Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  We got home reasonably early but a bit under the weather and I went to bed. After a little while my door opened and Jane came in to see if I was all right. She just wanted to cuddle and say hi. Then I heard Phorn yell out, ‘Jane. Jane. Are you in there? We don’t want you two in there alone. We already told you that.’

  Jane kissed me and went to talk with them. Now the walls weren’t that thick and Jane had left the door slightly ajar, so I could hear everything that was said. They were understandably upset.

  ‘I told you that I didn’t want you going into his room at night, young lady,’ John said firmly.

  Then I heard Phorn raise her voice. ‘You stay out of there. What are you doing in there anyway? We don’t even know him. Or his family. Can he even read and write?’

  Now, Jane’s mum and dad had been very nice but I’d had enough to drink to make me a little intolerant. I wasn’t going to stay in my room while they spoke like this about me. If they didn’t like me, which I could understand, then I wouldn’t stay in their house. So I got up and packed my bag before the maid could. Jane came past the room and I told her I was leaving. Jane decided she was coming with me.

  ‘Where are we going to go?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll find somewhere. Anywhere.’

  We checked into one of the big hotels near the Tokyo Tower and went out to drink some more. Jane had introduced me to a restaurant called Inakaya. I loved it and I think we ate there about four times over the next few days. I have compulsive tendencies, in case you didn’t know. If I like something, I do it to death and then do it some more. This is something that has caused me a lot of problems over the years. Anyway, we drank and ate and ate and drank and then drank some more, every night staggering back to the hotel and falling asleep in each other’s arms. It was great, although I noticed that drinking so much sake seemed to make me a bit aggressive. I know what you’re thinking – I’m aggressive anyway, and you’re right. But I think that the lead in the petrol from so many cars and the sake were a lethal combination. I was nearly getting into fights with strangers just walking down the street. Eventually Jane and I started to fight a little too.

  AFTER A PARTICULARLY BIG night we walked into my hotel. I noticed that there were what appeared to be hotel security following us through the lobby right to the lifts. I pressed the button to call the lift when one of the men said, ‘Excuse me sir. You cannot take any prostitutes up to your room.’

  I stopped and looked around. There was only Jane and myself standing there.

  ‘What did you say?’ I snapped.

  ‘No prostitutes are allowed in guest rooms, sir.’

  He was looking at Jane. I was dressed in faded blue jeans with holes in them and a leather jacket. Jane was in a short, short miniskirt with thick eye makeup and a leather jacket and we had both been staggering through the lobby of the hotel. They had mistaken Jane for a hooker and I was ready to kill them.

  When you check into hotels overseas they ask for your passport and Jane had some sort of diplomatic stamp in hers. If they had checked before they acted they might have been a little more careful what they said. But now it was too late.

  ‘Hey mate. This is my girlfriend, you fucking idiot. Now get out of my way.’ And I pushed my way past them. But they followed us upstairs and stopped us again. I went nuts. ‘Go downstairs and get my bill ready. I am checking out and your hotel is going to be in big trouble. I am a famous rock star in Australia and this will be all over the papers.’ (I don’t pull the rock star card unless I’m really desperate and drunk, by the way.) ‘And this young lady is the daughter of an Australian diplomat. You guys have really fucked up.’

  Jane and I went to our room to pack our bags. We were furious. I punched holes in the walls and smashed the television set and generally threw everything in the room around. Then we went downstairs.

  ‘I’m not staying in this fucking country another minute,’ I announced to Jane, expecting her to join me. ‘I hate this place,’ I went on as I stormed around the hotel.

  We got to reception and the staff had obviously realised their error and were waiting to apologise. ‘Very sorry, sir. Please accept our apology and let us make it up to you by offering you your room for free.’

  They bowed graciously and waited for my reply. It was too late to back down. I hadn’t fitted in anywhere since I’d left Australia. I was out of my class at Jane’s family home and out of my depth in Tokyo. I was embarrassed and angry and the only way I knew how to deal with the situation was the way my mum had dealt with things: smash up the place and burn every bridge that I had crossed.

  ‘I accept nothing, mate. It’s fucking hara-kiri for you, pal. Now fuck off and give me my passport.’

  As we left the hotel I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I was in a blind rage. Had I thought Jane would come with me or had I not thought at all? I think it was the latter.

  ‘Where are we going to go now, baby?’ I looked at Jane. She paid no attention to me. She had already organised for someone to pick her up and I was alone.

  ‘Take me to Narita Airport and don’t spare the fucking horsepower.’ The cab driver didn’t know what I was talking about so I told him slowly, ‘Please take me to the airport.’

  I jumped on the first plane that would take me to Britain. As it took off I could see the sun rising in the east. Over the next few hours I drank the plane out of sake. I had fucked it all up again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  this hotel’s a cesspool

  PLAZA HOTEL, KINGS CROSS, 1980

  MY FIRST TRIP TO Scotland was an eye opener. I immediately knew that this was where I was from. Everywhere I looked I saw glimpses of myself in the people I met. On the street, in the bars, in fact everywhere. Some of the people reminded me of good things in my life but a lot reminded me of the bad. So I was happy to have gone there but I was also happy to leave. I wasn’t quite ready to confront all my demons yet. I had to get back to Australia. The album had been released and we were ready to start work again.

  The band had run off in all directions looking for inspiration and a chance to put some distance between us. We had lived in each other’s pockets for a long time. I think that if we hadn’t gotten away from each other we might have broken up earlier than we did.

  Just like my pilgrimage to Scotland, Don had made a pilgrimage to New York, in search of ideas. I’m sure he found some in the coffee shops and bars of downtown New York. I figured Don had spoken to every character that inhabited the Cross and he needed some new people to write about. New York was full of wild and wonderful people. I don’t know if that’s what inspired him, but his new songs were darker and more worldly.

  So, after a short break, we all assembled back in Sydney with a new lease on life. Rested and ready to work. Well, ready to work anyway. I hadn’t really rested that much. I’d hardly slept while I was away unless I passed out cold. In the UK I drank a lot, smoked a lot and snorted a lot of drugs. Speed, coke, whatever I could lay my hands on. So it was good to get back to work and some sort of routine before I died.

  EAST WAS A SMASH. A huge success. Much bigger than any of us had imagined. Of course Countdown was right behind us. They were in our corner now. The people who ran Countdown, including Molly, were smart, and they knew that we were good for their show. They didn’t need to be fighting with all the best rock bands in the country. They already had a feud going on with Midnight Oil, who refused to have anything to do with them. But we knew that as much as we disliked aspects of the show, it was better to use it for our own good than fight against it. Next time we played, we were allowed to have live vocals. ‘Cheap Wine’ became almost a regular on the show. They even played the film clip we made for the song. I was blasted across TV screens all over the country, half naked and wearing eyeliner. We were wearing them down, bit by bit. Record sales kept climbing and so did the numbers of people who came through the doors at our shows. We would use Countdown as much as they used us.

  We shot the cover for East the d
ay I arrived back from overseas. We were set up in an apartment in Elizabeth Bay somewhere, in the same block of apartments where we would eventually shoot the film clip for ‘Cheap Wine’. The idea was to base the cover on a famous artwork, The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was murdered in the bath and this painting was one of the most famous images of the French Revolution, one of the first times politics and art collided. East was an album where Don, in particular, had lyrically painted a picture of an underlying feeling of discontent with social justice in our country. This idea, this image, seemed to fit with that feeling. I turned up for the shoot with a headband that I had picked up in Tokyo. The headband had a bit of a story to go along with it. There had been protests in the streets of Tokyo while I was there. The protesters called it the Spring Offensive and a lot of the marchers wore headbands with slogans like ‘Death Before Dishonour’ and ‘Fight for Freedom’ written on them. I liked the idea of this so I grabbed one of their headbands, not knowing what I would do with it. For some reason I brought it along to the photoshoot. It seemed perfect for the shot, so I wrapped it around my head and lay in the bath. Everyone loved the image. I wore the headband for years.

  It wasn’t until about ten years later that a Japanese fan stopped me after a show and told me, ‘Hey Jimmy. On the cover of your album East, you have the headband on upside down.’

  What could I do? I laughed and pretended I knew all along.

  THE GUYS IN THE band will all have different memories of things like this but I remember us meeting at the Plaza Hotel. Don wrote a song about this place:

  I’ve been living

  In the Plaza Hotel

  It ain’t the Hilton

  But I live well.

  Ian had to sing this song because I refused to.

  Anyway, at this meeting I said to the band and management, ‘I want a pay rise.’

  ‘Er, not really a good time to be asking for more money at the moment.’

  ‘Why the fuck not? We’ve just done a sold-out tour. Don’t you guys want more money to live on? Look where you’re living.’ I looked around the sleazy hotel room, trying to make eye contact with one of the band.’ Any one of them would do.

  ‘Na. I don’t need any more,’ Steve said. ‘What would I fucking spend it on anyway? I got everything I need, I can drink at the gigs and I’ve got money for chip butties and I got a place to stay. What fucking else do I want?’

  ‘Look at this fucking place. It’s a shithole,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Looks good to me,’ Steve quickly shot back, in his thick Liverpudlian accent that made everything sound like a joke. Maybe he was kidding. I wasn’t sure anymore.

  ‘Well, I need more,’ I stated. ‘Twenty-five fucking dollars a week is not enough for me to live on. We’re one of the biggest bands in the country and I think I should be able to earn enough to rent a house.’

  Don was next to speak up. ‘You could stay in the hotel like me.’ Now Don was in a different position to the rest of us. He was making a lot of money from his publishing by this time. None of us begrudged him making the money because he worked really hard, writing some of the best songs we had ever heard for the band. I felt privileged to be singing them. But Don could afford to stay anywhere he wanted. He liked living in the Cross. I think the filth and the desperation of the place were inspiring to him somehow. But not to me. I’d seen enough filth and I’d lived through enough desperation.

  ‘This hotel’s a cesspool. It’s full of cockroaches. They ran over me in bed when I was sleeping when I stayed here!’

  ‘You could just pull your bed away from the wall a bit,’ Steve quipped.

  ‘I did. They fucking pulled it back.’ We all laughed; it was an old joke but a goody. But I was sort of serious. ‘The place is full of hookers and drug dealers.’

  ‘And you have a problem with that suddenly, do you?’

  I wanted to punch Steve in the face. ‘No, I don’t actually, but the doors don’t lock properly and you have to share a bathroom with the hookers’ fucking filthy old drunken clients. It’s fucked.’ I was sick of talking about it. Couldn’t they see that? ‘And that’s why I won’t stay here.’

  ‘I think it’s okay.’ Ian had finally joined the argument.

  I glared at him. ‘Glad you like it. You stay here. I don’t fucking want to. Anyway, I want more money.’

  ‘You’ll just waste it if we give it to you,’ Rod said, baiting me.

  ‘I’m allowed to waste my own fucking money. Where the fuck is it anyway? Give me some.’

  ‘Well. Now is not a good time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a business thing, Jim. You wouldn’t understand. It’s about cash flow or the lack of it, if you really must know.’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do need to fucking know.’

  ‘The accountant tells me that this is not a good time to outlay money. We’ve invested all the money in a few projects that should pay you guys big dividends if you can just be a little bit patient.’ Rod’s voice always became calm and monotone when he tried to sell us on something. He was a hard boy and there was always an underlying touch of aggression to what he said, but he never tried to intimidate us. He had been on the road too long, like us, and he could just sound aggressive at times. I’m glad I never had to fight him. I reckon he could go, but I trusted Rod with my life. He was one of us. He was honest as the day is long and hardworking, but I still wasn’t sure we were investing wisely.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘Listen, you ungrateful bastards don’t know the work that your accountant is doing behind the scenes.’ Rod’s voice was raised slightly. He knew our accountant was honest and doing his best too. So did we.

  ‘Is he even a real accountant yet?’ I was asking for trouble now. This subject always got Rod’s back up. Our accountant was doing an accounting course through the mail at one time. ‘He might be out of his depth.’ I kept digging.

  ‘I think he’s doing the right things with your money,’ Rod defended him.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, he’s invested in a really great gold scheme we heard about. Nobody has caught onto it yet. You guys are going to clean up.’

  This particular scheme ended up being known as the ‘bottom of the harbour scheme’. It was illegal and that’s why no one was talking about it. We lost a fortune. It’s an expensive exercise to run a band at the best of times, but when what little money you have is involved in schemes like this, it doesn’t help.

  ‘Well, I hope it pays off soon.’

  It never did, but at least none of us went to jail. Another thing we did on his advice was buy a block of apartments in Glebe. ‘You guys are going to make a killing with this. We got them for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. We can strata title them and sell them off and you will make at least a cool million. Can’t go wrong.’

  Famous last words there. We sold them four years later for less than we paid for them. It appears we were the only people to lose money from the property boom in Sydney.

  ‘Well, meeting over then,’ Rod said.

  ‘Wait a minute. I can’t live on twenty-five dollars a week.’

  ‘Leave it with me and I’ll look at the books and see what we can do. Good talking. Very productive, I thought.’ Rod smiled and walked to the door.

  ‘Fuck, Rod.’

  He stopped. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said and winked at me.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘We really should have meetings like this, every week. We get so much more done. Bye.’ Then he disappeared into the corridor and was gone, quicker than one of the hookers’ clients.

  ‘What the fuck happened? I never got an answer?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, he’ll get back to you,’ Don drawled. ‘Anybody want to get a coffee?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m in,’ Steve and Ian said at once.

  ‘Yeah, me too, I’m starving.’ Phil was up and heading for the door.

  The
band walked off, leaving me alone with my friends the cockroaches in their lovely hotel. This had been a typical Cold Chisel meeting.

  I was propositioned by a young lady as I walked down the hall towards the stairs.

  ‘Sorry love. You’re asking the wrong bloke. I’m a musician. I’m broke. Maybe another time.’

  AFTER SIX MONTHS JANE moved back to Sydney and we moved in with some friends while we found a place to live. My old friend Vince Lovegrove and his girlfriend of the time let Jane and I live at their house for a while, but it was too wild a time for all concerned. Vince was crazier than I was, so we needed to find our own house. Jane’s best friend Victoria was spending more and more time in Sydney and I introduced her to Mark Opitz. They immediately took to each other, so we all thought it would be a good idea to move in together. Jane found us a house in Brown Street in Paddington.

  It was a huge terrace house, much nicer than anywhere I’d ever stayed before. I was used to living in hovels but Jane needed somewhere nice. I liked it. Jane made a home for us. The house was on three levels and Jane and I decided we were moving into the ground floor. So we took the ballroom on the ground floor as our bedroom. We didn’t have lot of furniture but it was a great room. And we had room to dance if we liked. No, I never really danced. Mark and Victoria moved in together onto the second floor. I was working with Mark and living with him. We all became the best of friends. Mark and I talked about music all day and night, driving the girls crazy. He had a great sense of melody and had a million ideas on how I could make music, with or without Cold Chisel. Mark and I talked about making solo records long before I actually made one.