Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  Jackie was born in February 1986. Jackie was a big baby. He weighed eight-pounds-ten. Not big by my standards – I weighed fourteen pounds. So, no one was big compared to me. But he was our biggest baby. He came on tour at the age of two weeks. From the safety of home straight out into the Chicago winter with a wind chill temperature of thirty below. Maybe that’s why Jackie still loves playing shows in new places every night.

  He is soft and gentle. Growing up with three sisters taught him how to be respectful of girls, and besides, his sisters were much tougher than he was and would have killed him if he wasn’t. Everybody loves Jackie. He is a good boy, smart and very, very talented. Jackie is over six feet tall – by the time he was fifteen he towered over me. He doesn’t get his size from me or my side of the family. I don’t know many tall Glaswegians. We are all well below six feet. We think it comes from Jane’s Chinese grandfather, who was six-feet-four. So, Jackie looks like a tall, Asian version of me.

  I HAD TO FIGHT with the management to get Jane and the kids out to the US. For it to work with Jane, and the three kids, and Anne Maree the nanny from Jindabyne, and Noel all with me, we needed another tour bus. It would cost at least another thirty thousand dollars. I didn’t care, I wanted them with me. The management weren’t happy.

  Towards the end of the tour they tried to get me to send Jane home again, rather than rehire the extra bus. But I insisted they stay. One day I was in a limousine with Lou Blair, on the way from one of the few hotels we stayed at to a show, when we started fighting.

  ‘Barnes, it’s time to send your wife home and get down to some real work,’ Lou said to me in as strict a voice as he could manage.

  ‘It’s Jimmy.’

  Lou stopped talking and looked at me. ‘What?’

  I said again, ‘It’s Jimmy.’

  He acted like nothing had happened. ‘So, Barnes. What’s it going to be? Are you going to send her home or what?’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘It’s Jimmy, and no I’m not.’

  Lou’s blood pressure was rising. I could see his face reddening. ‘What is this, Barnes? Some kind of fucking Yoko Ono thing?’

  He had crossed the line. I’d had enough. I already felt bad about letting them talk shit about Randy Jackson. I would not put up with them talking about my wife.

  ‘Driver. Stop the fucking car. You, get out of here. We’re finished. This is over. I will have my new manager contact you guys and sort out the details later. Get out. And it’s Jimmy by the way, not fucking Barnes, okay?’

  I didn’t have a new manager, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Without the clout of Bruce and Lou, Geffen gave up on the tour support and this album was over. They didn’t drop me from the label – for some reason they wanted me to stay – but it would never be the same after this.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  chemicals can do strange and wonderful things

  HELL, 1986–87

  MARK POPE AND CHRIS Murphy, the manager of INXS, came up with the idea for a tour called Australian Made. The concept came from the widespread misconception that overseas bands were better at filling halls than Australian bands. Mark and Chris thought differently. They knew I was filling every stadium I played in, as were INXS. So they put together a bill to prove their point. Australian Made featured myself, INXS, Divinyls, Mental as Anything, The Saints, Models, I’m Talking and The Triffids. It was a great bill and marked a change in attitudes towards Australian acts. The tour, which ran from December 1986 to January 1987, didn’t sell as many tickets as the promoters would have liked. Does any tour sell as many tickets as the promoter would like? But music in this country was viewed in a different light from then on.

  INXS and myself decided to record a song to promote the tour. We booked ourselves into Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney and started to look for a song. Glenn A. Baker, the well-known rock historian and uber music fan, came up with the idea of ‘Good Times’. The song had been written by The Easybeats and recorded in England. It featured Steve Marriott on backing vocals. As soon as I heard it I knew it was the one. We all did. This was the perfect song to celebrate the good times we all were having, although in reality I wasn’t having a good time at all.

  We spent a day and a half in the studio recording the song, writing the B-side and mixing the tracks. Michael Hutchence and myself didn’t sleep the whole time we were there. It was a booze- and drug-fuelled couple of days. On the last day we made a film clip for the song. The clip features us playing live in the studio and generally going crazy, smashing the place up a bit.

  When I see that clip now, I know at that time I could see over the edge of the precipice. I was standing right on the edge of a cliff with no way out but down. Success, excess and addiction were staring me in the face. They had been for a long time, but now they were calling me to take that final step. I was afraid but I didn’t want to stop and think. There was too much to answer for. There was no going back. So I didn’t just step, I jumped in head first without a second thought.

  Fame can be tough. I made so many decisions before I even thought about consequences. If the world was screaming out my name I would be all right. But things were beginning to unravel. I was falling apart. I could see it every time I looked into my eyes in the mirror. So I stopped looking. I just went for it. This was a pivotal time in my life. I wonder if Hutch felt like this too? He must have. But I wasn’t going to ask him. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone about any of this stuff for a long, long time. If I never had to talk to anyone about any of it, I’d be happy. It was best kept hidden away deep inside of me. Festering.

  BACK IN AMERICA, GEFFEN had big ideas for my next record. They felt they’d started behind the eight ball with the first record because I did most of it in Australia. That would all be rectified this time round. Gary Gersh wanted me to record in the States under his supervision. Gary was still waiting on that big album that would secure his position at Geffen Records, so money was no object. He was willing to pay whatever it took.

  I was being introduced to the cream of the North American songwriting crop, so I had to be on top of my game. I was worried. What was the top of my game? Had I ever been on top of my game? I don’t think that happened until many years later.

  Gary Gersh had started the ball rolling with Jonathan Cain on the For The Working Class Man album and now it was time for his plan to come to fruition. Jon would write or at least cowrite and produce the next album. Gary had organised all this without talking to me that much. I didn’t mind because I thought that Jon and I would work well together.

  I started writing with Jon in San Francisco. I stayed in a hotel not too far from him. He lived on the outskirts of what I think was the Napa Valley, at a place called Novato. Every morning I would fall out of bed, work out where the fuck I was and then drive over to Jon’s house to write. We would spend the early part of the day writing and then, later in the afternoon, drive over the bridge to Oakland. There we would go into a studio owned by Neal Schon, who played guitar with Journey, and work up whatever song we had come up with that morning with the band that Jon had put together. The band consisted of Tony Brock on drums, Randy Jackson on bass, Neal Schon on guitar and Jon on keys. Now this was a smoking band. I couldn’t believe how great these players were. They took every song we wrote and within minutes had it sounding polished. Jon’s playing was impeccable, and then there was Neal. I hadn’t heard a guitar player with so much raw talent in a long time. Everything he played was exceptional. I knew that the record was going to be great.

  Each morning Jon would meet me at the door of his house, dressed in spandex tights, like the pants that bike riders wear. Only Jon didn’t ride a bike. He always had his German shepherd next to him and he held a large, and I mean very large, cup of coffee in his hand. I got the feeling that it wasn’t his first cup for the day either. The dog looked like it had been drinking coffee too, eyes darting from Jon to me and then back to Jon. He would bring me in and offer me a coffee so I could catch up to him and
then bang! We would start work.

  He was a creature of habit. So was I, but his habits seemed slightly healthier than mine. Each day on the drive to Oakland he would stop his sports car at the Burger King drive-thru and order the same thing. Six mini hamburgers for him. Six for me whether I wanted them or not, and six for the dog, who was sitting on the back seat that was too small for a human being, right behind my head. The dog by this time was practically drooling on me. If I couldn’t face the burgers, the dog always wanted more.

  ‘You know, Jimmy, there’s something about the chemicals in junk food that really get the creative juices flowing. Have you noticed that?’ Jon would say.

  I had similar theories. ‘Yeah, chemicals can do strange and wonderful things, all right.’

  On one of these drives Jon was grilling me, wanting a title for our next song. ‘Come on, Jimmy. We need something to write about tomorrow. If you can come up with something, I can work on it overnight. Come on, give me an idea, man.’

  The car was very small and the highway was full of big trucks. I was stressed by all the traffic, looking around and punching my foot to the floor on the brake pedal that wasn’t there. ‘What about a truck-driving song?’ I suggested, as the sixteen wheels from a passing truck almost killed us. ‘Shit, did you see the size of those wheels?’

  Jon slowed down. ‘Good idea. Truck driving. Big wheels. Rolling wheels. Driving wheels. I’m onto it, Jim.’ He patted the dog, smiled at me and planted his foot to the floor.

  After about a week we had enough songs for an album. But Gary wanted me to write with a few other guys too. So I said bye to California and headed up to Canada to write with Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance. As it happened, Bryan had been called away on tour and I was left with Jim. Jim was the quiet one of the songwriting team but he was very good at his craft. We started a few songs. One of them became ‘I’m Still on your Side’, a song that gave me the title of the album. ‘Sometimes I feel like shoutin’, Feels like a freight train in my heart.’ My heart pounded most nights as I tried to sleep and kept on pounding when I wished it would stop. I was on track for a disaster and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop. These lines in this song defined me as a person for a long time.

  The other song we wrote for the album was ‘Lessons in Love’. But the songs weren’t finished by the time I left, so I had to finish them with Jon when I saw him next. Jon dragged lyrics out of me that I would have been scared to write by myself. He could see me and wanted me to write the truth.

  FROM SAN FRANCISCO I went home, where Gary had organised for me to hook up with one of the biggest writers they had to offer. Desmond Child had started his career as a singer in the band Desmond Child and Rouge, but he had really found his feet as a writer. He had written for a lot of bands by the time I met him: Aerosmith’s ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’, Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ and Kiss’s ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You’ were all huge hits. Desmond’s songs were being sung in pubs and clubs all over the world, and as far as writers went, he was on top of the pile.

  Desmond came out to Australia to write with a few people, and it was organised for him to meet me in Bowral. I spoke to Desmond and he seemed very quiet but nice.

  ‘How are you getting down to my place?’ I finally asked him.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll catch the train. It’ll give me time to clear my head,’ he very calmly said.

  ‘Okay, I’ll pick you up,’ I offered.

  ‘Oh thanks, that’s very nice of you.’

  I had never met Desmond before so I said, ‘Hey Desmond. What do you look like? I don’t know you.’

  He laughed and said, ‘Oh yeah, of course you don’t. I’ll be wearing purple. See you at the station.’

  He gave me the time and hung up. He’d be wearing purple. Purple what? Shirt? Pants? A jumper? What? I guessed I would have to wait until he got there. I arrived at the station in Bowral just before the train.

  There were a few country blokes standing around. ‘Gudday, Barnesy. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’ one said.

  I didn’t want to get into a conversation. I said, ‘Just picking up a mate from Sydney.’

  He kept talking. ‘Is it anybody I know? A rock star or something? Ha ha ha.’

  I had to laugh. ‘No mate, it’s a songwriter from America, if you really want to know.’

  He looked interested. ‘Hmm. A songwriter, eh?’ The train pulled in, cutting the conversation short. ‘Right, see ya later then, Barnesy.’

  I nodded. By this time, I was looking for Desmond. There was a bloke in moleskin pants who looked like he was being met by a horse. That definitely wasn’t him. There was an old lady. That wasn’t him. I was about to give up when at the end of the platform I spotted him. He didn’t walk like the other people on the platform. He walked with a Los Angeles gait, light and careful where he trod. He was wearing purple. Purple shorts. Purple socks. Purple shoes and a purple shirt. Oh, and a purple beret.

  ‘You must be Desmond,’ I said as I walked up.

  ‘Yes I am. How did you know?’

  I smiled. ‘Just a guess.’

  I picked up Desmond’s purple bag and we headed for the car. In the carpark the bloke from the platform was loading his mate with the moleskin pants into his car.

  ‘Songwriter, eh?’ He grinned. Desmond had hit the Southern Highlands.

  Desmond was an unusual character to say the least, but a sweet man. He was immediately taken in by my family. Desmond taught Jane how to make red beans and rice, a Cuban speciality he had learned from his mother. Then we got stuck into writing. We wrote the song ‘Waiting for the Heartache’. Then he played me ‘Walk On’, a song he had written with Joe Lynn Turner. Both songs sounded great, but I knew there would be problems because Desmond made it clear that he only wrote songs for people if he produced them too, and Jon had told me he was producing the whole album. I would work this out with Gary later.

  THE ALBUM WOULD BE recorded in two places: upstate New York at Bearsville Studios near Woodstock with Desmond, and the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with Jon. Desmond wanted to make the entire record and so did Jon. But I managed to keep them both happy. Each recorded the songs they wrote with me. It wasn’t ideal but it worked. I started in Sausalito with Jon. The Record Plant had a history. Fleetwood Mac, Santana, The Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone had all recorded in the room we used. Jim Gaines was the engineer. Jim had worked for Stax and with all sorts of amazing artists including Otis Redding. He had a million stories to tell me. He didn’t mind that I got wasted.

  ‘Hell, Jimmy, I’ve seen the best of them get smashed while they work. For a while this studio used to have nitrous oxide tanks outside, with pipes running the stuff straight into the control room. There were masks hanging from the ceiling and you could just grab one and float away. You ain’t that bad, let me tell you.’

  Mid-recording with Jon, we took a break and headed to New York to work with Desmond. Bearsville Studios had been built by Bob Dylan’s old manager, Albert Grossman. It had a great history too. Everyone from Dylan to The Band, Alice Cooper, 10CC and even Divinyls recorded there.

  Jane and I flew to New York and then had a car drive us up to Woodstock. I was expecting to see hippies everywhere. There was definitely still a bit of counterculture within the community but it had been softened by time. They now drove cars instead of riding bikes, and the peace and love had been replaced by commercialism. You could still buy peace signs in the shops but they were very expensive, and the tofu served in the Chinese restaurant we ate at was perfectly carved in the shape of a fish and cost much more than any vegetable dish on the menu. The hippies had grown up, and instead of handing out flowers, they wanted their fair share of what was there to be had. But I could still feel the underlying history. For that weekend of the festival, the town must have been amazing.

  Jane and I stayed in the accommodation at Bearsville Studios, which according to everyone who worked there was haunted. There were
marks on the door of our room. We were told to leave it open, otherwise the local ghost would come and stab the door with a kitchen knife. I slept with one eye open. I’m scared of the dark at the best of times but knife-wielding ghosts only make me worse. If Jane hadn’t been there with me I would have got no sleep at all. Not just because of the ghosts, but because I never slept a lot when Jane wasn’t there.

  The studio was isolated, which worked out for the better. I could not buy cocaine. Desmond didn’t drink or take any drugs so the sessions went really well. I was a little edgy but we got through it. After all, vodka was easy to find.

  I remember one night doing vocals, Desmond trying to pull more emotion out of my performance. He stood two feet in front of me while I was singing, pulling broken faces and staring at me with his sad Cuban eyes.

  ‘Hey Desmond. I really appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t sing with you looking at me like that.’

  Desmond smiled at me. ‘If you sing it properly I’ll leave you alone.’

  I sang it the way he wanted and Desmond kept his word and left me alone in the vocal booth. ‘If you need help I’ll come back in, okay?’

  I think that I was a bit wilder than a lot of the singers he’d worked with before, but we hit it off. He liked me and I liked him.

  So then it was back to finish the album in San Francisco. Jon was a little touchy about me working with another producer but he got over it.