Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  I was already away far too much. Jane and the kids stayed at home while I worked. This was causing problems. My dual personality was running wild. It got harder to come back to being a loving father and husband after coming off the road. I was damaging our lives.

  FRED DID A MAGNIFICENT job and we moved back into stage two of our little country home. It wasn’t quite as small anymore but it still had all its charm. The family was happy to be home. I toured and worked all over the country. Along the way I found I had to change management. Steve decided he’d been in the music business long enough and retired back to the country. Even with Steve’s history of wild investment banking and the CIA, the music industry had worn him down.

  ‘This business is full of crooks with no morals, Jimmy. I’m finished with it,’ he said one day. I thanked him. If it hadn’t been for Steve I’m not sure I would have been ready to get back into the swing of things. He gave me confidence. Especially with money.

  Money had always been a source of pain for me. Not having it reminded me of my childhood. I could still feel the shame of begging for money from the neighbours so that my brothers and sisters and I could eat. Or my mum crying every day, scratching to find enough money to put clothes on our backs. But having money opened up another can of worms. I didn’t know how to manage it. The more money I had, the more trouble I got into.

  I remember one day when I was stressing about the finance for my house, Steve pointed out, ‘You know, Jimmy, these guys in the bank just work there. It’s not their fucking money. They are paid to be there for you, so in reality they work for you. That’s the attitude you have to have when you deal with these bastards.’

  I wasn’t sure, but I trusted him. He was confident and calm about all the things that stressed me out. Particularly money. I think it’s easier to be confident when you have money or you’re used to having money. But I of course was always expecting it all to disappear, leaving me with nothing. This reappearing theme ran throughout my life.

  ‘How much do you need? Half a million? Fuck them, just ask for a million. They’ll give it to you without a fight.’

  He was right. The house was financed and I was up to my ears in debt before I could say, help! But Steve left and I had to fill the hole in my management. Steve had got on well with my agents, Mark Pope and Richard MacDonald, and he thought Mark was capable of taking over the job. Mark liked Steve and had worked closely with him, helping him with things he didn’t know about the music industry. Mark became my manager.

  I remember overhearing them talk one day. Mark was trying to dig into Steve’s somewhat mysterious past.

  ‘So what exactly was your business before managing Jimmy again, Steve?’ he casually asked, waiting for Steve to give away his darkest secrets.

  ‘If you must know, I was in the iron and steel business.’

  Mark was shocked. ‘You were in mining? I thought it was banking.’ Steve was even more mysterious than Mark thought.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. My wife stays home and irons and I go out and steal. Are you satisfied now?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  harder than Chinese algebra

  TOURING, 1986

  MY BAD HABITS WERE getting worse. Everything I was consuming was taking a toll on me. I was slow out of the gates. The shows lacked impact. It took me half the show to get over my hangover, and then in the second half I was too pissed to really fire up. I needed to do something to keep fit.

  I had met a lot of guys who did martial arts over the years, working backstage and so on, but there was one guy who I thought was the best. His name was Noel Watson. All his mates called him Crazy Horse, because he was completely crazy when he lost it. Noel was harder than Chinese algebra, but I had never seen him lose it. I rang him and asked him if he would come on the road and train me. I thought that getting fit would help me straighten myself up a bit, and I needed someone tough to make me do it. And Noel was about the toughest guy I had ever come across. He worked the doors at the clubs around Perth. I had seen him fight but it was always measured. He only used whatever force was completely necessary. I had seen a lot of guys who just went nuts and beat people half to death. Noel wasn’t like that at all, he was vicious but fair.

  I used to ask him about working doors. ‘How do you deal with these big guys that come through here? Doesn’t it worry you?’

  He just looked at me and smiled. ‘The bigger they are, the easier they are to hit.’ I got the feeling he liked the challenge.

  ‘There are certain places nobody can build muscle, Jimmy. You just got to know where they are and belt them where it hurts. Then it’s just like chopping down trees. Bang-bang-bang and they all fall.’

  I thought Noel could be security at night and train me during the day. Noel took his job very seriously. No one, and I mean no one, got near me unless Noel cleared it with me first. I came out of shows to find record company people standing outside in the rain. I would ask Noel, ‘Hey mate, why are these people outside the gig? They’re my record company and my mates.’

  He would look me in the eye and calmly say, ‘You said no one backstage so I threw them out.’

  So I had to be very specific with what I asked of Noel. He ended up being my best mate on the road. We would get up in the morning and no matter how hungover I was, he would make me run for miles and miles. Then we started to train, kicking bags until I felt my legs were going to snap. Punching pads until I could no longer lift my arms. Then we would go for lunch. He made me eat healthy and kept me in line. Well, at least until night-time, and then I did whatever I wanted. Night-time was my time. Noel would walk behind me, cleaning up the mayhem I left in my wake. When it got too wild for him he’d say, ‘I reckon we should call it a night now, Jim, or we’ll all get killed.’

  I would go home with him and then sneak out after he had gone to bed and continue on my rampage. But I got fit, regardless of how much I drank or snorted. I was doing hundreds of push-ups and running for miles and throwing thousands of kicks. But I needed to be more than fit. I needed to meditate, not medicate.

  IN ORDER TO MAKE things work in America, Gary Gersh needed to get me under control. My manager Mark Pope didn’t know the American market. Besides, Geffen felt he was a liability. He couldn’t get me on track. Then again, they thought that anybody they didn’t control was a liability. Gary looked for US management that would be tough and that knew how to sell records in the States.

  He came up with a couple of Canadian guys who were connected and happening in America. Bruce Allen had managed Bachman-Turner Overdrive. But he didn’t have time to manage me on his own so he recruited another Canadian manager to help him, Lou Blair. Lou was a big likeable guy who managed Loverboy. He was the size of a fridge and tough as nails but a teddy bear inside. They both liked my singing and wanted to be involved if they could get me under control. Better men have tried and failed, might I add. No one could control me. Never could and never will. The only one who had a chance of controlling me was me. And I wasn’t equipped emotionally or mentally to do it yet. These guys didn’t stand a chance.

  They secured me a number of dates throughout America supporting ZZ Top, starting January 1986. The promoter was a guy named Don Fox. He owned Beaver Productions and was very close to Bruce and Lou. Don had started out in the music business as a doorman in clubs around Chicago. He was a tough guy. So between Bruce, Lou and Don Fox, I think Gary had the toughest guys in North America ready to set me out on the right path, if I would listen.

  The management wanted the band to be clean and together and they didn’t want to pay them a lot of money. This would cause problems for me from the start. I had become very close with Tony Brock, who drummed on For the Working Class Man, and with Randy Jackson, who played bass. Both of these guys wanted to play the songs live because they liked the record we made. But the management didn’t want a bar of them. Tony liked to party with me, so they weren’t having him anywhere near the tour, or me for that matter. Randy, they said, was a liability
in middle America because he was black. When I heard this I wanted to sack them on the spot. I had never heard people talk like this before in my life. I was furious. Gary calmed me down by telling me I had heard them wrong and besides, Randy was doing other things and wasn’t available. I knew what I’d heard but I didn’t want to fight with Gary. I should have sacked them then and there and I regret that I didn’t. They wanted to put together a band out of Vancouver, guys they could control and trust to set me straight. I didn’t like it. I wanted to bring my live band from Australia but this was out of the question.

  I was touring in Australia until just before the ZZ tour started, so the band they hired started rehearsing even before I met them. I had never hired a band sight unseen before, or since come to think of it, so I was deeply concerned. But the management insisted. This was the only chance I had to get For the Working Class Man out to the people who would buy it. I knew that Geffen was on the verge of dropping the ball, so I agreed.

  I arrived in Vancouver with Noel. Noel was my safety net. He was as straight as they come, didn’t take any drugs, so I knew they couldn’t say no to him being there.

  We went into Bruce Allen’s office to say hello. ‘Hi Bruce. I’m ready to start touring. Oh, by the way, this is Noel, my karate instructor.’

  Bruce was behind his desk. There a heavy punching bag swinging behind him. I believe that when he wanted to intimidate people at meetings, he got up and punched it. He didn’t move when we walked in.

  ‘Hey Barnes.’

  Canadians tend to call people by their last names.

  ‘Hey Barnes. Let me talk to you alone for a minute.’

  He looked at me and then at Noel and then looked down at his desk.

  ‘Yeah, no worries mate. I’ll wait outside,’ Noel piped up and walked out, never taking his eyes off Bruce for a second.

  ‘What the fuck is this supposed to be? You’re here to tour, not fuck around punching things.’

  I was surprisingly calm. ‘Look Bruce, if you want me out on the road with a bunch of strangers, this is how I’m going to do it. Noel and I can train every day and keep it together for the shows, okay?’

  Bruce didn’t like it, but he agreed and motioned for Noel to come back in. ‘Listen here, karate boy. You better fucking do your job or I’ll come out there and show you how real men fucking fight. Do you understand?’ Bruce stood up and started punching his bag.

  Noel’s face went red. ‘You listen, motherfucker. You speak to me that way again and I’ll shove that heavy bag up your fucking arse. Do you understand?’ Noel leaned on the desk.

  ‘Settle down. I know you’ll do a good job. I was just setting the ground rules.’ Bruce was backpedalling as fast as he could without losing face and I knew it, so I jumped in to help.

  I grabbed Noel’s arm, which was rigid. He was ready to jump the desk and kill my new manager. ‘Thanks Bruce. Noel and I appreciate your concern and you don’t have to worry about us, okay?’ I slowly pulled Noel back from the desk and from certain death for Bruce and my career in America. At the very least, Bruce came very close to losing his teeth that day.

  ‘If that motherfucker ever talks to me like that again, I will rip him apart,’ Noel said as we walked out of the office.

  ‘I know, man. I know.’

  THE BAND WERE ALL great players but they played a lot lighter than I was accustomed to, so for three days I screamed like a banshee at them. ‘If you guys play like a bunch of pussies out there on stage with me, I will kill you.’

  They got the message. By the time we hit the road they were a lot tougher. Still not like my Australian band, but I liked the guys and they worked really hard to get things together.

  I remember they were styled by Big Lou. Now Lou was a good guy but I’m not sure he was known for his style, so it took a bit of fighting until they looked okay. Jeff Neill, the guitar player, wore the same thing every night. Jeans and a cut-off black T-shirt. I could deal with that. He looked and played like a rock musician. It was him and me up front and we became good friends. Jeff went on to move to Australia for many years, playing with me and writing songs. He played hard and loud. Every night on stage he put it all out there, leaving nothing in the tank for later. That’s why Jeff was the only one from the Canadian band who I kept on.

  But on tour things didn’t go that easy. The rest of the band played very well but there was something missing. They had all the moves and sounds but they didn’t hit hard enough. I thought that like most North American bands I’d seen, they had more front than grunt. And I needed more. I felt naked out there. I was alone.

  ZZ’s crowd were a lot like Cold Chisel’s crowd, or my crowd at home. They were there for one reason and one reason only. To see ZZ. I could understand that but I wasn’t used to it. Plus, like I said, I was training four hours a day and drinking heavily and using coke most nights. So I was a tad aggressive.

  We were playing a lot of shows in ice-skating rinks in towns like Bismarck, North Dakota. They would cover the ice with wood and set up on top. It was midwinter so the shows were freezing cold. The temperature didn’t get above freezing and the wind chill outside was twenty below. ZZ’s crowd were hoons. I know this because most of my crowd were the same, wild bastards out for a good time. After one or two songs they didn’t recognise, they got bored and started throwing coins at the band. One night I had had enough.

  ‘Throw them again and I’ll jump off this stage and fucking smash you,’ I yelled at the audience. The crowd let out a roar and bang! I was hit by about thirty coins. I was about to jump when the Canadian tour manager grabbed me, trying desperately to keep me on stage and out of jail. I wanted to kill them but bit my lip and kept singing. When I came off stage one of ZZ’s crew took me aside and tried to console me. He had a Southern drawl and was a good guy.

  ‘You know, Jimmy, here in America people are just like that. They will throw shit at you if they don’t know you. We all have to go through it. So relax man, and have a drink and sit up here side of stage with me and watch the show.’

  I went to the bus and snorted about two grams of coke and grabbed a large vodka and went side of stage ready to look for the arseholes that were throwing shit. But I got sidetracked by Billy Gibbons. He played guitar so well I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I got over it, until next time.

  WE HARDLY EVER HAD hotel rooms. The management were saving money by keeping us on the tour bus. This meant we would do a show, travel all night to the next town and then hang around all day in the backstage area, waiting to play again. This went on for months. I would have gone crazy had Noel not been there.

  Every day we would wake up and look out the window and try to work out where the fuck we were. We’d go inside to the backstage and shower and then Noel would crack the whip.

  ‘Right, boy. Let’s run.’

  And out into the snow we would go. Running five to ten miles a day, the wind cutting through the scarf I had wrapped around my face and biting at my skin.

  ‘Keep up. If you stop now, you’ll fucking die out here,’ Noel would shout over the wind. Then we would sprint back to the gig and find a space somewhere in the backstage area to train. Next Noel would make me go through my katas, a series of movements strung together into a sort of dance – only this dance, when done properly, was the choreography to a deadly attack or a way to repel multiple attackers. Each movement took different stances that I had to hold until my legs burned. Each stance held the secret to a way to disarm an opponent. Then snap! A combination of punches and kicks would bring you back to the centre, ready for the next assault. I loved it. I loved having some sort of discipline in my life. I had to focus or else Noel would work me over. He never beat me up, but he made me feel a lot of pain just by the workload he put on me. I can look back at those times and see that Noel kept me alive. No one else on the road had any control over me. Especially myself. But Noel got me up and kicked my arse every day. I wish I’d had a better attitude when I was learning all of this. It could have b
een more useful to me. But I didn’t.

  We would eat lunch and then take it easy for a while. Around three o’clock Noel would get me into another session. ‘Come on, Jim. You can’t be a ninja if you don’t train hard.’

  We used to go at it for about four hours a day. Every day. Lifting weights, punching focus pads and kicking for hours. The roadies from ZZ would wander over to check us out. ‘What are you crazy Australian fuckers doing over here?’

  Noel would turn to them. ‘Fuck off or we’ll use you as the punching bag, fat boy. Okay?’

  They never bothered us again. Dusty, the bass player, came over wanting to train but we scared him off. I remember he was watching and every time I took my eyes off what Noel was trying to teach me, Noel made me do fifty push-ups.

  ‘Get down and give me fifty, motherfucker.’

  I dropped to the ground and struggled through them.

  ‘Don’t you look at these other guys. I’m the one teaching you. You concentrate on what we’re doing. Understand?’

  I would be dragging myself up. ‘Yeah, I got it,’ I would say under my breath.

  ‘Hey, look at me. Do you understand?’ He was very serious about this.

  ‘Yes, sensei,’ I would shout. And we would be back into class. No one wanted to train with us after a while. They all kept their distance.

  By seven o’clock I was pumped and ready to perform. Noel had done his work and he would leave me to get ready. As soon as he was gone I would start drinking and snorting lashings of coke and by eight o’clock I was crazed.

  I WAS MISSING MY family. Jane couldn’t come out on tour with me straightaway as we were just about to have another baby. It was so hard to leave home and miss the birth but the US management had made it clear that I either started the tour when I was booked or I didn’t do it at all. This was the only chance I had to take on America live. So I went. Bruce and Lou were old-school managers. Women didn’t belong on the road anyway, as far as they were concerned. They wanted me working hard and chasing girls, all the things that rock singers were supposed to do. But I knew that I needed Jane and the family with me or I would fall apart. Being alone reminded me of being a kid. That feeling of emptiness was back and I drank more to try to drown it out. I needed my Jane with me.