Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  ‘Give me that shit and we can all have a few more rounds,’ I said.

  ‘You have to wait. Don’t rush, man. This stuff will creep up on you.’

  ‘I’m here for a good time not a long time,’ I said, restocking the pipe. Before long, I’d had nine or ten pipes. It seemed to have no effect on me. I decided to cut to the chase and started eating it raw.

  ‘Are you sure this is opium?’ I asked. ‘I think you’ve been ripped off.’

  But no. It definitely was. It appeared that opium didn’t work on me. What a cruel twist of fate this was. What had I done to deserve this? Why am I asking you? Everyone else was as high as Afghani kites and I was straighter than the road out of town. Nicki was having a great time, as were the rest of the gang so I shook it off and we went on with the party. But I was not going to give up so easily. Every now and again I took a little more and swallowed it.

  I forget how much I had but at some point I was talking to one of the guests. ‘I love this album. The guitar playing is . . .’ When suddenly, mid-sentence . . . I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move and I could barely stand. My tongue didn’t seem to fit my mouth anymore. Was it even my tongue, I wondered. It might have been Nicki’s. I couldn’t tell. Someone must have helped me, probably the beautiful Nicki, because I remember floating just above the ground into the lounge room and then lying down on what looked like a cloud. I later found out it was the couch. The one light globe hanging in the centre of the room shone down on me like the northern lights, throwing colours in all directions and shadows that swayed on the walls like beautiful Indian dancers. The music coming from Michael’s cheap little stereo sounded like choirs of angels were in the room, standing right next to me in fact, singing at the top of their heavenly voices. Nicki, who was looking even more beautiful by this point, had by some miracle turned into a golden-skinned Asian masseuse. I had reached Nirvana.

  AROUND THIS TIME, MY big brother John somehow talked his way into the band. ‘Come on son, this will be great, two singers. Eh? Much better than just one. We can have a great time.’ His tone sounded familiar. I knew I was getting conned. Just like when we were kids.

  All through my childhood, I remember him saying things like, ‘Hey Jim, come here quick!’ He’d be whispering as if something great was about to happen.

  ‘What is it, John?’ I’d say.

  ‘Keep it down,’ he’d whisper, looking around the room to make sure no one else was listening. ‘I’ve got a job that only you can do. Now don’t tell the other kids.’

  By then I’d be sitting at the bottom of his bed, like a puppy waiting for scraps. ‘Great, what is it, John?’

  ‘I need you to go out to the kitchen and make me a cup of tea and some toast.’ His tone would get secretive here. ‘But keep it quiet or they’ll all be wanting to do it.’

  I’m not dumb and never was, but his delivery was great, and I fell for it every time. Almost before he finished talking I’d find myself out in the kitchen in stealth mode, acting like a secret agent, doing whatever he asked me to do.

  Now he promised, ‘I’ll be there to back you up if these guys give you a hard time.’

  ‘John, these guys don’t give anybody a hard time,’ I tried to tell him.

  ‘Well, I’d be there if they do. Come on, Jim, it’ll be great. The brothers back, united as one. Come on.’

  John talked me into it and then he talked the band into it too. We didn’t take a lot of convincing. He was the singer that the band originally wanted so they loved his voice. John could sing, play piano, guitar and was an amazing drummer. He could also fight better than most people and seemed to be afraid of nothing. He was a dangerous individual when cornered. If his back was to the wall he would lash out with a fury I had never seen in anyone else. It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would work out that he was afraid of everything, just like me.

  He moved into the house in Kentucky and started doing gigs. John and I always sang together at home so we could harmonise well and we both liked to rock. So really he was a bit of an ally for me, helping me push the band closer and closer to becoming a hard rock band.

  Before long John wanted us to wear makeup and stand on top of the PA system in robes, screaming and pointing at the crowd. ‘Come on guys, try it. This will freak these fucking hippies right out, I promise you,’ he said one afternoon at rehearsals.

  ‘But we don’t want to wear makeup.’

  ‘I do,’ Steve said.

  ‘Come on, guys. All the big bands are doing it.’

  ‘Who?’ Ian said.

  ‘I don’t fucking know. You know who I’m talking about. All they big fucking bands. Let’s not get bogged down with details.’ John could have been a politician. He was very convincing.

  ‘Yeah all right. I’ll wear it too, but I’m not wearing a robe. Fuck it,’ I agreed. John had me again.

  This period of glam rock didn’t last long and it wasn’t really glamorous. We looked a bit stupid. Unfortunately, there are photos of me in makeup and a robe. Not many, thank God. He was right though, it did freak out the hippies. I think the glam phase ended when John left the band. When I say left, I mean was sacked.

  John had joined the band at a bit of a bad time. Michael was becoming even more depressed and had been driving us all mad for months. He would sit and play the first Jackson Browne album over and over and over until we all wanted to slash our wrists. Well, I actually wanted to slash his wrists but I didn’t tell the boys this. They were pacifists. Don’t get me wrong, the album was beautiful but by the four-hundredth listen it started to wear a little thin. We would plead with him, ‘Come on man, play something else. Anything fucking else.’

  But he’d snap back, ‘This is my stereo. If you want to play something else you should buy your own.’

  ‘Are you fucking serious? You sound like a spoilt little kid,’ I shouted at him, almost stamping my feet.

  ‘Yeah, well, this kid owns the stereo, so fuck you.’

  I wanted to hit him so hard but I kept my cool. None of us was about to buy a stereo so we would leave the room and try to make noise in the studio space to drown out Jackson.

  But John was not known for keeping his cool and after a short time his patience snapped. He walked into the lounge room and smashed Michael’s Jackson Browne record over his head.

  ‘And as for your fucking stupid little stereo, this is what I think of it.’ He turned and kicked it across the room. It smashed into pieces.

  By the time the rest of us could get into the room, Michael was laying back over one of the lounge chairs, turning blue, with John’s hands around his neck.

  ‘I fucking asked you to take it off, but no, you wanted to play it over and over. Well now I’m going to rock you on the fucking water until you drown, you fucking idiot.’ John had snapped and there was no turning back. If any of the boys said a word they would be next.

  ‘I think that’s enough, John. I don’t think he’ll ever play Jackson Browne again,’ I said, placing my hand on John’s shoulder.

  ‘Good. Good. Right then.’ John straightened up his clothes and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened.

  We had all dreamed of taking Michael out and nailing him to an apple tree and leaving him for the birds to eat, or hogtying him and burying him in the paddock for the farmer to run over in his tractor, but we had all held our urges under control. Every single one of us had thought about doing the same thing, but John had actually done it. The rest of the boys could all be annoying in their own way and they must have been worried about suffering a similar fate.

  One of them was elected spokesperson; I can’t remember who. ‘We think John should leave the band now. That was out of line. What if he did that to one of us?’

  They were right to be worried. I knew John would never hit me but I wasn’t sure if he felt the same about them. If they pissed him off one night after a few drinks he might belt one of them. Besides, they already had me to deal with. That was bad enough. So John was
asked to leave, very politely, and shipped back to Adelaide. He was disappointed, but I think a little bit happy he was getting away from us, and all the hippies who hung around us.

  BY NOW IT WAS winter. It was so cold that most nights or early mornings we would be fighting for space next to the stove, the main source of heat for the whole house.

  ‘Hey, you’ve been sitting there for hours. Let someone else get close for a minute.’ This would be the standard morning chitchat as we began stumbling out of bed, bleary-eyed and freezing cold. ‘At least if you’re going to hog the fire, put the kettle on. Do fucking something useful.’

  One day we decided to go into Armidale. It was cold and wet and we all thought it would be good to eat something and go to the movies. Mossy decided to stay back.

  ‘I’ll just stay here and do a bit of guitar practice, I think,’ he said, wearing nothing but a towel. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and he hadn’t got dressed yet.

  ‘Are you sure? It could be a long cold night out here,’ I tried to warn him.

  ‘Na mate, I’m good. I’ll get a fire going and stuff. It’ll be great. See you guys later.’

  ‘You might want to put some clothes on soon. It’s getting cold.’

  He practised guitar all day and all night by the way, and it seemed like every time I saw him he was naked or near to it, with his guitar, playing scales and Ritchie Blackmore and Jeff Beck licks.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I will in a minute.’

  So we all jumped into the truck just before dark and headed off. ‘See you mate. We’ll be back about midnight with some beer and stuff. Watch out for ghosts.’

  One of us always had to volunteer to drive the truck home, which meant no drinking. I hardly ever drove, now that I think about it. We went to the pub and had a few drinks and something to eat. We had a great night and headed home around twelve. As we left town the temperature dropped rapidly and by the time we were halfway home it was snowing quite heavily. We drove slowly down the highway, trying desperately not to slip off the road and die. We made it to the Kentucky turn-off. It was dirt road from there on and the snow was lying heavy on the ground.

  About a mile from the highway and ten miles from our house, the truck came to a screaming halt. Mick thought he saw something out on the road ahead of us.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ he shouted. ‘Hey guys, there’s something big and weird-looking out on the road.’

  Everyone in the back was tossed around but we found our feet and jumped out to see what was confronting us. There, in the middle of the road about two hundred yards away, was a large hairy figure. Whatever it was stumbled as it lurched across the snow-covered road. It was obviously afraid of the light, preferring to hide in the shadows, as it was pulling away from us. But it was too late. It was caught in the high beam of our truck lights. It seemed to freeze, and stood there staring back at us, as if it was trying to work out who or what it was that had interrupted its nocturnal stroll. None of us could work out what it was.

  ‘Is it a fucking yeti?’

  No one had heard of any sightings of yetis around Kentucky. So we quickly ruled that out.

  ‘A gorilla?’ someone asked.

  ‘Not in Australia, you fucking idiot.’

  Not far from where we had stopped was a large rock known as Thunderbolt’s Rock. Apparently the bushranger known as Captain Thunderbolt and his gang used to jump out from behind the rock and shout, ‘Stand and deliver!’ and rob stage coaches at gunpoint, a hundred or so years before. We had heard local legends of his ghost being seen in the area.

  ‘Maybe it’s Thunderbolt’s ghost?’ I said.

  That got a bit of an uncomfortable laugh. ‘Could be.’

  The figure turned and walked towards us. Slowly at first, with a menacing, awkward gait, picking up speed as it crossed the snow-covered ground. Our eyes adjusted to the light and we worked out what it was. It was not a yeti or a gorilla. It wasn’t even Thunderbolt holding his pistol at the ready. It was Ian, and he was stark naked, and that wasn’t a pistol.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing out here?’

  ‘I looked out the window and saw the snow falling and it looked so beautiful. So I thought I’d go for a walk.’

  ‘Where’s your clothes, mate?’ I asked. I was freezing just looking at him.

  ‘I was only just stepping outside the door. I didn’t think I needed any.’

  It seemed that even though he was naked at the time, or maybe especially because he was naked at the time, Ian had decided to brave the cold. He lost track of distance and time and ended up ten miles from the house, alone in the darkness, naked in the snow. We found him standing in the middle of a dirt road staring at the sky. Luckily it was us who found him, as he could have scared some poor farmer’s wife to death. We got him into the truck and drove home. No one said a word. What could you say about something like this? It was an uncomfortable short ride. No one knew where to look, so we just looked down, in silence.

  Next day Mossy got up and acted like nothing had happened. Luckily for him and us, his fingers and other extremities had not been damaged by frostbite and he lived to play guitar again. Mossy was always on another planet, but we loved him.

  THE YEAR WENT BY quickly. Pretty soon it was September and we were getting itchy feet. We began to think that we’d learned as much as we could from playing in country towns. It was time to get back to the big smoke. Adelaide. Don was heading into the final few months of his degree and needed to work hard so we wouldn’t be seeing him much anyway.

  ‘You blokes just head back down there and start doing some work. I’ll join you after Christmas and we can get stuck into things together,’ he said.

  I had been happy staying in the country. Mainly because I didn’t want to see Adelaide again. But after being away for this short period, I had forgotten what I was running from and the thought of going back to Adelaide sounded pretty good.

  ‘Yeah, it’ll be great to see my mates again. I can catch up with the family I guess too.’ As I spoke I could feel my enthusiasm dwindling. Did we really have to go back to Adelaide? Life was easy up here. Our lease on the farm was up but we could find somewhere else to live. Maybe closer to town. We’d made some good friends up here. Nicki was here. I wasn’t fighting in gangs or taking too many drugs or even drinking as much as I used to.

  Les spoke up. ‘We’ll die as a band unless we challenge ourselves a bit. We can do anything up here and get away with it.’

  He was right. It was time to leave. We said our goodbyes to our good friends. Some we would forget and others we remember forever. Michael couldn’t bring himself to leave. He fitted right in, these were his people. He took what was left of his record collection, scratched copies of The Allman Brothers records he had brought with him and the brand new copy of Jackson Browne he’d been forced to buy, and off he went to live with a bunch of hippies somewhere out of Armidale. None of us have seen him since, but I’m sure if we ever head up that way we could find him. He probably has dreadlocks by now, if he still has hair. He’d be sitting red-eyed in the corner of a remote farmhouse singing ‘Jamaica Say You Will’ in his slightly flat and somewhat unattractive to the human ear singing voice. Still traumatised by his run-in with my brother John. I can just hear him. ‘Man, you should have seen him. He came at me like an animal, man. Wow. It was scary. Like, who doesn’t like Jackson Browne, man? I mean, really.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  take the shirt off their backs . . . or rip your head off your shoulders

  LARGS PIER HOTEL, ADELAIDE 1974–75

  BACK TO ADELAIDE WE went. The band looked for work and managed to play shows all over town. It seemed that the trip to the country had done us a lot of good. We played hard and fast. Glen Innes must have sharpened us up a little. We got a few reviews and even got some interest from promoters.

  The first place to really get us was the Largs Pier Hotel. It was a great pub that led the way in Adelaide rock’n’roll for years. These people knew how to pa
rty and the fact that we’d been going crazy in northern New South Wales for a few months served us well. If you wanted to jump on the tables at this pub you had to book a spot. Everyone was either on the table or under it. If you put your drink down no one tried to spike it, they just drank it. There were a few complaints about people getting felt up and having their arses pinched at the Pier, but we guys got used to it after a while and just let the girls get away with it. You wouldn’t want to have to fight these chicks.

  ‘Get us a drink Jim, would ya?’ Suzi said as she slid across the dance floor. I waited until her partner Dennis spun her once around the floor and then back to me. She was screaming with excitement. She loved to dance and especially with Dennis.

  ‘Sure, what do you want?’ I didn’t mind, as I got free drinks whenever we played there.

  ‘A jug of ouzo and Coke thanks luv. No ice.’

  ‘Coming up. What’s Tooley having?’

  We all called him Tooley, but his real name was Dennis O’Toole. Dennis drove a crane on the wharfs at Port Adelaide. He was born in the area, spent his whole life living in the area and would probably die in the area too. Tooley was one of those guys who, if he won a trip to Paris, would say, ‘Paris. Why would I want to go there? Can you get freshly caught flathead and blue swimmer crabs off the fishing boats as they pull up to the wharf in the Port River? Can you watch Port Adelaide play football on the telly on a Saturday night? I don’t think so. Why would I want to go to Paris? I got everything I need right here. You can shove Paris up your arse.’

  He wore straight-leg jeans and T-shirts most days, maybe a dress shirt on a Saturday night so he could look smart when he danced with his favourite girl. He drove a Holden and lived with his mum and dad. He swore he was never going to leave home. ‘Somebody’s got to watch out for Mum. She’s not getting any younger, you know.’

  Tooley was the most Australian guy I ever met.