Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  ‘So I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Look, I can’t stand and talk to you all day. This is a show, that’s all I’ll tell you. Now fuck off and let me work.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. Maybe you can work for me one day.’

  I got a smile out of him.

  I had worked it out. Billy had a bunch of amps he loved but the others were spares or even just dummies to make the show look bigger. This is something I’ve seen a million times since that night but Billy was the first. And I thought he was so smart to do that. He did it just to keep the punters guessing.

  The Pier was happening. On a lot of nights, I was more entertained by the fights that broke out than the bands that were playing. There was one bouncer I remember very well. They called him the Beast, for obvious reasons; he looked like a refrigerator on legs. I would sit, off my head on whatever I could find, and watch as the Beast threw people through the plate glass windows, the glass smashing and spraying through the air like fireworks, while the music screamed in my ears and the hallucinogenics surged through my brain. It was like being an extra for A Clockwork Orange.

  Every Friday and Saturday night I seemed to end up at the Pier watching the hardest and best bands that Australia had to offer at the time, playing so loud that my eardrums nearly burst. This was what I called fun, not hanging around the shops fighting and hoping to get laid.

  This pub was full of tough blokes who looked like they worked on the wharves during the day. Some of their girls looked just as tough. There were bearded blokes with tattoos, arm in arm with tattooed girls drinking beer. There were handsome young fellows holding beautiful girls with wide eyes and beaming smiles, jiving around the dance floor to the music. I got the feeling that if you looked at the wrong girl for too long you would end up floating next to one of the wharves their boyfriends worked at. You were safe as long as you showed respect for the locals.

  They were a strange mix of people but everyone seemed to watch out for each other and I liked that. One of the people that I met in the front bar of the Pier was a guy called Dennis O’Toole, who I had met many years earlier at the party where we first met Reg’s family. Tooley, as we call him, has been a friend ever since we reacquainted ourselves at the Pier. He was a gentle soul but could fight with the best of them if he had to and he ended up working as a roadie for Cold Chisel and Fraternity when I joined them.

  That pub became my home ground and soon I became friends with many of the regulars. By the time I was sixteen and a half I even ended up on a first name basis with the Beast.

  ‘Hey, Beast. What’s it like in there tonight?’

  ‘It’s really packed. In you go, have a good night.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  ‘Hey. Hey.’

  I thought for a minute I was getting stopped. ‘Yeah, what is it?’

  ‘It’s Bob.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘It’s Bob. Bob McKinnon. That’s me name. Call me Bob.’

  ‘Er, right. Thanks mate, er Beast, er Bob. Thanks.’

  I felt even safer in the bar now. On many a night I ended up drinking until sun-up, on the jetty across the road from the pub with a bunch of mates and, if we were lucky, a few beautiful girls who were too pissed to go home or they’d get a hiding from their dads. We’d sit and look out to sea, thinking how lucky we were to be alive.

  ‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids,’ Tooley would say. ‘I wonder what the poor people are doing while we get to sit out here. Working probably, the poor suckers.’

  He be laughing out loud. He thought he was really funny. ‘We are the luckiest people alive. Look where we are. We got the water underneath us. A bunch of good mates and the pier to look at in the distance. Oh yeah and of course you girls are with us too.’ Tooley seemed to care more about his mates than the girls but he was always a gentleman.

  We’d sit there until the sun came up and then pile into a car and head for home. I’d be ready to sleep or keep partying with the girls but the others would head to the docks to work.

  The Pier was my home away from home for many years after that. And even now, when I go back there I think about those days, when we were young and life was only about having something to drink and a pretty girl on your arm and a few mates ready to help you take on the world. And we did take it on, again and again. It became the place I learned about friendship and music. About love and loss. The Pier was our home. But the whole of Adelaide was our playground and we played hard.

  One night we stood outside Memorial Drive in Adelaide. This venue was built for tennis but it became one of the great places to see a big band in Australia. I played there many times with Cold Chisel and as a solo performer and I always loved it. But this night we listened as Led Zeppelin played ‘Rock and Roll’ so loud that even outside the venue it was rocking. The crowd broke down the fence and thousands of punters who had no money got in for free. I remember being overjoyed at the chance to see them. Of the five thousand punters who crashed the fence I was the only one who got caught. I remember being dragged away to a paddy wagon as the sound of ‘Dazed and Confused’ drifted through the warm night air. They sounded good that night. And even from the back of a moving police car, I was happy to hear them.

  Another night I stood outside and listened as the Rolling Stones played the same venue. I was wishing I could get in and see Mick and Keith do their thing. But it didn’t really matter. I was happy to stand outside with the crowds or break in if I got the chance. As it happened, the Stones didn’t sound so great that night. So I didn’t feel too bad.

  Our lives were like a Rolling Stones concert in a lot of ways. Some nights were great, some were bad. It depended on the night, the drugs and the company we kept. But it was all ours for the taking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  do you want to join our band?

  It was about this time that I was visited by a roadie named Michael. ‘Are you John Swan’s young brother?’

  ‘Why, who the fuck’s asking?’

  ‘My name’s Michael. I work as a roadie for a new band that’s starting up.’

  ‘What, you mean this band has someone to carry their gear?’ I was impressed but I didn’t let on to him.

  ‘Yeah, anyway we’re looking for a singer.’

  ‘You’re in the band, are you?’

  ‘Er, no. I mean they’re looking for a singer.’

  ‘Why didn’t they come and ask me themselves?’

  ‘Er. I live in Elizabeth and they don’t. So we thought it would be easier if –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m just giving you a hard time.’

  ‘Look, I want you to know this up front. They really wanted your brother John to sing but he didn’t even get back to them. I told them I heard he had a brother who sang pretty good.’

  ‘That’s great, so I’m second choice, am I?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Are you interested in coming down for a jam? I could take you.’

  ‘I’ll get there myself if I’m going. Are they any good?’

  ‘Yeah, listen man, they are great. It’s a blues band and the guitar player is really fucking good. This young guy from Alice Springs is awesome. They’re rehearsing on Saturday in the city if you want to go.’

  When he called me man, I thought twice about it. ‘What is he, some kind of fucking hippie?’ I said to myself. But the idea of actually joining a band who were even remotely good appealed to me.

  ‘Okay, man. I’ll see you there.’ I gave him a peace sign and walked away.

  John was making quite a bit of money around the Adelaide scene at the time, so he didn’t even consider this band. They were a bunch of guys with no experience. In fact, the only guy John knew was the piano player, a guy named Don Walker. He and Don had played together in an Adelaide blues band named Queen.

  Don told me later that he had auditioned for a band in Adelaide and they were all very cool and hardly spoke to him. That is, except John. He said he was warm and tried to make it as easy as possible for him. Don
also told me that he thought John was an amazing singer, and he figured if I was half as good as him I might be okay.

  I’d never been around a band with a roadie before. Every band I’d been a part of carried their own gear and did everything themselves. Only big bands or overseas bands had roadies, so this was very impressive. Even if he was a hippie. I found out later that Michael was just a mate of the band, but he went on to become Cold Chisel’s first roadie. He worked with us for a long time until we drove him crazy and he left. We seemed to do that to a lot of people; they’d come work with us for a while and then get burned out and need to leave.

  Anyway, he was the guy who told Don that John had a young brother who also sang. As he had never heard me sing, he couldn’t vouch for how good I’d be but he could find me and see if I wanted to audition.

  I’d never tried out for a band before. My other bands I just walked into. Friends of friends or something like that, so it was always easy. This seemed more difficult and I wondered if I could be bothered. I didn’t want to waste my time trying out for a bunch of dorks and I didn’t want to go and be out of my depth. I didn’t take rejection very well and would probably swing at them if they pissed me off. So I was a bit hesitant to go. I think I really wanted to try but needed some prodding.

  I ran it past my mates at the shops. ‘What do you think, guys? Should I have a look?’

  ‘Just give it a go, mate. If they stink you can just tell them to get lost. Who needs ’em?’ Mick said, not taking it that seriously.

  This was true. I could just walk away.

  ‘If things get bad you can always belt one of them. That’d be fun,’ Mick laughed. ‘I’ll come with you and we could belt them all.’

  The idea of taking a trip to the city alone appealed to me. Might be a chance to get away from Elizabeth. If things worked out, maybe for good. I’d go and see what it was like.

  So I got the address of the place and the next Saturday I went to town. I turned up at the address and found myself at the Women’s Liberation Centre. This was where they were rehearsing. It was in the middle of Adelaide and although I thought their choice of venue sounded more than a little strange, I’d give it a try. Maybe one of their friends was a woman? I didn’t know what women’s lib meant at all. I only knew my mum had liberated herself from my dad but that was it. I had no idea what a feminist was. We didn’t have them back in Cowcaddens, I don’t think.

  I was terrified by the time I walked in. They didn’t look like feminists. The first guy I saw had thick curly hair that stuck out like an afro, bushy eyebrows and a big mouth. Ian Moss was a young guitarist from Alice Springs who didn’t wear shoes and didn’t talk at all. He seemed nice enough. Maybe they didn’t speak English in Alice. He didn’t really look at me. He kept his eyes down or on his guitar. Which was fine with me. What would he be looking at me for unless he wanted trouble?

  Les Kaczmarek stood nearby, a young Polish bass player who had the best, shiniest equipment I had ever seen. He had long light brown hair and a pretty face. He was more self-assured than Ian and I thought he might run the show. If he didn’t run it, he did a good job pretending that he did. He tried to make me comfortable right away. Les, I soon found out, also liked a drink and I think he needed a drinking partner in the band. The others were very straight.

  There was another guy standing around who turned out to be the drummer. I really didn’t get to know him as he was on his way out of the band as I was coming in. I’m sorry to say I don’t even remember his name.

  Then there was Don Walker – a bearded university student who looked way too intelligent to want to play rock. He was quiet and reserved. This made me suspicious of him immediately. I didn’t trust quiet people and I didn’t like university students. Quiet people were normally up to something where I came from.

  When I say I didn’t like university students, I didn’t really know any. If they were that smart, they weren’t hanging around the Elizabeth shops fighting. I thought that anyone who actually went to university was a spoilt rich kid with more dollars than sense. This was some sort of reverse snobbery, probably brought on by the fact that we had nothing for our whole lives and Mum resented anybody who got a break or had more than us. Everyone had more than us so she hated everyone. I think I got this wonderful trait from her. She didn’t trust anyone. She didn’t even trust us. And she taught us well – so well that we didn’t trust her either.

  I used to go and play football at the private schools when I was younger and I thought they were all pussies. We always beat them on and off the field and when it came to university students, the only ones I’d met were at university dances that we crashed while we were drunk and looking for trouble or chicks. In reality I was afraid of anyone who might be smarter or better than me.

  Anyway, I was more than a little guarded with Don at the start but I soon worked out that he, in fact, ran the band. He was the one I was going to have to impress and I wasn’t sure how to go about it. As it happened, I didn’t have to. Don was a good guy from day one and all he wanted in the band was a good singer. How they ended up with me I’ll never know.

  ‘Shall we do a few songs,’ Don said, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Sure. What do you want to do?’ I was really worried.

  ‘What about a Free song?’ Ian piped up.

  ‘Wow, I like this guy,’ I said to myself.

  ‘Do you know “The Stealer”?’

  ‘Yeah. I think I know that one.’ It was my favourite song at the time and I knew all the words like the back of my hand.

  We did the song and there was an awkward silence.

  ‘Yeah that was great. Give us some time to have a chat, would you?’ Don said softly.

  ‘Yeah well, just let me know. I’m fine if you don’t want me. I got lots of things to do.’ I started walking out the door.

  ‘You want to just stay there a minute and we’ll just have a quick talk over in the corner?’

  I was getting defensive. ‘You sure? I’ll get to fuck out of your way if you want.’

  ‘No, just wait.’

  They went to a corner to discuss how I sounded. In the meantime, I stayed on the other side of the room, scowling at them. Pretending I didn’t want the gig anyway.

  Les was the first to speak. ‘So yeah. We like what you do. Do you want to join our band?’

  Now to tell you the truth I’d never sung with a band who could actually play that well. This band owned their own gear. They knew what they were doing. Ian was a great guitarist even in those early days. When they told me that Don was a songwriter, that was it. They had me. I’d never been in a band with someone who wrote songs before.

  I acted as cool as I could and said, ‘I’ll give it a go and we’ll see, eh?’

  But inside I was really excited. They weren’t the hardest band I’d ever heard but I was sure we could change that with a bit of pushing and shoving. Eventually I would jump all over these poor guys, fuelled by booze and cheap speed, making them play louder, harder and faster every night but that would come later. They didn’t know what they were in for.

  I joined the band and, like I said, the drummer was on his way out. So we were immediately talking about who to get to replace him. My brother John, besides being a great singer, was a great drummer too. I told you before John could do anything he put his mind to. In fact, at that time John was a drummer more than a singer. So I went to see him.

  ‘John, the band I’ve joined needs a drummer. Got any ideas?’

  ‘I didn’t want to sing with them so I’m certainly not drumming for them,’ he joked.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know any drummers that might be good enough to try out?’

  John didn’t have to think for long. ‘I met this English guy called Steve at a party. He plays really well. He might do it.’

  Steve Prestwich had been in a band called Ice with Michael Smith, the guy who played bass in Tarkus, who went on to have a career as a music journalist. And Michael had also told
me how good Steve was. I knew a couple of Steve’s brothers and they were wild. As wild as me if not wilder. So I wasn’t sure how we’d get on but we got in touch and Steve came down and tried out.

  He was a great drummer. He was a bit cool and acted like he didn’t really want to be in this kind of band. Ice had played covers of Yes songs and we were just a simple blues band. But he sounded great playing with the band so we asked him to join.

  Steve ended up being one of my favourite people of all time. We toured the world together making music, laughing and drinking and fighting with each other, until he died a few years ago. What a loss.

  Anyway, basically we had the band together and worked in that hall every weekend for months, trying to come up with a set of songs that we could play live, if we ever got out of the rehearsal hall. We all got on well and working with the guys was something I looked forward to. I would get out of Elizabeth and get to make music with a bunch of guys who played really well. Eventually we got ourselves a gig. It was in the local Polish Club. I’m sure we only got it because Les’s dad put some pressure on them.

  Now we had to find a name for ourselves, something that would be cool and let people know what we were about. We came up with the name Orange, a name that was not cool and didn’t give any insight to where the band was coming from. It was a shit name. Maybe we weren’t that good a band either, so the name probably fitted us. We got the name from a Jeff Beck album we liked – it wasn’t called Orange but had a picture of one on the cover. This is still one of my favourite albums to this day. We were playing a couple of songs off the album in our very first set so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  The gig was not the best gig I’d ever been to. In fact, there were times when we were playing I could see members of the audience yawning and looking for something else to do. I’m sure I heard them whispering to each other in Polish, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’