Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  We all have lives of our own and other people in those lives to share the time with. But those days growing up made me who I am, and I’m thankful that I went through them with my brothers and sisters, because I like who I am now. It took me a long time to get to this place but I made it. For all the sad things I’ve remembered in this book there are a thousand other moments that made me smile. When we thought we had nothing, we had each other.

  I had a huge career with Cold Chisel, selling millions of records. During that time with the band I met Jane, the girl of my dreams. The one person in the world who could eventually make me feel safe. Jane is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and the most important person in my life. I remember the minute I saw her. She took my breath away. I loved her then, I love her now, and I will love her forever. We have a beautiful family that is still growing, and these days, life is good.

  The chip I had on my shoulder that had weighed me down for years became an attribute when I started writing songs. ‘You’ve Got Nothing I Want’ came from a young guy who had so many doors slammed in his face that he felt like the Avon lady. ‘No Second Prize’ came directly from my need to win at all costs. There was no other plan for me – it was sink or sing. And singing ‘Working Class Man’ was a match made in heaven for me. I wouldn’t put anyone else through my life, but fuck it, I survived.

  I went on to have a career as a solo performer that included selling as many, if not more, records than Cold Chisel, and having so many platinum albums I ran out of walls to hang them on. So I built more walls and eventually I worked out that walls and awards weren’t going to make me happy. I was going to have to look longer and harder at myself, even if it hurt. My battle with my past and the scars that it left on me has been the cause of a life that was a roller-coaster of emotions, from great highs to unspeakable lows. Along the way I have laughed and loved, lived and lost. But I have always tried. I have tried to break the cycle that my family has been caught in. I’ve tried to hurt as few people as I could in this wild life I have lived. I’ve tried be a good man but the journey has not been easy for me or the ones I love the most. And I know that I have wounded many people along the way. I never meant to. I try every day now to pick up the broken pieces of my life and make a better person of myself.

  I want people to read this because I know there are other people out there, just like me. People who think they are alone in life and that their cards have been dealt and that there is nothing they can do to change anything. That’s how I felt too for a long, long time. I nearly killed myself because of it. But now I know there’s always time for change and there’s always a better path. You just have to look for it.

  This book was my first real step in looking for hope.

  Peace and love

  Jimmy

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  How I became Jimmy Barnes is a bit of a long story. In fact, it’s such a long story that I’ve had to write two books to tell the whole thing. This book is the story of what shaped my life. The good, the bad and the very, very ugly. It’s the book I had to write first if I was going to make any sense of what was to come. Everything I am is because of the things that I talk about in this first book. In the second book I will try to tell you about how all this early stuff shaped what came later – the rock’n’roll years.

  It wasn’t easy to write. There’s a lot of my past that I wanted to push out of my memory and never see again. But I couldn’t. I tried to drown my past in every possible way, but as long as it was festering inside me I could never really move on. My childhood affected every step I took over the rest of my life. It twisted the way I thought and the way I interacted with normal human beings. Eventually I realised that these wounds needed to be brought out in the open and aired if I ever wanted them to heal.

  So I started trying to write things down. My first attempt was actually back in the early nineties. At the time I’d almost gone broke and it had me wondering what I was going to do with my life. I seemed to be on a downhill slide. So I started to write my story, not really knowing what I was trying to achieve. I thought that maybe I could skim across the surface of my past, dealing with as little as possible, and then it would stop haunting me.

  I’d written about thirty thousand words by the time we moved to France in 1994. Moving away from Australia brought me a short period of relief. My past – like everything else – seemed a long way away and my writing slowed down. My computer sat on the bookshelf collecting dust until one day we were robbed and the computer was gone. I hadn’t backed anything up or written anything down, so my first attempt at writing this book ended there.

  I didn’t try to write it again until about the year 2000. Everything I wrote that time was twisted by copious amounts of drinking and all the drugs I was taking. I still have that stuff somewhere and some of it’s almost funny, but there’s nothing in that version about the real issues. I actually can’t bear to read it now. I skirted around everything and made light of the worst moments of my life. Once again I got to around thirty thousand words and came to a brick wall.

  Eventually I realised that I was never going to be able to write this story until I faced up to a lot of things. It then took me many years of therapy, battling alcoholism, drug dependence and guilt, to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I’d seen that light before, by the way. In the past it always turned out to be a freight train coming to run me into the ground, but this time I think things have changed for good.

  I remember the exact moment when things changed. It was about eighteen months ago. I was sitting in a hotel room somewhere in the middle of a tour. I’d watched every movie on the movie channels except one. It was a dark South Australian murder story called Snowtown.

  I was suddenly dragged back to my childhood. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t serial killers – well, not that I know of anyway. But everything in this movie looked like where I grew up. It looked like our street. In fact, it looked like our house. The floodgates opened and I couldn’t hold back the past any longer. It just washed all over me. So I began to write. I really didn’t lift my head again until I had well over a hundred thousand words. Suddenly a year was gone and I’d written down most of the stuff that I’d been running away from for most of my life. I felt at peace for the first time since my earliest memories of being a little boy back in Glasgow.

  One day I was talking to a mate of mine, Neil Finn, and he asked me, ‘So, what are you going to call your book?’

  At that stage I had no idea, but if you’ve ever heard Neil’s songs you’ll know that he’s very good at painting a picture in just a few words. Anyway, he said, ‘You’d have to call it Working Class Boy, wouldn’t you?’

  I thought, ‘Shit, I wish I’d come up with that!’

  The name stuck from then on but apart from that one bit of help from Neil it’s entirely my story. It’s a story that I had to write on my own – the story of a working class lad from Glasgow who grew up in the northern suburbs of Adelaide where things definitely weren’t pretty.

  This book would not have been possible without the love and understanding of my family. My wife and children have watched me work my way through this stuff long before I even knew I had stuff to work through. They were there with me when I was at my highest, and believe me I was high. And when I hit my lowest they were there to reach out and help me up. They laughed with me and at me, and cried with me.

  I sat and read parts of this to my two dogs, Snoop Dog and Oliver, when I was too ashamed to read it to anyone else. Thanks boys.

  Thanks to Mum, Dad, Reg and my siblings. Our lives were made bearable by having each other. Without you guys I couldn’t have made it through. Thanks for sharing my joy and my pain.

  I know that life is full of lessons to be learned and my children will have to learn their own but I hope I have broken the cycle of shame and fear that plagued my childhood. I know their lessons won’t be as hard as mine. So don’t be afraid. Go out and live, laugh and love. Life is good.

 
; I’d like to thank John Watson for being my manager, a great friend and an even better sounding board as I wrote this. You helped me make sense of my ramblings.

  Thanks to Andrea McNamara for getting me started, Helen Littleton and Nicola Robinson for pointing me in the right direction, even when I didn’t want to go that way, and Scott Forbes for reminding me how to speak Glaswegian.

  Now that I have made some sense of this stage of my life, I truly believe that I will be better equipped to tackle my next book: the years I spent on the road making music and building a family.

  There were times throughout my life when I didn’t think I was going to make it. But I am so glad that I did. You have to be able to hold your head up high and say, ‘Fuck it, I made some big mistakes, but everybody does. I can live with mine.’

  PHOTOS SECTION

  1. Da, his favourite granddaughter Dorothy, and his ‘wee dug’ Jackie. This photo says so much: my Da with the only person he liked to spend time with, and the one who shared his life, his dog. The walls in this photo sum up Glasgow for me. The chalk drawings and marks were not just graffiti. The streetlights were always broken so drunks would leave a trail marked on the walls to find their way home, a bit like Hansel and Gretel. 2. Elizabeth Dixon and John Dixon. My Da and Granny in happy times in Glasgow. I don’t remember them together a lot. Granny would go around to his house and look after him but she couldn’t live with him. 3. The Scottish Western Districts Championship cup, 1953. Dad won many cups and trophies. This is the only one we have left. Mum smashed them or threw them out or at him when they fought. 4. My dad, James Ruthven Harvey Swan. In his heyday. He wasn’t that big but he could fight as good as any man, in the ring, in the house or on the street. He thought fast and punched faster. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. The Hut, 1952. Mum and Dad by the sea with John. My mum was very young and beautiful. Dad was fit and handsome. These days didn’t last too long. 2. My dad with Dorothy and John. The van in the background looks a lot like the cars that Dad would buy to fix up. Way beyond saving. 3. On the street in Glasgow. Dorothy, young Alan, myself and John. The Royal Bar in the back was the scene of many a bloodbath. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. Aunty Maude and me. Aunty Maude was Mum’s sister. Apart from my granny, hers is the only family I ever saw again after leaving Scotland. Her son Jackie and daughter Joanne are the only cousins I know and I love them very much. We all need family. 2. John, Linda, myself and Dorothy with Mum and Aunty Maude. I’m not sure where we are. It might be Port Seton on the only holiday I remember in Scotland. 3. Linda, John, Dorothy and me at the beach. Scotland wasn’t famous for its beaches but it looks like it was famous for very high bathers. The sky is grey and it looks fiercely cold. It must be midsummer. 4. John, myself, Dorothy and Linda in Glasgow. John used to say that my ears were so big I looked like a taxi with the doors left open. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. Dorothy, myself, Linda and John on board the SS Strathnaver, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We had escaped the horrors of Glasgow and landed on a ‘luxury’ cruise. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 2. Mum on board the ship. While the boat was a luxury cruise for us kids, Mum soon realised that she had escaped from fighting on the streets of Glasgow by jumping on board the Titanic. Any hope of saving her marriage was sinking fast. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 3. The SS Strathnaver. To us, this was our ride to a new life. It would take us away from everything that was stacked up against our family and give us a break. Well, that was the plan. (© WEST AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED)

  1. Me sitting outside our Nissen hut at the Gepps Cross Hostel. It was so hot inside. Outside the air moved occasionally. Inside the air only moved when Mum and Dad threw things at each other. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 2. That’s me aged six. There are a few photos around with me as a kid with no front teeth. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 3. Elizabeth, City of Tomorrow. Slow down. Who were they talking to here? It could have been the trucks that rolled in from the north, carrying food to the hungry immigrants who would fill the houses yet to be built. Or were they talking to themselves? Let’s think about what we are building here. Will this work? They could be talking to the families who couldn’t wait to get there and get hold of their dreams. Maybe it was written for kids like me who would be running around the streets. Look at the dry prickly ground under the sign. This sort of ground cover would ambush young shoeless boys like me. My feet hurt just looking at this picture. Elizabeth, City of Tomorrow? It seems like yesterday I lived there. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE)

  1. Twenty-odd miles from Adelaide, somewhere on the main highway that led north to the dead heart of Australia, lay Elizabeth. It was flat, hot and dry. This was as far from Glasgow as my folks could run. It was in the middle of nowhere. But everything was laid out nice and neat. Each separate area had its own shops, its own school and its own football grounds. They all had the same problems though. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE) 2. Me and Alan with our mum on the front porch of 45 Heytesbury Road, Elizabeth. That is the door Mum used when she left us. The door always slammed because it was attached to a spring. When she left we didn’t hear a thing. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 3. Hamming it up in the front yard. Mum tried to grow a lawn but it didn’t work. Nothing grew well at our house. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. Lisa, our little pizza pie, Linda, myself and Dorothy on the back porch. I get a feeling of emptiness when I look at pictures of this house. We were always hungry and our lives were empty. It was hard to feel love in this house. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 2. The train at the Elizabeth West shops. The things I saw from the front of this train still crash their way into my dreams and I wake up gasping for breath, hoping I never have to think about them again. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE) 3. If I saw this postcard I wouldn’t be booking my next holiday here in a hurry. I don’t know if ‘beautiful’ is the right way to describe Elizabeth in the early days, but the place had a lot of potential when they first built it. Some of that potential was reached; some was lost in the haze from the heat that rose from the red dirt. But what really makes a place great is the people that live there, and a lot of great people have come from Elizabeth, and still live there. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE)

  1. The Centre shops. This photo was taken near the front of the coffee shop. I walked through here on many a boiling hot day, running from one patch of shade to the next, trying desperately to stop my bare feet from being burned by the blistering heat of the concrete on the way to the swimming pool. Later on, I sprinted through the same shops at night, avoiding thugs who wanted to bash my head in, or running with a gang of my mates, trying to get away from the police. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE) 2. John and I in the driveway at Heytesbury Road. Behind us you can see the scrawny candle pines that Mum planted. On these trees there were small spikey pine cones that I used as ninja stars to throw at my sisters. (BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION) 3. In the summer this was the best place to be. The temperature would reach the one hundred mark and everybody in Elizabeth seemed to be on the verge of blowing a gasket. In the morning I would sit outside on the footpath, waiting for the pool to open. Then I would run in and dive to the bottom. It was cool and quiet down below the surface. But, unfortunately, I always had to come back up to the waiting world. When I’d been in so long that my skin began to wrinkle, I’d go and sit on the grass and daydream. Thinking about life. Well, food and girls anyway. (CITY OF PLAYFORD HISTORY SERVICE)

  1. Myself, Alan and Lisa sitting at the table, ready for breakfast. Reg and I would set the table the night before so we could eat as soon as we woke up. It also gave us a chance to eat cereal before we went to bed. 2. This is me in action, playing football after moving in with Reg. I spent most of my time as a young guy playing football. I thought I was really good, but I’m not sure I was. 3. Mum and Reg. Mum looked beautiful and happy then. But things would change. Reg looks surprised. He had a lot more surprises once we came along. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

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nbsp; 1. Aunty Dorrie with her nephew Reginald. She’s the one who first taught Reg to play piano. 2. Reginald Victor Barnes. This was before we met him. He looked kind of cool, like Buddy Holly, but when we saw him the first time we all laughed. Dad called him a big streak of nothing. But there was a lot to Reg. 3. Grandma and Grandpa. Reg’s parents. These guys were real salt-of-the-earth Aussies. No airs and graces. But they probably had skeletons in their closets too. I’m sure they did because my sister saw ghosts walking around their house at night. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. Reg’s grandmother, Mabel Evelyn Barnes. My sister Linda met her at Grandma’s house. Reg’s grandmother would talk to Linda at night and tell her about life and how to deal with it. The only problem was she had been dead for a long time before we moved to Australia. 2. Uncle John and his wife Tania. John was the rebel of the Barnes family – the black sheep until we came along. It wasn’t long until we made him look good. 3. These four brothers were all decent blokes. I liked them all. Uncle Tom, Reg’s youngest brother: a great guy who was a little wild when he was young, so he had a soft spot for us. John, who took me to speedway meetings and encouraged me to drink beer. Reg, dressed in his standard outfit: a cardigan and slacks. And Edward Barnes: Uncle Ted worked with Reg and was the boss at Kelvinator. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)

  1. Reg thought he was cool riding around on a scooter. Mum doesn’t look that impressed, although I think she is showing him a bit of leg there. Reg was probably more interested in her slippers. He would have wanted a pair too. 2. Dorothy, Lisa, myself and Alan on an outing with Reg to Mount Lofty. We weren’t used to family outings, but Reg insisted that the family do things together. Normal things. That’s what families do. 3. The same day out. A normal, healthy, happy family. At this point in time we might have been, but cold winds were starting to blow even then. Things wouldn’t last. Everything always fell apart. 4. I’m not sure when or where this was. I have a feeling that it might have been at Uncle John’s house. They had outside toilets but this was getting ridiculous. (ALL IMAGES: BARNES FAMILY COLLECTION)