by Jimmy Barnes
The album entered the charts at number three. This was the worst chart position of my career. I had filled stadiums and football grounds. I had been bigger than anyone in the country. Overseas bands that could have toured on their own came out to play support for my tours. If I wanted more lights, they were there. If I needed more sound, I got it. If I needed anything at all, it was always there. And I had gone from all that, from having the world at my feet, to being on my knees in front of my own family, with nothing to give.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
world record time
OLYMPIC STADIUM, 2000
EVEN BEFORE THE SYDNEY 2000 Olympics I was running on empty. If they had drug-tested me when I sang at the closing ceremony, they would have thought I was in the Bulgarian weightlifting team. Uppers, downers, all-rounders. You name it, I had it in my system. I was on a downhill slide that just kept going down. I was shaking and sweating as I walked to the stage. I had been smoking hashish and snorting coke in the dressing room. A dressing room that I shared, by the way, with three great Australians. Slim Dusty, Greg Norman and Paul Hogan had no idea what was going on in that room or they would have run a mile in world record time. This made me feel even worse about the state I was in. I couldn’t look at them when we were introduced to each other.
I needed to warm up and, besides, I thought that my warm-up might keep people away. At the time, there were only myself and dear old Slim Dusty in the room. Slim was sitting on a bench, waiting to be asked to do something. He sat quietly with his hat on his lap, watching as I paced up and down.
‘Hey Slim. This is going to get a bit loud. I have to warm my voice up,’ I said to him before I started to scream. I was about to sing live to a billion people and I was having trouble talking, never mind singing.
‘No worries, Jimmy. I’ve seen a few singers warm up in my time. Off you go.’
I wasn’t sure he’d seen someone warm up the way I did, but I went on with it anyway.
‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’ I let out a scream that started quite high and slid up until I reached the top of my range and my maximum volume. People have told me I sound like I’m in pain when I warm up.
Slim looked startled. A huge Maori security guard burst into the room. ‘What’s going on in here? Is everyone all right?’
He looked around the room, trying to find out what had happened. I quickly told him, ‘It’s all right. It was Slim. He’s a troublemaker.’
The guard shot a stern look at Slim and left the room.
Slim looked at me and smiled. ‘That was very funny, Jimmy. You know, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while. I’d really like to make a record with you sometime. A duet. You know that song you sing with your band, about Vietnam. I think it would be great.’
I was stunned. ‘You mean “Khe Sanh”, Slim?’
He smiled again. ‘Yeah, that one. I reckon we could do a good version of it together.’
In the midst of all that was going on in my life, Slim Dusty was asking me to sing ‘Khe Sanh’ with him.
‘I’d love to do that, Slim. Anytime you’re ready. I’ll contact you soon, shall I?’
He nodded and I went back to warming up. It was going to take me a while to find a sound that would work for this show. My voice was a little shredded. But somehow I managed to get away with it. I seemed to get away with a lot. I don’t think that people, the police or the public in general, turned a blind eye. I just think that they all wanted the best from me. They liked me and didn’t expect me to be such a fuck-up. That night was one of the highest points and also one of the lowest points in my public life. The whole of Australia, and a lot of the world, watched me as I struggled through my performance.
Not long after that Jane found a house to rent in Vaucluse. I think she was moving into it with or without me. But somehow I managed to stick with her and we moved in together. And things went from bad to worse.
SOON AFTERWARDS I MADE a second album in the soul series, in Los Angeles. Soul Deeper was a good record but I drank a lot during the making of it. Cocaine is always too easy to find in LA as I’ve said, so I spent weekends driving down to San Diego to visit my friend Deepak Chopra. Deepak and I had met when he was on tour in Australia. He loved music and I was looking for answers. He might have given me those answers back then but by the time he did I had forgotten the questions. Still, we did stay friends over the years. He is a very intelligent, caring man and I have a lot of time for him.
While making this second soul record, I would visit on the weekends and try to get myself together. I would turn up at his door like a lost dog, tail between my legs. All week I would be working ten hours a day, recording with some of the best musicians in the world, all the time taking copious amounts of coke and booze. By Friday night I was always nearly dead. Deepak would get me into his clinic and fill me full of supplements and fresh juices. He would get me massaged and doing yoga and generally dry me out. Come Sunday night he would give me a pep talk and send me back into the ring for the next round.
Once again, my mate Don Gehman helped me pull together some unbelievable players, and even though I was a complete basket case, coked to the eyeballs and drunk out of my mind, the album turned out pretty good. I sang well and managed to live through another American trip without dying or getting arrested.
I HIT ROCK BOTTOM, bounced back up and slammed down into it a few more times, every time inflicting potentially fatal wounds on myself and my marriage and everyone around us, before I found the courage to try to tackle the problem head on.
‘Get some clarity and things will look a lot better, Jim. It’ll be like a holiday. You’ll love it,’ one of my healthy, drug-free, sober, boring friends told me one day as he tried to drag me kicking and screaming to an AA meeting. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. You find you have a lot to be thankful for. I am thankful every day.’
I couldn’t help think to myself, ‘You should be thankful I don’t smash you in the face.’
But I knew he was trying to help and I knew he wasn’t that boring. I just thought that a world without drugs and booze would be the kind of world that would put me straight to sleep. Then again, was that such a bad thing? I could have done with a good sleep by this point in time.
When I did go, I decided to go not really for myself, which apparently is the only real reason to go, but in an attempt to save my marriage. Appease Jane. Show her I was trying. I also knew that if I didn’t do something, I was going to die.
By the time I went away, I was drinking two, three bottles of vodka every day. The booze would stop me stressing out about the amount of cocaine I was consuming. I would buy ten grams of coke a day, sometimes more.
A mate of mine once told me, ‘You know that buying coke is God’s way of letting you know you have too much money, Jim. Way too much.’
It was obscene the amount of money I was wasting every single day. It makes me sick to think about it now. Even the drug dealers would tell me to take it a bit easy, and that wasn’t in their best interest. I would share it with whoever was with me but I always took more than anybody else, lots more. I used most of it in fact.
My head hurt so much. My nose was swollen and throbbed and bled all the time. I thought I was going to die from a brain bleed. I would wake up and I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. My chest was wheezing and I sounded like I had pneumonia.
The first thing I would do when I woke up, no matter what time it was, was to swallow a handful of Nurofen Cold & Flu tablets with a few Aspro Clear in a glass of water. That was breakfast. This would take down the swelling enough to allow me to shove the first line of coke up the passages of my nose, which by this time, along with my liver and kidneys, were pleading for mercy. As soon as my nose cleared I would chop out a line. Not just a little line like a normal drug addict, but a massive one. Half a gram of coke at least. And then, bang, the world would light up. My eyes would weep as the coke, which was normally cut with all sorts of shit – speed, sugar, even crushed gla
ss – would hit me like a hammer. I would have to sit for a moment, to make sure I wasn’t going to die right then and there. Then I would shake my head and fall out of bed.
Jane would be up and about. She wasn’t feeling much better than me but she could somehow still function. It was Jane who was looking after the kids, not me. I tried but most of the time I just fell apart. I had trouble facing the world. I could do nothing. I had trouble getting up. When I did I would just sit and think, ‘What did I do last night?’ And then it would all come rushing back to me. I had destroyed any hope of salvaging my life with my family and the girl I loved. There was no turning back. It was over.
I didn’t want to feel at all when they walked out the door. If Jane was going to leave me, I didn’t want to be able to see it. I wanted to stay drunk and smashed for as long as I would stay alive. And I hoped that wouldn’t be for long. But I would always make it through to lunchtime, Jane ignoring me and me trying to stay out of her way.
By most lunchtimes I would have to track down my mate who sold me this horrible shit and make sure I had enough for the next day or so. I never wanted to run out, even for a minute. I would meet my dealer and start drinking again. Maybe a beer or three with lunch. I didn’t eat much, I normally moved the food around the plate so it looked like I’d eaten, but I hadn’t. The whole circus was back in town. Another drink, another line. ‘That one felt good.’ I wasn’t thinking about last night. Maybe I’d have another drink and another line. By mid-afternoon I was mindless and no longer cared about anything or anyone. I was in this world alone. And I was glad about it. My world was a horrible place and I didn’t want anyone I cared about to see it. Ever. I would disappear. By the evening, a lot of nights, I had swallowed two or three ecstasy pills on top of everything else.
‘That’ll stop the pain for sure.’ But it didn’t. More booze, more coke. ‘Maybe I’ll smoke some weed to mellow out a bit.’ Then I would need another massive line to pick me up. Unfortunately, I would be out and about by this point so this was happening in public. I would be bouncing off the walls in some bar somewhere, doing drugs on the table right where I sat. Not even hiding them. Sometimes I attracted attention too. But no one seemed to care; in fact, they seemed to want to join me. Girls would sit at my table and tell me I was crazy to behave like this in public. Why didn’t I go back to their place, where it would be safer? This was a typical day’s running amok. I would stagger home and Jane would be there, not really waiting for me anymore. The house would be full of people and the party would continue. More coke, ecstasy and a lot of ketamine thrown in for good luck. If you don’t know what ketamine is, it’s basically an animal tranquiliser that comes in different strengths. Some batches might be for small animals, and if you took them it would feel like your consciousness hit a little speed bump. Other batches were for much larger animals. Much larger than humans. Then it would feel as if your whole mind had stepped into outer space for a rest, the universe hurtling past at breakneck speed while you were left clinging to the floor, hoping you weren’t going to die this time. We did this for fun.
It was only a matter of time until my mind never came back from one of its little excursions and I was left staring blankly into space while a nurse spoonfed me with food that had been mashed so I didn’t have to chew it. This went on for years. I was always amazed how much of a beating a body can actually take. Mine just didn’t give up.
Quite often during this time, I would be working five nights a week. I would arrive backstage at a show after not sleeping for days on end, my body shaking and my eyes darting from one member of the band to the next, looking for one of them to assure me I was going to be all right. But I wasn’t all right. In a state of panic, I would shovel a gram or two of coke into me before I went on stage. By this time, I would be completely crazed, jumping out of my skin again and ready to throw punches at anyone I thought looked sideways at me. I don’t know how I did these shows. They couldn’t have been good. I wonder if people used to come along, waiting to see me drop. But I kept standing. I think the longest I ever went without sleep was seven or eight days. I lost count. It was on a tour to Perth towards the end of my rampage. I was taking eight or ten ecstasy pills a day. I would take one before I went on stage and another halfway through the show, snorting as much cocaine as I could get my hands on and drinking. At my hotel I had booked myself into three different rooms and I had parties going on in each room with different people. I would excuse myself from one and stagger to another floor and another party full of strangers, stay for a while then move to the next. If I got bored with these parties I would nip out to a club and fill another room in another hotel with more people I had never met before.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
keep your nose out of trouble, son
IN TRANSIT, 2003
BY THE TIME I did go to rehab in 2003, it didn’t matter why I was going, I just needed to get some help. Any help might save my life. Jane had tried to save me but she couldn’t, no one could, so she tried to save herself by going to a rehab centre in the States. She left while I was away on one of my binges. I was mortally wounded. I thought I’d lost Jane and it hurt so badly. I thought she had given up on me. I can see now of course that I had given up on me years before and Jane trying to get herself together was the best thing she could do. Nonetheless, I was wounded. I went even crazier for a while. If I could make myself feel I didn’t need anyone, then I wouldn’t be hurt. But it did hurt. More than my childhood. More than all the booze and drugs hurt me and more than I could ever hurt myself.
JANE CAME BACK, READY to get on with her life with or without me. So I booked myself into the same place she had gone to. It was in Arizona. This was it. I was going to try to get myself straight. I headed for the plane after a couple of days of binging. I would sleep on the plane. Well, that was the plan, but in case I didn’t sleep I would take along some ecstasy and a few grams of coke. I was starting off with the wrong attitude. On the plane ride I went crazy, drinking bottles of Champagne and terrorising the guests in first class, every now and then disappearing into the bathroom to take another pill or snort more coke, then coming back out and jumping all over the seats. Thank God the crew liked me. They tried to keep me happy and out of the way of the other paying customers. At one point I sat on the top of a first class seat and it snapped and I crashed backwards onto the feet of the lady sitting behind me.
‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this. You seemed so lonely back here by yourself,’ I said. She just laughed and shook her head in disbelief.
ANYWAY, I MADE IT to Tucson, where I was met by a guy from the rehab centre. He was big and wasn’t the slightest bit fazed by the state he found me in.
‘I was a bit nervous so I had a few on the plane,’ I sheepishly said. By this point the drugs were wearing off just a little.
‘Don’t worry sir, we’ve seen worse than you come through this place. It’s going to be all right.’
He piled me into a van and drove off. I felt like this was the last day of my life. Like I was crossing the Bridge of Sighs. My eyes scanned the areas we drove through. I was thinking of where I could run to when, not if, I ran away from rehab. It was hot and dry and I felt like I was an extra in a western movie. I was definitely a desperado of the worst kind. This place had a reputation for being a very good rehabilitation centre. I knew it was going to take a great one to help me.
They checked me in, ignoring my funny, smart-arsed comments. They’d obviously heard them all before from people much funnier than me. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling very funny by this point. They sedated me and I slept next to the office in a detox room. The room was like a cell inside a hospital. The door was bolted and the windows were barred. I slept for about three days. Every now and then someone would wake me and give me another pill and some water. I needed to sleep so badly. I don’t remember dreaming. Just my eyes opening and seeing figures talking to me and about me, before they shut again and I was gone, back into the blackness.
&
nbsp; AFTER THREE DAYS I woke up. I was hungry and refreshed. Maybe I could go home now. I felt much better. A doctor came in to talk to me. I immediately asked the obvious question. ‘Will I be allowed to go home or at least have my things? I have some music and books in my bag. I thought they’d keep me busy while I wait to get out.’ I didn’t tell her that there might be some pills hidden there in case of emergencies.
‘We think it would be better if you stayed with us. Let’s not think about going home for a while. We have been through your bags, Jimmy, and there is nothing in there you will be needing. We will supply everything you need now.’
I was getting anxious. ‘But I can’t live without music. I play music all day, every day. I need it.’ My voice sounded desperate and was slightly raised by now.
‘Just stay calm and maybe you can ask your therapist about that when you meet.’ Her voice was calm and sounded like she was singing a nursery rhyme to me.
I dug my heels in. ‘I’m a fucking adult, you know. So don’t fucking talk to me in that whiny tone of voice. I’m not a bloody kid. I want my music and I want it now!’ I was shouting by this time.
‘Jimmy.’
I stood up and started looking for my clothes.
‘Jimmy, calm down.’
But I didn’t hear her. ‘Somebody better get my music or I’ll smash this place up. Right now.’
I suddenly noticed the other person in the room. He had moved a little closer while I spoke. He was very big and didn’t look like he had a sense of humour.
‘Why don’t you sit down and we can talk about this?’ His voice was deep and stern and he laid his hand on my shoulder. It was the size of a leg of lamb. I wanted to smash him but I had no strength and I was suddenly dizzy. I sat down. What had I done? I was trapped.