Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  The guys in the foundry liked me and one particularly gnarly old guy took me under his wing and looked after me. His name was Tony Matthews. Tony had been at the foundry longer than anyone else in the place. He was the boss as far as I was concerned. He would take me aside and say things like, ‘Come on, young fella. Don’t be a stupid bastard all your life. Knuckle down and do your job and life in this place won’t be too bad to you. Just pull your bloody head in, would ya? You got to work hard to get ahead in this life. I’ve bloody worked hard for forty-five years and life is okay for me.’

  Was that what I wanted? A lifetime of slaving at a job I didn’t like just to be okay? I wasn’t sure.

  The foundry was huge, broken up into sections. Each section had a different job. Each job played an integral part of the big picture. Casting and shaping brakes and wheels for the trains they were building at the railways. There was constant noise. Sirens to tell you to get out of the way. Sirens to tell you to take a break. Sirens to let you know there was danger and sirens to relax. The whole foundry screamed at me all day. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to fall on me. Sparks exploded from the moulds as metal so hot it flowed like lava from giant buckets was carried across the floor by cranes the size of dinosaurs. Then there would be a deafening bang as the bucket was slammed on the floor to get rid of the waste. A siren would sound, telling everyone to move out of the way as the crane lumbered back to the other end of the floor to be refilled with molten steel and the whole process started again.

  Tony pointed out what I needed to know about the foundry to get by. He took me to the front door and showed me where I had to clock in every day. ‘It all starts here. Get here on time and the whole bloody day will go a lot smoother for everybody.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, just remember it. Too many of you young bastards think you can waltz in here whenever it suits you. You bloody well can’t, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘Don’t bloody “yeah, yeah” me, just listen and learn.’

  ‘Over here is where we clean up the castings. You won’t have to do that much but get a good look at it. You should be able to do every step of this bloody work.’

  ‘Right, Tony.’

  ‘This is Len’s office. He’s a good bloke. Nice and polite. Not like me but don’t think you can pull anything over on him. He sits in that bloody office all bloody day and he sees everything that goes on in this joint.’

  ‘What’s he do in there?’

  ‘He runs the bloody place. Aren’t you listening to me? You got cloth ears from all that rock-and-bloody-roll you play. That’s not real music anyway. So don’t get me started on that.’

  ‘I never said anything.’

  ‘Good. Keep it that bloody way. You’ll hear more if you shut up a bit.’

  ‘Right.’

  This went on through every part of the foundry floor. By the time we got to the other end, I’d forgotten what happened at the start. But Tony would tell me over and over.

  He taught me everything he knew about moulding but sometimes I didn’t listen close enough. ‘Get the bloody hell out of the way you idiot. You might want to kill yourself but I don’t want you killing me along with you. I’m going to show you this one more time and if you don’t get it right you can fuck off out of this job.’

  Of course he was right. One wrong step in the process could cause a mould to blow molten metal back up at you. It was very dangerous.

  He would reason with me at times too. ‘You know what, Jim? You could be the best apprentice I’ve ever trained if you buckled down a bit. I like you a lot. I look at you like my own son, so come on. Don’t let us both down.’

  I could see him tearing up sometimes when he spoke to me. He tried to be really tough but he wasn’t. He’d been at this job for most of his life and before he retired he wanted to pass on his wisdom to me.

  When it came time to initiate the apprentices I was ready to kill anyone who came near me and so was he. They grabbed all the new guys and painted their balls with some weird paint that burned like hell, but I made it clear that if they came near me with that shit they would end up getting it rammed down their throats.

  ‘You bastards touch my boy and you’ll have to deal with me,’ Tony roared across the floor. They all laughed at him behind his back but no one was game to take him on head to head. He was a tough old codger and I found out later that they left me alone because my old mate had frightened them off, not me.

  We worked together the whole time I was at the railways. He always looked after me, helping me learn new things. If I came in too wasted to work, he helped me out then too. There were sand bins in every section of the building.

  ‘Get yourself in behind that bloody bin and sleep it off you stupid young bastard,’ he would say and look at me with that same look of disappointment that I had seen so many times on Reg’s face. I was getting used to it by now and really didn’t care anymore.

  After a couple of hours, he would walk up to the back of the bin and kick my feet shouting, ‘Get up boy, here’s a cup of coffee for you. You can’t sleep all bloody day. We’ve got work to do here.’

  I spent a lot of time behind those bins. By this time, I was going out to the pubs around Adelaide to see bands and chase girls. A lot of those gigs didn’t finish until three or four in the morning so it was safer if I did sleep it off. This was as much for his safety as mine. But it worked out well for both of us. I would walk in at seven in the morning, red-eyed and shaky, and he would get me a cup of tea and send me to sleep. I’d wake up just in time for a break and then he would work me like a dog for the rest of the day. I was his prize apprentice and I was a wild boy. I got the feeling he’d been a wild boy like me in his youth and he wanted to help me get through this rough patch in my life. The difference between him and me was this wasn’t a rough patch. My life had always been this out of control and it was spinning more and more out of control every day. So he was never going to be able to save me. I was the only one who could save me and I couldn’t see that happening.

  Some of the older guys in Elizabeth had been dabbling in heroin for quite a while and a few had become real casualties, losing their jobs and cars and even their families. That was bad, but what was worse was that just like in every other aspect of life, whatever the older guys did, the younger guys wanted to do the same. So some of my friends started using heroin.

  This particular drug was not seen as cool by the real heavy guys in Elizabeth. You could get drunk out of your mind and beat your girl. Or take acid or speed. Being strung out on speed was all right because you could still fight on it; in fact, it made you want to fight even more. So that was cool. But heroin was wrong. If you did it, you were a fucking junkie. And nobody wanted to be that.

  This meant that the guys who were doing heroin kept it on the down low. Because of that a few of my mates were well and truly addicts before I had any idea they were using at all. I was offered it a few times and said no. I don’t know if it was good sense or brainwashing from my folks but whatever the reason, it worked, and I always managed to say no to heroin. I used to joke and say, ‘I won’t take anything I can’t fight or fuck on.’ But you could probably do both on heroin.

  Some of the guys I knew started stealing from friends’ cars and homes and it wasn’t long before a couple ended up in jail. Over the years I lost a lot of friends to heroin overdoses, and to jails come to think about it. All drugs fucked us up, but this one seemed to do even more damage, and it seemed irreparable so I was scared to try it. This was a good thing but there must have been a better way to learn a lesson than by the death of your friends.

  There was another apprentice who worked in our section. He was a quiet young guy and one day he invited me out to his house for a birthday party. So after work I hitchhiked home and got changed and grabbed a few of my mates from Elizabeth. We all took LSD and then headed out for a few drinks while we waited for the drugs to kick in. Then
we would head to the party.

  By ten o’clock we were mindless and ready to tear the town down. So we decided that we were ready to hit the party and find some girls to keep us company.

  We drove up to my workmate’s house, thinking he wouldn’t be ready for what was coming, but in fact we were the ones who weren’t ready for what was coming. We arrived at his house just after ten o’clock and knocked at the door.

  ‘Hi Jim. Great to see you. Come on in. I thought you might not come.’

  The mild-mannered young man I worked with was a drag queen in his spare time. And was taking hard drugs and listening to twisted music just like I was listening to. In fact, he played some music I’d never heard before.

  As I walked in something was playing that sounded new to me. Not really like anything I had heard before. This was the first time I heard Lou Reed’s Transformer and in the state I was in this was a life-changing event. Talk about different worlds colliding, his mates and mine were as opposite as you could get. My mates were dressed in denims, ripped and faded. With Adidas sneakers and T-shirts. This was the uniform we all wore so we didn’t draw attention to ourselves, every single one of us as unrecognisable to the police as the next.

  His mates were as far from us as you could get. Dressed to the nines in sparkling frocks that sent light dancing across the room, drawing your eyes to them. With shoes that were so high they looked fierce, like something we would use as a weapon back in the shops around Elizabeth. They had hair that was teased so much that they looked seven feet tall. And make-up that chiselled their features so they resembled statues. Everything about these guys screamed out, ‘Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.’

  But we all got on like a house on fire. In fact, we were all so out of it, the house could have been on fire and no one would have noticed. We had a lot more in common than either of us could have imagined. We were all trying to find out who we were in this world. I never looked at that guy the same again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  wouldn’t be dead for quids

  The year 1973 was becoming a good one for me. I was learning about music and life. Every night had potential; it was all up to me to make it happen.

  Mick and me would talk twenty or so guys into going to the Apollo Stadium, near the city, to see bands. None of us ever had any money.

  ‘Hey, guys. I reckon if we kick the back door in the bastards could only catch one or two of us at the most.’

  Mick and I had worked it out.

  ‘The rest of us just keep running into the hall and mingle with the crowd. It’ll be easy.’

  ‘And if we don’t like the bands we can leave. It’ll cost us nothing.’

  ‘What’ll we do if the fucking bouncers catch us?’

  ‘Just act innocent. They’ve got too much to do. They’ll let you go for sure,’ Mick told the boys. ‘Otherwise belt them and run. What are you, pussies?’

  We did this night after night and much to our surprise it never got any harder. We couldn’t work it out.

  ‘Maybe they just don’t give a fuck. Or maybe they’ll be waiting one night and bash our heads in.’

  ‘Na. They don’t give a shit,’ Mick assured us all. ‘Trust me.’ We had trusted Mick many a night and it nearly got us killed.

  I’ve got to say some of the best shows I ever saw were for free, after charging over a couple of useless security guys at the Apollo.

  I remember one of the many nights that we took acid and ended up outside the stadium. We didn’t even know who was playing. We didn’t care. If it was bad, we would just walk out and go and start trouble somewhere else.

  Bang! We kicked the door in and Mick shouted, ‘Let’s go.’

  I slipped through the grips of an overweight body builder who was moonlighting as a bouncer and I was in. I made it into the middle of the crowd just as the show started. About the same time, coincidentally, as the drugs kicked in.

  The room went dark and trumpets rang out. ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ washed across the crowd. I felt that I was waiting for the entrance of the Queen, not a rock band. Low bottom end from the PA droned out across the hall, so deep that you couldn’t really hear it but felt it in your stomach. Dry ice-created fog came rolling over the amps and cascaded from the edge of the stage like a waterfall onto the audience.

  ‘Wow,’ I whispered to myself, trying not to look too gobsmacked. ‘This is great, isn’t it?’ I said, nudging the stranger with the headband who was standing next to me.

  ‘They haven’t started yet, man.’

  I quickly got a hold of myself. ‘Better try and look a bit tough or these hippies will punch holes in my aura.’ As if.

  I’d never heard anything like it before – or since really. It was Yes in their prime. I wasn’t a Yes fan as such. Progressive rock took too much thinking for my liking. But as I stood surrounded by patchouli oil-smelling, sandal-wearing, kaftan-flowing hippies, I came to the conclusion that they were a fantastic band.

  ‘Maybe it’s the drugs,’ I said to myself. ‘Na, could be.’ I’ve got to say, I still like them but they have never sounded quite as good as they did that night. Yeah, it was the drugs.

  Everyone else got bored and left to look for more excitement but I stayed with my eyes glued to the stage, taking in everything that was going on between the band.

  My eyes were darting between the lights and the PA system. I was watching roadies running across the stage making guitar changes. Subtle set changes between songs seemed seamless. This was the smoke and mirrors that you hear about in showbiz. Because my reality had been enhanced by the drugs or perhaps because the penny dropped for the first time, I saw the communication that was happening on the stage. I was mesmerised.

  I think I had to hitchhike home but I didn’t care; it was worth it. It seemed there was more to being in a band than just singing.

  That year I saw Frank Zappa, T-Rex, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath and Ike and Tina Turner at the Apollo. Every single show we saw for free.

  Frank Zappa played songs that turned my ear to more adventurous music. Watching him play was like watching someone conduct an orchestra. Every move of his hands led every musician into another movement of the song. It was amazing.

  Jethro Tull was a band that most of the young guys in Elizabeth liked, mainly because of their gross lyrics about snotters and girls. But we went anyway.

  I stood watching what appeared to be cleaners in white overalls sweeping the stage. Only to find that one by one the overalls came off revealing that they were the band. Good trick.

  Marc Bolan, who had made amazing music in the early seventies, was completely disillusioned by the time he came to Adelaide. British media had worn him down. It was clear you couldn’t be openly gay and be allowed to make music without being driven into the ground. He had an empty, lost look in his eyes when he sang. The best thing he did all night was to bullwhip his guitar. He needed to lash out at something I guess. He died a few years later. I learned that the public and the press don’t need to know everything about you or they might turn on you.

  Ike and Tina were unbelievable. I fought my way down to the front to get a look at Tina and the girls.

  ‘Excuse me. Coming through. Excuse me. Hey, I said get to fuck out of my way.’

  I made it to the front row. I remember being mesmerised by Tina and the Ike-ettes, as any young guy would have been. But while I was in the front row watching the girls I saw this guy in the back of the band driving them all like I’d never seen before. That was Ike Turner. As I watched him I realised how important it was to push a band, and push them really hard. He was a brutal taskmaster and I could see the band jumping at his every gesture. He made the band great. But this same tyrannical behaviour made him a violent partner for Tina. She survived Ike’s violence to go on to much bigger things – when he was washed up and good for nothing, Tina was just getting started. I think he should have kept the iron fist for the running of the band.

  I learned something from every band I
saw. I was like a sponge, soaking in everything I could. This was to become my apprenticeship – not the railways but rock shows all over Adelaide.

  We would go and see Fraternity, the Coloured Balls, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs and anybody else who came through town. But Billy was the guy I liked the best. He was a rocker. No bullshit. Straight out rock-and-roll. I used to go and watch him at pubs I shouldn’t have even been allowed into. Places like the Largs Pier Hotel, one of the wildest and roughest pubs in Australia. I started sneaking in there when I was only sixteen. I’m sure the bouncers knew I was underage but I didn’t start trouble and they had their hands too full throwing people out to stop some young guy getting in.

  There were no police threatening to take away their licences in those days; it was just jam as many people as you could into a small space and see what happened.

  I saw Billy Thorpe in there one night with a whole wall of guitar amps. He was loud as hell but I thought he should have been even louder considering how many guitar amps he had up there. So I tried to speak to one of the roadies.

  He was standing, trying to look important in front of a girl he was aiming to impress.

  ‘Hey mate, you busy?’

  ‘What do you think? Do I look busy? Someone’s got to run this show,’ he said, winking at the chick.

  ‘There’s a lot of amps up there. Is that normal?’

  He looked a bit annoyed by now. I was obviously cramping his style.

  ‘Fuck, yeah. It is for Billy. He’s the man. The loudest guy in the country,’ he said to the girl. Almost as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘I didn’t think they were all turned on.’

  Suddenly I had his attention. ‘Listen, you little bastard, I’ve got fucking work to do. What do you want?’

  The girl walked away.

  ‘Sorry, I’m in a band too and Billy’s a bit of a hero to me. I want to play as loud as him, that’s all.’

  By this time he knew his chances with the girl were gone but for some reason he started to soften. ‘I’ll let you into a little secret, son. Everything is not always as it seems. It’s show business. Do you understand?’