by Jimmy Barnes
As she got out of the car I made a quiet noise. ‘Sssssss.’
The dogs’ ears all pricked up and they looked around to see who I could want them to attack.
‘Sssssss,’ I said again and they ran out the gate, barking like the Hound of the Baskervilles at Jane.
Jane screamed and jumped back into her car.
‘Boys. Boys. Come. Come here,’ I barked back at the dogs and they ran towards me wagging their tails.
Jane got out of the car again and looked around.
‘Ssssss,’ I whispered but this time Jane could hear me. The dogs went into attack mode and ran at her.
She jumped back in the car, yelling from the slightly opened window, ‘Why did you do that?’
I was laughing out loud.
‘That’s not funny. I don’t like it or you.’ She was clearly upset.
‘Sorry, it was a joke. They won’t hurt you. Come on in, I won’t do it again.’
Jane looked worried but the dogs were back in the yard, standing behind me by this time, so she slowly, nervously, got out of the car and headed to the gate.
‘Sssss,’ I started one last time but grabbed the dogs before they could run. I didn’t think I could get away with it again.
Jane wasn’t happy with the way our second date had started but she soon settled down. ‘My dog is bigger than any of these little runts,’ she laughed and proceeded to tell me about the hound she owned, a huge Great Dane with an appetite for small dogs. I knew I liked her when I first met her but now I was sure.
The party went well. Things were a bit uncomfortable at first but Jane was so cool and poised and never let anything upset her. I thought she was amazing. Bernadette was fine too, but Jan wasn’t sure about either of them. Or me for that matter. She left early. Jane and I laughed our way through the evening. I liked everything about her and she forgave me for sicking the dogs on her. I wanted to see her again and soon.
SHE LIVED IN BEN Boyd Road in Neutral Bay and I arranged to see her the following week. I went over and sat while Jane and her friends played bad music and smoked bongs. These were not the sort of parties I was used to, but I was on my best behaviour. Until one night. ‘Can I borrow your Mini? I’ve got a show to do and I’m really late.’
Jane was happy to lend it to me. But after the show I got drunk and couldn’t drive it back to her. The next day I went away on tour, leaving the car at my house. Jane tracked it down and rang the house to get her car back. Jan from Punt Road, the other girlfriend I never had, was back again and answered the phone. ‘Yeah, he’s gone. The keys are here but you know he doesn’t care about you. He’s my boyfriend, not yours.’
Jane was furious, not about me but about the car. ‘I wouldn’t have him as a boyfriend. I only want my car, that’s all.’ And she hung up.
When Jane tracked me down, somewhere in Melbourne, it wasn’t to let me know she had the car back but to tell me in no uncertain terms, ‘You have no manners and a gentleman would never take someone’s car and not bring it back. And I never want to see you again.’
She was right, I was no gentleman. I felt bad and tried to call her. Eventually she answered one of my calls, and luckily for me, she gave me another chance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
what a girl she was
SYDNEY, 1980
EARLY IN 1980, I moved in with Jane in Neutral Bay. It appeared she liked me too. We were from different worlds but when those worlds collided, sparks flew. We laughed a lot and we had big fights but, most important of all, we liked being together. But I was in a rock’n’roll band, touring relentlessly, and Jane was at university, studying. She liked pretty, girly things, like Laura Ashley print clothes and flowers and soft music, whereas I wore leather jackets and ripped denim and lived in cheap motels and screamed for a living. And I didn’t know who or what Laura Ashley was.
Her world looked, sounded and smelled different to mine. I liked being in her world a lot, but I was a stranger in a strange land. I had never felt the way I did with her, but I was scared at the same time. I had an underlying feeling that I didn’t belong in her world. Jane tried her best to make me feel a part of it, but nothing she could do would fix the problems I had. I met her sisters, they were great girls: confident, poised and beautiful. They were also normal, happy, and they all got on together. This was new to me. My family couldn’t be in the same room for very long before one of us started a fight. I never wanted our two families to meet.
Although Jane smoked pot, she was very straight. Well, compared to the people I knew. Until Jane met me the idea of snorting drugs was crazy to her. When she saw me snorting a line of speed one day, she was shocked.
‘What are you doing, Jimmy?’
I thought everybody knew about drugs. ‘I’m just having a line. Do you want one?’ I didn’t know that she had never seen speed before, let alone done it.
She nervously watched me chop and lay out a line and then she said, ‘Are you going to breathe those solids into your lungs? You’re not, are you?’
I laughed. I thought she was kidding. ‘You bet I am.’
Ssnniiiiiffff! I snorted up a long white line of speed. It burned like hell and Jane panicked.
‘Are you all right, Jimmy?’
My eyes were watering and my face was grimacing and I let out a groan. ‘Ahhhhh. Fuck. What? Yeah, baby, I’m good. I’m great in fact. Do you want one too?’
Jane looked at me like I was crazy. I was slightly crazed but only a little bit crazy at this point. A few days later, Jane decided to try a line too. I wish I had never given it to her. She didn’t need this shit. I didn’t need this shit. But she did it and almost from day one we fought even more. Speed makes a person aggressive. Jane and I were both full-on people, so this just made us worse.
Jane became intolerant of idiots. I was used to them. I met them every day in my world. We would try to go out for a quiet drink. We would smoke pot and then sneak into a club and sit up the back. Order a few drinks and sit and play Space Invaders. Space Invaders was a new thing and was huge at the time, with tables in coffee shops and bars all over the country. So this night we were in a bar in the Cross drinking and playing games. There was a band playing up the front but we weren’t watching them.
A guy walked up out of the blue and shouted over the music, ‘Hey Jimmy. Jimmy. Hey, remember me?’
I could tell he was drunk just by the tone of his voice. I looked at him quickly between shots and said, ‘Nope.’
But he persisted. ‘Come on, Barnesy. You fucking remember me, don’t you?’
I looked up again. ‘No, I don’t.’
He was getting annoying by this point. ‘Hey Barnesy, come on, man. The last two times you’ve seen me, you’ve fucking belted me. Come on, man.’
This made sense to me so I looked up again and said, ‘Keep it up and it’ll be fucking three times.’
But this guy wouldn’t give up. He kept hassling me. ‘Your memory’s fucked, Barnesy. You know me, don’t you?’
I was shuffling my feet into position so I could jump up and smash him. Suddenly I spotted Jane getting up at the other side of the table and bang! She hit him in the face. Dropped him where he stood.
As he lay on the floor I looked at her. What a girl she was. She turned to me and said, ‘I thought I’d do it to save you doing it. Besides, you would have hurt him.’
The guy was carried out of the club by a couple of bouncers, bleeding from Jane’s blow, but he still kept shouting, ‘Jesus, Barnesy! Your memory’s fucked. You know me!’
I looked at Jane and smiled. I hated her having to put up with my life and the people it attracted. ‘Do you want to go home?’
She smiled and picked up her bag. ‘Sure. Let’s go.’
But not every night went so well. Other times we would end up arguing with each other. Jane would scream at me and walk off down the street alone. I always followed her just in case she needed me. We started fighting more and more. It wasn’t only the people around me that rubbe
d Jane the wrong way. My behaviour was bad too. I drank too much and I took too many drugs. I would go out for a drink and not come home for days. Something had to give.
AFTER A COUPLE OF months, Jane announced that she was leaving. ‘Since I met you I have quit uni and I started taking hard drugs. I am not this sort of person. I don’t want to live like this anymore.’
I had known the day would come. In fact, I knew I had driven her to it. She chose to try to live rather than stay and die with me. I would have done the same if I was her.
I pleaded with her to stay. ‘I can change. I love you. Don’t leave.’ But we both knew I wasn’t going to change.
‘I’m going to live with my parents in Japan. It would be better if you didn’t follow me.’
JANE LEFT FOR JAPAN in April 1980, and I was heartbroken. I had fucked up the best thing in my life. It would not be the last time I did this.
But she made one mistake. She told me where she was going. It would have been better if she had just left. I would have been in pain, but not this pain. I knew where she was and I thought she didn’t want me. This was a pain I’d thought I’d never feel again. I’d spent most of my life not ever letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. But I was hurting now. I hadn’t seen it coming. I knew I liked her a lot but I’d liked other girls before her. This was different. Jane going away left a hole inside me. It wasn’t even the emptiness that I had become used to as a child. This was something else.
I tried all the things that had masked pain for me in the past. I drank more, I took more drugs, I filled the gap every way I could. But it was still there. Gnawing away at my insides. Nothing worked.
Jane would call me from Japan and for a while everything brightened up. Then as soon as she was off the phone I was left with a vast sense of loss. I wanted to run to Japan and see her. But we were in the middle of making the album East, an album that was starting to feel right. There were a lot of reasons for this. The band was tight, the sort of tight you can only get from doing thousands of shows, and that helped the recording process immensely. The other big difference between East and the previous two records was Mark Opitz, a young producer fresh from working at Alberts. He had been an engineer for Vanda and Young and it appeared he had watched what they were doing quite closely, whether they knew this or not. Mark came to us with a refreshing style that brought the best out of us.
We had started off trying him out just for a single. WEA were desperate for us to have a hit. I heard recently that they were sick of waiting and were on the verge of dropping us unless we had a breakthrough. We certainly weren’t aware of that at the time. We were oblivious to record companies and anything they wanted. We only did what we wanted. Anyway, we had spent a few days with Mark in late 1979 recording at Paradise, a new studio, to get a feel for each other. The result was ‘Choirgirl’, the first single off East. Jane told me later that before her mum Phorn moved to Japan, she heard the song on the radio while they were in a car together. The song came out around the time of the first boat people crisis. So refugees were talked about on the radio all the time.
‘Looking like a choirgirl. Crying like a refugee . . .’
‘Listen to these stupid people,’ Phorn laughed.
‘Looking like a choirgirl. Crying like a refugee . . .’
‘Why are they singing about refugees? Silly people. They would probably think that we were refugees too.’ Jane and her mum both laughed as ‘Choirgirl’ sang out from the radio.
That song was never really understood by the public. It sold well and was all over the radio but no one ever picked up on what it was about. They all thought it was a sweet pop song about doctors and nurses. It was in fact a very dark song about abortion. But we never told anyone.
Mark helped us start to find our sound – the sound that we had when we played live – in the studio. Not only that but he helped us find a whole new set of dynamics that would enhance the band’s live sound. Softer, cleaner, but still aggressive enough to fit into our live show. It was the start of a good friendship. The song was a hit and everyone, including the band, wanted us to make the new album with Mark.
AFTER THE FIASCO THAT was Breakfast at Sweethearts I owed it to the band and myself to see the new record through. But as important as the record was, my thoughts were constantly with Jane. When I should have been immersed in a song, I was waiting on a call.
I even wrote a song about Jane leaving. ‘Rising Sun’ was written because that was all I was thinking about. What was Jane doing? Had I lost her? How was I going to win her back? I thought that writing a song about her would impress her, let her know how much she meant to me. So I grabbed my only guitar, a black and white Fender Telecaster. I remember I bought this guitar because it looked like the one Bruce Springsteen was playing on the cover of Born to Run. Maybe I thought if I had the same guitar, some of that songwriting magic would rub off on me. But Bruce was safe. It would take a lot more than a Fender to help me write songs.
Twelve months earlier, a fan had handed me a cassette of Johnny Burnette and the Rock’n’Roll Trio as I was leaving a show – the cassette I used to carry around in my kit bag, remember? He looked like an old-school rocker: no front teeth, with slicked back hair and a leather jacket. I remember him saying, ‘Hey Jimmy. Why don’t you have a listen to this? This is the best rock’n’roll album ever written.’
He had a bit of a glint in his eye, and as I was about to drive overnight, interstate with the band, I was looking for something new to listen to for the next few hours. ‘Thanks mate. I’ll give it a go. But if it’s shit, you know it’s going out the window, don’t you?’
‘Yeah mate, I know. But trust me, you’ll love this.’
I was sceptical but he was confident so I jumped in the car and banged it into the cassette player. It stayed there until the band couldn’t listen to it anymore. I loved it. I never knew the guy who gave it to me but if he’s reading this, thanks. You saved my drive and inspired me to write some rock’n’roll.
So I drew on what I had. I’d spent months listening to that cassette. I wanted to write a rockabilly song and ‘Rising Sun’ was what I got. It was just a little story but it rocked. It was a bit shallow but I can look back at it now and see that I was thinking about much deeper things. I just couldn’t write about them yet.
COLD CHISEL ALWAYS TEETERED on the edge of getting too nice for my liking. I spent most of my time in the band trying to stop that happening. I only wanted to write rock songs. Steve was writing pop. Very good pop, but lighter than Don and I were writing. Ian was experimenting with funk and so was Phil, so it was up to Don and myself to write up-tempo songs.
Don spent a lot of time writing for East. He came up with a lot of songs about outsiders. We were outsiders, and we were surrounded by outsiders and misfits. There was something about the outcasts from society that fascinated him. Maybe that’s why he liked me. I felt like I’d been locked up all my life. These were my people. Don was trying to understand these people and I was trying to outrun them. Don’s songs got too close for comfort for me sometimes. When he presented ‘Standing on the Outside’ to the band, I felt like I was singing a song that came from somewhere deep inside my soul. I had been standing on the outside all my life, never being allowed to taste or touch the world that was always just out of my reach. ‘Star Hotel’ let me sing about not being good enough, not being wanted or worth anything, and wanting to tear the world down because of it.
So this record was special to me on many levels but I still couldn’t wait until we finished it and our shows, so I could go to see Jane. But I was preparing for the worst. If she didn’t want me I would not allow myself to get hurt. I planned to go on to the UK, catch up with an old girlfriend and visit Scotland for the first time. I was setting myself up for failure. Jane and I continued to speak every day, and every night I would get hammered and give myself another reason to feel that she didn’t need me in her life. Still, the calls got longer and longer until the day I left.
&n
bsp; LIFE ON THE ROAD is as far from reality as you can get. You spend eight to ten hours a day driving to somewhere that you know nothing about, and when you get there, you’re too tired to feel anything or see anything the place has to offer. Instead, you go to an area where real light doesn’t shine, a place where real people aren’t allowed, and that’s where you stay until you walk out onto a stage and into a world that is made up of people’s hopes and expectations being pushed at you. Expectations that you have no hope of meeting or even understanding, so you twist and turn and go berserk until you drag the audience kicking and screaming into the mess that you have created, using volume, booze and drugs and whatever else comes to hand. Sometimes it explodes into something spectacular and other times it just fizzles out, lost in smoke and mirrors. Whatever happens, it rarely feels real, and unless you can detach from it somehow, it will drag you down.
We had the music to keep us grounded, but our roadies Billy and Alan didn’t, and as much as we tried to make them feel a part of it, it was our world and not theirs. Although these two guys were real hard men compared to the rest of Chisel, we had been doing this for a long time and it was our lives. These guys were just visitors in our lives, and they started to crumble under the pressure that a couple of years on the road can have on a person. It ground Billy and Alan down and eventually killed them.
After a few years on the road with us, they drifted off and worked with other people, but it was never the same. They thought they’d found a home working with my brother’s band, but on the night of 12 April 1980, somewhere just out of Canberra, Billy, Alan and another roadie called John Affleck were driving on a straight road, with next to no trees for miles. They blew a front tyre and the truck crashed into the one tree by the side of that road in five miles. John told me later that he thought Billy, who was in the front passenger seat, was killed outright. Alan, who was driving, was trapped behind the wheel, and flames were starting to flare up under the truck. John, who had been sleeping in the bunk behind the seats, was knocked out cold by the impact, but Alan managed to wake him up and drag him to the front so he could get out of the wreck, knowing that he himself was trapped and had no escape. The truck burst into flames seconds after John fell out, and Billy and Alan were gone.