldn’t get signed for years. We used to punch each other up on stage and stuff like that. It was very volatile and that’s what people thought was exciting – just the potential of this band to implode at any moment.

Is there any chance of another reunion tour?

Yeah, last week we spent a week in the studio and cut nine tracks. We’ve got a really great record coming that we’ll probably go out and do. We’re going out to do some big shows and the Clipsal in Adelaide. We’re going to go do some touring around then and we’re making an album mid next year.

Have you ever lost the buzz to perform?

No, not really. I mean, there are times when you’ve done 50 shows in 60 days and you’re absolutely knackered. You wake up in the day and you just go, “I want to take a break,” but then you walk on stage and the vibe of the crowd picks you up again. I’ve never been blasé in front of a crowd. In the old days when we were still building our following, if they didn’t pay attention to me I’d jump on their table and kick their f**king drinks over in their lap. I didn’t let people ignore us.

Your children are all fairly musical; has it just been a case of osmosis from being around music all their lives?

Literally since the day they were born, I’ve had recording studios in my house. They’ve been on the road since the day they were born. Everyone they knew was a musician or in a band or a producers. I remember when they were four and five years old they just thought everybody was in a band. They said, “Why can’t we make a record too, Dad?”

What role does family play in your life these days?

Family’s everything. They’re in the band. While the kids grew up, it was never about leaving them at home. I was always on the road so I’d bring them with me the whole time. I just wanted them with me. It was about the importance of family and the closeness of family. They learnt to support each other; if my kids are messing up, one of their siblings will tell them – one of them will walk up and say, “You’re out of line.” They’re honest and they’re straight up with each other. They’re hard on each other sometimes, but they love each other. Family’s everything.

You partied pretty hard back in the day; do you have any regrets?

No regrets. There’s stuff of course that you think maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but everything I’ve done I’ve learnt from. If I’ve made mistakes, hopefully I’ve learnt enough from them so that it negates the mistake. I think if you sit around dwelling on the past you’re going to drive yourself nuts. I didn’t kill anybody that I know of. I’m happy to move on and hopefully I can learn from the stupid things I’ve done. I could have been a bit straighter, could have been a bit more focused, but I did all right. I managed to get a lot done.

Do you prefer the life of a working class man or a semi-retired rock and roll legend?

I’m a working rock and roll singer who is working class. I remember people used to say, “How can you say you’re working class when you wear a Rolex and drive a Mercedes?” When you grow up as a kid and you’re struggling to make ends meet, your family’s battling, your mum’s battling to feed you, you don’t forget that shit. By making a bit of money, I don’t forget about the people and punters out there who are struggling to live. That’s in my genes; that’s in my blood. I’m proudly working class, but I’m also work-in-progress class. I’m trying to make myself a better person and I don’t want my kids to have to go through the same things as me. Because you’re working class doesn’t mean that you’re inferior or anything; you’re just struggling to make ends meet.

Do you have a favourite venue?

Not really. For me it’s more about the audience than the venue. I do prefer smaller venues to bigger venues, just because the audience is within eyesight; you can swing at them if you want to and they can swing at you. The communication is really open and really close, and the band sounds tight. You get in the big stadiums and things tend to get a bit lost sound-wise. I prefer to see a band and prefer to play as a band in a smaller venue.

Do you ever get star-struck?

No, not really. I just take everybody on their merits. There are lots of people with great auras about them, but I remember playing with the Rolling Stones in Germany many years ago and we were at the Voodoo Lounge. It was beautiful and I thought, “Fantastic, what a great back room,” and then we weren’t allowed in it. We had these little shitty caravans that were stuck in the mud. I remember coming off stage and everybody was going, “Keep away from the Rolling Stones.” I came off stage and I had a few drinks; I was pumped up and we’d just played to 100,000 people, and I thought “F**k it!” I walked through the Voodoo Lounge and the bouncers tried to get me. I threw them off and I went into the Rolling Stones’ dressing room and Charlie Watts was there. I just said to him, “You know what, if you treated a support band like this in Australia, they’d kill you; it’s really bad. We’ve travelled 12,000 miles to play with you, not for money, not for any other reason, just because we like your band, and you should treat us better.” He apologised and came out and met the band and hung out. It takes a lot to get me star struck. I treat everybody as an equal and as a decent person, unless they treat me otherwise and then I’ll turn on them.

Will you ever retire from touring and recording?

As long as people want to come to shows, I don’t think so. It would be a bit lame going out and singing if there was nobody there though. Hopefully I won’t retire; I love singing so I have no intentions of giving it up.

What’s your favourite Jimmy Barnes/Cold Chisel song from over the years?

It changes depending on the crowd. Flame Trees is pretty hard to pass, and it’s the same with Working Class Man and Khe Sanh. I’ve played Khe Sanh since 1977 and it’s one of those as soon where as you start playing it, you see the audience’s eyes light up and their hands go up in the air. The whole audience, the whole venue, the energy of the band, the levels go up and it’s just great to play. I think Flame Trees out of the Chisel songs is one of my favourites because it’s such a great melody. It’s a really well crafted song, and Don and Steve wrote that. To be honest though, my favourite song for me is probably something I wrote called Love and Hate, which I wrote when I was living in the Eastern Suburbs. I had a fight with my wife and I was storming out to my studio, which was above the garage at that point. This friend of ours, who was this really gentle tarot card reader, came in the gate just as I was getting there and he said, “I’ve come to read your cards.” I said, “Read my lips: f**k off!” He followed me up to the studio and I was trying to get away from him, so I just started playing really hard and loud when I got there. He was sitting there trying to talk to me and I just kept singing, “You want to talk, talk about this mother**ker; talk about this!” I wrote this really nasty song and I realised when I finished writing it, it was about myself. It’s a really great, aggressive song.

Do you support any charities?

I support the Westmead Children’s Hospital, big time, and the rehab unit at the Westmead Children’s Hospital. I’ve spent a lot of time there. My youngest daughter, Ellie May, has mild cerebral palsy and we’ve spent a lifetime in there with her and with these people helping her. I’ve been seeing children who are having had a really hard time with cerebral palsy and I’ve been inspired by them.

Do you have any role models?

My wife’s my inspiration. She’s got this strength of character, she’s tough, she’s bloody honest and she’s pure. She’s the one that’s tried to make an honest man out of me. Whenever Jane says, “You should do this; it’s character building,” I go, “Oh god, I’m not going to like this.” She tells me, “You’ve got to take this on the chin.” Jane’s my hero. She’s the girl that helped me learn about myself. My children inspire me like that too. There are a lot of great people out there, though. There’s no one in particular that I base my life on.

In an ideal world, what does the future hold for Jimmy Barnes?

I just want to become a better singer, a better performer, a better parent, a better husband and a better person. I just want to keep improving, keep learning and keep growing. As long as you grow, as long as you learn, as long as you enjoy what you’re doing, I think you’ve got a life.

The new Jimmy Barnes album ‘30:30 Hindsight’ will be released on Friday, August 29, 30 years after his chart-topping debut solo album ‘Bodyswerve’ was released in September 1984. And don’t miss Jimmy Barnes live, celebrating 30 years with a national tour. For ticketing and further information, visit www.frontiertouring.com/jimmybarnes.