Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  Don even joked with me, ‘I really like this album, Jim. I’m not sure I liked the others but I like this one. I think you’ll find that this one won’t sell that well.’

  Don was joking but there was a bit of truth in there too. My other records were too commercial for his tastes. I tried not to take it personally. Don just didn’t like straightforward songs. His tastes were a bit darker than mine. But I did take it personally. I hated that the Chisel boys didn’t like what I was doing without them. I needed their approval. I tried not to show that it affected me, but I was always sure they could see it did.

  Steve had told me a hundred times, ‘That fucking rubbish you call music is shit compared to what we could be making.’ I remember him saying, after twenty-five drinks at a party somewhere, spitting on me the whole time, ‘It’s the fucking songs, Jim. They’re shit, you see. What can you do?’

  I did want to punch him sometimes, but when he was drunk he was just funny.

  Phil would pretend he hadn’t heard my music. ‘Yeah, yeah, Jim, I hear your record’s good, but yeah, na, I haven’t heard it yet. But don’t worry, I’m going out to buy it soon.’ Phil would never want to hurt my feelings. Ian just never mentioned it.

  Don was right though. Heat, my sixth studio album, released in March 1993, failed miserably compared to the others. It stiffed. The album only reached number two on the charts, and fell away quickly, selling a fraction of what my previous albums had done. Anyone else in the world would be happy with that result, but for me the writing was on the wall. I was a failure. The behaviour, the drinking, the drug taking had dragged me back towards the place I belonged. The gutter.

  THINGS HADN’T WORKED OUT for me in America. I’d been dropped by Atlantic, but Mushroom Records had set up an office in London with the aim of taking on some new territories. So I travelled to Europe about six times in as many months, trying to break into new markets. I had Heat under my arm and I’d bounce happily into radio stations, expecting them to play it, only to be met with, ‘Hey, can you do a song or two unplugged?’

  To start with, I didn’t know what they were talking about. Apparently the new big thing was playing songs live on the radio, accompanied by an acoustic guitar or the like. Everyone was playing unplugged. I sent for Jeff Neill and we started playing songs from Heat unplugged. Now Heat was probably the most plugged album I had ever made. Most of the songs didn’t lend themselves to this treatment. But I didn’t let it stop me. ‘Yeah, absolutely. Unplugged. I can do unplugged.’ And we would tear into versions of my songs that sounded nothing like the originals. We were never going to sell any records this way.

  I decided after being asked to play unplugged for the fiftieth time to make my next record a bunch of songs I could play with an acoustic guitar. I was basically behind the eight ball from then on, following trends instead of setting them.

  I CAME BACK TO Australia and put together an album I could play unplugged. I was beginning to hate that word. Up until then I had been one of the most plugged-in singers, from one of the most plugged-in bands in the country. The music world was changing rapidly. A lot of it had to do with MTV and their bloody Unplugged series, but there were changes going on everywhere. I didn’t like a lot of them. I had a way of doing things. My system. Even though that system involved me getting fucked up, it was a system I knew. It was hard to make music in the state that I was in when everything was so bare and stark around me. I had nowhere to hide. All of my faults were uncovered – dare I say unplugged – for the world to see. I couldn’t get away with them in this new acoustic world I was being dragged into.

  The resulting album was called Flesh and Wood and, regardless of all my worrying, it ended up being a great album to sing and make. Don Gehman was at the helm again. I really loved Don, but he was getting stranger as our time together went on. He decided that not only would this album be acoustic but he wouldn’t use any real drumkits as such. Every day we would put together various bits and pieces from the kitchen and hit them in front of microphones, trying to get a sound out of them. Pots, pans, frying pans; you name it, we hit it. Cardboard boxes instead of bass drums, jars filled with rice and used as shakers. I think a few good drumkits would have made the record even better, but considering we didn’t use any I think we did a great job. The album hit the charts at number two in December 1993, despite having great songs and a bunch of great singers involved in the project. After so many number one albums, now I had two in a row at number two. I felt like I had lost all my momentum. I was a failure.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  we’re not getting any fucking younger

  MY BIRTHDAY, 1993

  CRACK.

  Suddenly I can see bright lights flashing inside my head. This is what they mean when they say you’re seeing stars. Steve Prestwich just head-butted me while I wasn’t looking.

  ‘Hey you!’

  Crack.

  There he is again. I’m not trying to ignore him, I’m just busy talking.

  ‘Are you listening to me, you bloody twat?’ Steve interrupts me. He’s had a few drinks, obviously, and he wants to talk shit with me. We’re standing in the front room of my house, the White House, up on Mount Gibraltar. It’s my birthday and everyone in the place is starting to get warmed up. There are at least another hundred people Steve could terrorise but he wants to get stuck into me.

  ‘I’m just having a word with my wife if you don’t mind, “Our Steve”.’ That’s what his brothers call him when they talk about him. ‘Our Steve’. I think it might placate him for a minute and I go back to my conversation.

  Crack.

  He won’t take no for an answer. He wants to talk to me and he wants to talk now. ‘Come on, Jim. Fuck. I need to talk to you, all right?’

  I apologise to Jane. She laughs and walks away. Jane knows how Steve and I get after a few.

  ‘What do you fucking want, you stupid fucking Scouse git?’

  I know that sounds harsh but I am speaking from a place of love. Steve often calls me a fucking twat because I act like one sometimes. And I, more often than not, call him a fucking Scouse git, because he comes from Liverpool and he can be a right git when he gets pissed.

  ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’ He’s smiling at me now and trying to cuddle me.

  ‘No, I don’t. Come on, what? You tell me what I’m supposed to know.’

  I look him straight in the eye. I have to, otherwise he’ll head-butt me again. Every time he does it, it gets a little harder. Like he’s trying to make a point.

  ‘We –’ He looks around the room to make sure no one’s listening. ‘We should get the fucking band back together. And soon,’ he tries to whisper in that way that only a drunken Liverpudlian can. The whole room can hear him. I can see his eyes are starting to water a little. He’s getting sentimental now. ‘We’re not getting any fucking younger, you know. And I want to play some music with my mates. Fuck all the bullshit. Let’s just play fucking music, man.’

  I look at him and I can tell that even though he’s drunk too much and he probably won’t remember this tomorrow, he is deadly serious. I give him a cuddle. ‘Well, you talk to the others. If they are in, I’m in. I’ve been working hard since we stopped. You guys are the lazy bastards.’

  THE BOYS HAD BEEN anything but lazy and I knew it. It was strange. What we thought of each other and what we said to each other were never the same thing. We would say the harshest things to one another in public, even though we thought the world of each other. Cold Chisel was a very complex beast.

  So Steve knew I was kidding. Ian had made a career for himself. He had some very big records and toured relentlessly, just like me. Don had formed the band Catfish and would go on to make some great records with Tex, Don and Charlie. Phil had taken a break and spent time with his family, something that we all yearned for but couldn’t quite bring ourselves to do. He kept up his chops playing bass with Ian’s band and with me occasionally. And Steve, of course, wrote beautiful songs. He
’d joined the Little River Band for a short time and even played drums with John Farnham before he’d finally made a record of his own and toured a little with his own band. So we had all been busy.

  Whenever Steve put shit on me or the music I made, I reminded him how many records I had made and sold, just to shut him up a bit.

  I LAUGH AND START to walk away. Steve calls me back in close. ‘Hey you!’

  I turn back towards him, thinking he wants another cuddle.

  Crack.

  He hits me with another head butt. ‘I am gonna fucking talk to them, you bloody twat. But you’d better be ready to sing well this time. None of that shit you sing in your solo fucking band. Working Class rubbish. Real fucking rock songs mate, all right?’

  Steve turns away and spots one of the many girls at the party. He starts to dance, the way he always does when he’s drunk and happy. He may be a git but I do love the guy.

  BUT WE DIDN’T GET back together, not straightaway. I heard soon after my party that Steve was having troubles with bad headaches. Blinding pain behind his eyes.

  ‘I think he’s got that headache from head-butting me so many times,’ I joked with Jane.

  Steve had a benign brain tumour removed in 1993. It was nothing to do with him head-butting me. When we found out we were all stunned. I thought we would live forever, so this news about Steve rocked me. Cold Chisel would always be there. They were my first family. When I left home and joined them, it was the first time I felt safe, the first time that I was a part of something positive and good. My family before that was never safe, was never positive. It was dark, and thinking about them made me feel some sort of pain. My family never knew what a family really was. But Chisel was different. We fought, laughed and cried together. I still looked back on my years with them as the good times. They were the family I had always wanted. Now there was a chance that we would lose Steve. Lose a brother. I couldn’t think about it.

  Steve had surgery not long after. Everything went well but everything changed too. Steve had realised that life was short and he wanted to have a good time. He was no longer angry or aggressive. He was a peaceful, happy, loving father and friend. The thought of leaving his family behind, including us, had made Steve realise how lucky he was.

  ‘We’re not here for a long time, Jim, we’re here for a good time. We shouldn’t take each other for granted. Let’s make some music before one of us dies, for fuck sake,’ he said to me, next time I saw him. He was very serious and had tears in his eyes.

  No one but Steve ever wanted to make the first move. He was always trying to get us in a room and play music. ‘Come on, guys. Just fucking give it a go. What have we got to lose?’

  But it never happened. We all stood back, protecting ourselves. I for one didn’t want to get hurt again, although I would have to risk it to get over the feeling that I was no good without Cold Chisel to prop me up. And it was more than just personal. Musically we still had work to do. We all knew it. The band had imploded for a lot of reasons but the heart of it, the music, was not one of them.

  BEFORE LONG I was told by my accountants that things were really bad, and getting worse by the minute.

  ‘How bad can it be? I can make more money,’ I laughed.

  They weren’t laughing with me. ‘We are going to have to make arrangements. Settle with all your debtors, and you will probably be bankrupt in a month. You have over-capitalised, Jimmy. There is no more money.’

  My world was crumbling around me. What was I going to do? That day had come. The whole world was going to see that I was a loser. I deserved this. I should never have been successful. I went into a dark place. A state of depression. That voice that I had heard in my head was screaming now. ‘You’ll end up back in the gutter where you belong. You thought you were better than us. Well, now we know you’re not.’

  I could hear it going round and round. I tried not to let the family see that I was so down, but I’m not good at hiding these sorts of things. We were going to have to sell the house. My home. I had worked my whole life for this. This made me different from the family I had left behind when I joined the band. I was the first person in my family to buy a house of their own. This was the home my children were supposed to grow up in. I had buried our old dog Theo in the grounds of this house. I couldn’t sell it. They couldn’t take it from me. But they were going to, along with all the stuff I had collected over the years that made me feel like I meant something. Statues, saddles, paintings, furniture, all of it was being ripped from me.

  As far as I could tell, Jane took it well. She didn’t seem to mind. ‘It’s just things, Jimmy. We don’t need things. We can make a better home. We still have each other.’

  She was right. Somehow I still had my Jane.

  ONE DAY, JANE MADE a suggestion. ‘Jimmy, you’ve spent the last six months in and out of Europe. Why don’t we pack up and move there for a while? You can work on building a new audience and we can have fun. The children will love it.’

  This sounded good to me. We could run away and I wouldn’t have to see everything I had lost. I thought that if I stayed in Australia I would have it rubbed in my face. I had to get away.

  I sort of believed what Jane had told me. I had all I needed. My children and my wife. I didn’t need all this stuff and I could make more money. I was free. But it was still weighing heavy in the back of my mind. I tried to keep a brave face, but alone I would break down and cry. I had fucked it all up.

  Dan Boud, courtesy of Cold Chisel

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  wipe the slate clean

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE, 1994 TO 1996

  WE HAD TO DECIDE exactly where we would live. Jane was excited about the prospect and me, well, I just wanted to hide my face. So, to distract myself, I did what I did best, the only thing I knew how to do. I worked. I carried on doing promotion around Europe, trying to sell records and maybe break some new territories so that I could rebuild.

  Jane travelled around France looking for the right town for us to live in. We had decided we couldn’t live in England. It was cold and wet. Hamburg was a good place but then we’d still have the Northern European winter to deal with. Italy sounded great. The food, the people, the sun and sea. It was beautiful but everything ran on Italian time. Airplanes and trains didn’t get away on schedule. If I suddenly had to be somewhere, I might not make it. Then there was Scotland. It was colder than England and nothing was going on there musically at the time. So through a process of elimination we ended up with France. France had great food, fantastic people, the sea, the sun and even the snow in winter. And if we stayed in the south, we could be anywhere in a matter of hours.

  I was in Germany somewhere when I got the call. ‘I found a place. It’s perfect for us. There are nice schools and good food and it is just so beautiful, Jimmy. You’ll love it. It’s called Aix-en-Provence. It’s not far from Marseille, only thirty miles, and there’s an international airport there. We can fly in and out for work as we need to. I’m going back to Australia now to finish things up. Can you go down and take a look at it? I don’t want you living somewhere you don’t like.’

  Jane never ceased to amaze me. Our whole world had come crumbling down and here she was, as excited as ever. More than ever. It was as if she was happy to leave everything that we had built behind. Looking back, maybe she was. I wondered if Jane knew everything I had been up to. Was this an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, start fresh for me? I hoped so. This is what my mum must have felt whenever she ran away from everything, trying to keep one step ahead of the past. If she could run far enough away, everything would be left behind and no one would be wise to her. But it never worked for Mum, so how could it possibly work for me? I didn’t deserve another chance but I had to try.

  I HAD A PLAN. I was working all week but I had the weekend off. Jeff Neill and myself would jump on a plane and fly to Marseille, rent a car and drive to Aix and see what my new hometown was like. I knew we were moving there regardless of what I th
ought. Jane loved it, and if she loved it I was sure I would be all right.

  We booked into the Hôtel des Augustins, right in the centre of town. The hotel was hundreds of years old and looked haunted to me. Maybe there were enough ghosts around here that my ghosts could disappear into the crowd? The whole town looked old, but it was old and beautiful. The main street was wide, cobblestoned and lined with tall trees. Paul Cézanne and Ernest Hemingway drank coffee in this street while contemplating their next move. I could do the same.

  This was a long way from Elizabeth. Some of the buildings were falling down, just like in Elizabeth, but the difference was they had been standing for centuries. And they weren’t being torn down by people like me. It was also a long way from the Australian rock’n’roll scene. No one knew me here and I felt I might be able to relax for a while. I wasn’t going to be in the spotlight. I thought that was a good thing. But I had gotten used to being in the spotlight. I knew how to hide there. When everybody is focused on the big picture, small things go unnoticed. It would take a little getting used to.

  The Cours Mirabeau would become a second home to me. Plane trees lined the streets, which were filled with tourists and locals drinking in the bars and coffee shops. It stretched from the enormous Fontaine de la Rotonde at one end to the markets at the other end. The town looked like a postcard. In fact, I’ve bought a few postcards since with that very street on them. At night you could walk the length of the street taking in the sights. There were artists painting portraits of passing foreigners and musicians playing classical music for tips. Occasionally I would hear an Australian accent cutting through the crowd, but I would just lower my head and keep walking. There were ice-cream stalls in the summer and in the winter, street vendors selling roasted chestnuts. All year round you could buy crepes smothered in Nutella. My kids would grow to love this place. But Jeff and I would have to get a feel for it. We went out into the street, set ourselves up outside a particularly busy bar on one of the corners, and started playing music. Tables filled with people were scattered across the footpath. Pretty soon they were clapping their hands and dropping money into Jeff’s guitar case. If worst came to worst, we could almost make a living doing this. Not the living we had become used to though. Locals kept bringing drinks out to us from inside the bar. Pastis was the drink of choice. It tasted like ouzo and had a kick like a mule. The more we drank, the more we played.