Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  We did a show in Detroit. The motor city. The home of Motown Records. A town with one of the largest percentages of black people in America. We thought, ‘Great. These guys will get what we are trying to do.’ We loved soul music. We loved the blues. But the agency had us playing not with a soul band, or a blues band for that matter. In fact, they put us on with the whitest band in America, The Marshall Tucker Band. The audience was full of good old boys and gals, with trucker hats and cowboy boots. There was not one black person in the crowd. They hated us as much as Ted’s mob did.

  Steve nearly got us killed in the bar of the hotel after the show. I walked in to find him chatting with some young black girls. Luckily, Steve had been drinking a lot, so they didn’t understand a word he said.

  ‘I fuckin’ love black people. You got rhythm. You know what I mean? You can fuckin’ dance. Fuck yeah. And you’re not really black, are you? Well you are but you’re so, so black you’re almost purple, aren’t you?’ This was what I heard him say as I walked up to him at the bar.

  The girls looked puzzled. They turned to me and asked, ‘What did he say? He is so cute and that accent is adorable.’

  I thought quickly to myself and translated for them. ‘He said he thinks that you girls look fabulous and he’d like to buy you all a drink.’

  They smiled. ‘Oh, that would be wonderful. He’s so nice.’

  Steve stood, drunk as a skunk, next to them, trying to bust out a few Four Tops dance moves. We bought the girls a drink and I managed to get Steve to leave before they learned to understand his Liverpudlian accent and killed us.

  ‘You fucking chicks are fucking hot, aren’t ya? Let’s go and get it on in my fuckin’ pad.’

  ‘What did he say that time?’ they smiled and asked.

  ‘He said goodnight ladies and it was lovely to meet you.’ I grabbed Steve by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards the door. All the while Steve was trying to dance like someone he’d seen on Soul Train, looking back at the girls, smiling and gesturing to them to follow him.

  THE LAST SHOW OF the tour was in Los Angeles, the home of Elektra Records. This could very well have been the most important show of our careers. We arrived in town the day before and walked into the record company to meet all the big nobs. As we walked down the main corridor there were secretaries sitting answering phones outside the offices of various A&R people. By the way, A&R is short for Artists and Repertoire. This is the guy who signs and looks after bands within the label.

  Each door we passed, some guy would lean out and say something like, ‘Hey Chisel, yeah. Love your single,’ then disappear back into the safety of their office before we got to say anything. It didn’t feel right. In fact, I got the distinct impression that they might have been scared of us.

  ‘Hey, you Aussies rock. Yeah baby.’ And another one was gone, behind the closed door of his room. I’m sure I heard the door lock this time.

  Finally, we got to the office of the man who was in charge of promotions for the band for all of North America. His name was Marty Schwartz. Marty’s secretary greeted us.

  ‘Hey guys. How are you all doing today?’ She was smiling way too much for this time of day.

  ‘Yeah, we’re all good. Listen, is Marty in?’ said Rod, trying to sound businesslike.

  ‘He’s on an important call, but if you take a seat I’ll let him know you’re here. He’s very excited to finally meet you.’

  She smiled again. I figured if he was that excited to see us he wouldn’t mind if we went in. So that’s what I did. Walked in and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Ah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, ah, do you mind if I call you back? I’m in a, ah, a meeting. Yeah, cool, love your single by the way.’ And he hung up. He sat looking at me. The boys followed me in and we stood around in silence for a second.

  He gulped. ‘You guys must be, ah, Cold Chisel.’ He spoke nervously as he straightened out his desk.

  ‘Yeah. I’m Jimmy. And this is Don, Ian, Phil and Steve. Oh yeah, and you’ve met Rod our manager before.’

  Marty obviously couldn’t remember Rod but he smiled and shook hands with him anyway. Marty was a typical American record company guy. Satin tour jackets and photos of himself with famous people adorned the walls of his office. He seemed nervous around us. I think he had heard that we were wild and he didn’t feel safe in our company. I noticed he’d left his office door open after we walked in. Maybe so he could make a quick exit if he had to. We were the wild colonial boys he had heard about in our songs and he was right to be afraid of us. Beads of sweat broke out on his lip and brow.

  ‘Hey, is it hot in here? Mary, turn up the air conditioning, would you. It’s like an oven in here,’ he shouted to his secretary. It wasn’t that hot. ‘Take a seat. Can I get you a drink? Beer, scotch, anything? Anything at all.’

  We were too busy looking at the record wrapped in a nappy behind his desk. ‘What’s that behind you there?’ I asked him.

  He spun around and picked it up, his smile beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘This is the promo first single,’ he said and passed it over to Don. His smile seemed a little smug, as if he was showing us little country boys how they do it in the real world. ‘Pretty impressive, don’t you think?’

  Don didn’t look at him. Instead he stared in disbelief at the record he held in his hand. It was a copy of ‘My Baby’, the song they had chosen to be our lead single in America, and it was wrapped in a baby’s nappy.

  ‘Why is this single wrapped up like this?’ Don’s lips tightened as he spoke.

  ‘It’s a little promo gimmick I came up with,’ Marty said. ‘I didn’t have time to run it by you, but it’s great, isn’t it? We sent it to every radio station in America like that.’

  ‘Fuck man, that’s my song you’ve sent out in nappies. Can you get them back?’ Phil was worried. He had written ‘My Baby’ and was very proud of how well it had been received in Australia. He didn’t want the Yanks to fuck it up for him. ‘I’m a serious songwriter. I don’t want to look as stupid as you do.’

  Marty looked at the floor. I guess he wanted to sink into it. ‘All of them. It’s great. We love it. They won’t forget your first record in a hurry, will they?’

  Don threw it onto the desk and walked out. The band followed. Rod signalled to me to stay. He obviously wanted me to go into damage control with him. I watched as Don walked back down the corridor, past the secretaries. At each door some dweeby little guy in a satin tour jacket leaned out for a second time. ‘Yeah. Rock’n’roll. Love you guys.’

  Meanwhile Rod and I sat in the office with Marty, in complete silence. After what seemed like an eternity he spoke again. ‘So, you guys have your big LA show tomorrow night. Should be great, eh? This is LA. The home of rock.’

  It was hard to talk but I figured I’d better break the ice so I said, ‘Yeah. Of course you’re coming? It’s your only chance to see the band and since you’re doing our promotions it’s important you get a sense of what the band’s about.’ I stared again at the single lying on his desk. ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  He drew a deep breath and I couldn’t help but notice a single drop of sweat form on his forehead and run down his face. ‘Look, everybody liked that idea. We workshopped it around the office and they all loved it.’ He was desperate.

  ‘Don’t do shit like that without asking the band. We’re not a gimmicky sort of band, okay? But you are coming to the gig, right?’

  I could see him squirm in his chair. He was obviously uncomfortable.

  ‘Ah, ah, no actually. You see it’s a, ahh, it’s a very big DJ’s party tomorrow and I can’t come to see you.’

  ‘You are doing all our promotion and it’s the only show we are doing in your town and you’re not coming because it’s a DJ’s birthday?’ I was stunned.

  ‘Well, it’s not his birthday. It’s his dog’s birthday. But he loves that dog like it’s his child and it’s very important that I go.’

  That was i
t. I wanted to kill him. I got up and left the office before I punched him in his face. As we walked away Rod tried to calm me down. ‘I tried to warn him you guys wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘You knew? For fuck sake, is he serious?’

  Rod was as pissed off as any of us. He looked down and kept walking.

  ‘This place is fucked,’ I yelled as I left the office.

  The door to the next office opened up. ‘Love your single.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’ I walked faster. I had to get away before I exploded.

  THE NEXT DAY WE played at the Country Club in the Valley and it was a great show. We walked off stage covered in sweat and gasping for air. After a minute or so the backstage door opened and in walked Marty Schwartz.

  ‘Hey guys. How are you all doing tonight?’

  It seemed I had misjudged him. He was here after all.

  ‘Marty, you made it. How did you like the show?’

  Marty stopped smiling. ‘Oh, ah. Well, I didn’t see it. I just got here. The party went longer than I expected. But my friend the DJ told me to tell you guys that he loves your single.’

  Covered in sweat and red-faced, it was hard to hide my disappointment, so I didn’t try. ‘You fucking didn’t see any of it then?’

  Marty grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a corner of the room. I shot a look at his hand and he removed it from my shoulder. ‘Hey Jimmy. I hear you’re a wild boy, do you do any of this stuff?’ And without letting the rest of the band see, he showed me a large bottle of white powder. Cocaine.

  ‘Here, why don’t you have a little? But keep it quiet, we don’t want everyone in the room to know about it.’

  The band were the only other people in the room so I could tell he didn’t want to give them any. They didn’t do drugs that much anyway, but he had grated me the wrong way now. I snatched the bottle out of his sweaty little hand, pushed him out of the way and walked through the door that led to the stage. Marty was close behind me, trying to get his cocaine back. There were a bunch of young guys still leaning on the front of the stage. I tipped the bottle over and poured out the lot in one long line and shouted over the house music, ‘Any of you guys do this shit?’

  Then I walked back into the dressing room. A very pale Marty Schwartz followed me back in. I threw his empty bottle in his face, grabbed his shirt and pulled him close to me and whispered in his ear, ‘You’re a dick. Fuck off before I beat the shit out of you.’

  And then I proceeded to push him out the door and yell at the top of my voice at him as he walked away. ‘Bye. Fuck off. Love your single. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’

  A FEW MONTHS LATER, in Paradise Studios in Sydney, I wrote a song about Marty. I’d had an idea for the words since leaving Los Angeles but the rest came to me in a flash. I sang the ideas I had for the guitar to Ian and he helped me with the guitar riffs. It was called ‘You’ve Got Nothing I Want’. I wanted nothing from anybody. I now know this was all to do with my childhood, but at the time I was just angry. I needed to spit some venom. So I spat it at Marty. I sent it to him with a note telling him it was all about him. If Cold Chisel’s career in America wasn’t over before then, it certainly was when he got my note.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  we weren’t young boys singing for free drinks and chicks anymore

  PARADISE STUDIOS, SYDNEY, 1981–82

  TOWARDS THE END OF 1981, Jane told me that we were going to have ourselves a baby. I was excited and terrified at the same time. Excited because the idea of having a family with Jane was beautiful but terrified because of the way I had been brought up. What if I wasn’t a good father? What if I couldn’t provide? I wanted my kids to have everything. All the things that I never had. I started losing sleep wondering how I was going to support them.

  SINCE THE AMERICAN TOUR I think that the band had started to see the writing on the wall. We had done it all. America was such a disappointment to us. The home of rock’n’roll was nothing like we had hoped. Nothing lived up to what we had dreamed. We were told to compromise what we were doing or we couldn’t go any further. A little bit of the band died on that tour. It was only a matter of time until the rest died too. We fought even more with each other. We still played great shows but it felt to me like we were at the end of a ride.

  Back in Australia we tried to reignite the flame that had been snuffed out by the politics of the music industry. Everything we had learned making East and touring Australia and America was useless to us, so we threw it all out. The way we dealt with crowds, the way we played music, the way we thought about life. It was like backburning. We started making Circus Animals. Everyone was pushing us to make a follow up to East. Keep the same formulas, the same sounds, just give us more of the same. They wanted East part two and we didn’t want to give it to them.

  At one band meeting Don came up with a new idea. ‘Hey guys. I don’t want to play the same thing night after night. Every night we play the same songs the same way. I think we should throw away all those song arrangements now. They’ve served us well but it’s time to think outside the box.’

  Don was always trying to breathe life into the band. Ian and myself sat scratching our heads, wondering what Don had in mind.

  I think Steve probably caught on quicker than us. ‘Are you saying we change the arrangements of the songs? If you are, I’m in, because I’m sick of playing the same fucking shit every night.’ Steve was excited, so his accent got thicker.

  But Don had more to offer us. ‘I’m not saying change the arrangements. I’m saying throw the arrangements out the window. We don’t need them. Start the song and if Steve wants to change the feel of the song then he can. Jim can sing when he wants, not always come in after just four bars like we’ve been doing every night. And if Ian gets an idea he can jump in and play it. No waiting for the solo, just step up and play. Push Jim out the way and play until Jim pushes him back and takes over again.’

  I’d been pushing them around for years. How was this different? ‘But won’t we be playing all over each other then? It could get very messy.’ I hadn’t quite grasped the whole concept yet.

  ‘At the moment we’re going through the motions. We all know what’s coming up and we play like we’re on automatic pilot. If we do things this way, it will only work if we’re all listening to each other very carefully. We each need to know what the others are playing and going to play before they play it. Or it will all fall apart.’ Don was breaking down years of training here. It was a great idea but could we pull it off?

  ‘I’ll give it a fucking go,’ Steve proclaimed.

  ‘Yeah, all right then. I follow Steve,’ Phil said quietly. ‘That’s really what I do anyway. I never know what I’m going to play until it starts. Sometimes even after I’ve started I don’t know what I’m playing.’ He laughed out loud.

  I could see Ian thinking things over. Ian loved to jam but jamming was self-centred and boring. This was different to jamming. This was feeling what the others were going to do before it happened.

  ‘I’m in. I always do what I want anyway,’ I laughed.

  Ian joined in. ‘Yeah, yeah all right, I’m in too.’

  THE BAND CHANGED. WE grew up. We weren’t young boys singing for free drinks and chicks anymore. We had stories to tell and axes to grind. Our worlds had been turned upside down. And life had started to wear us down.

  We had learned all we could from East, digested it and then spat out what we didn’t need. Music would never be the same for us. We reinvented the band. We started playing songs that weren’t straight four on the floor grooves. The rhythms of the band got a lot more interesting. If you listen to Circus Animals, which was released in March 1982, it is really obvious. The album opens with me spitting venom at the American record company in ‘You Got Nothing I Want’. Ian wrote ‘Bow River’, a song that a lot of people to this day think sums up the sound of Cold Chisel. Don’s songs in particular got more interesting. ‘Wild Colonial Boy’, ‘Numbers Fall’ and ‘Taipan’ beca
me the sort of songs that only Cold Chisel played. No one else could play like that. Loose, rumbling feels that were laidback and menacing at the same time. We turned into a different kind of animal. ‘Letter to Alan’ was a song about lost friends. And ‘Houndog’ was the story of our lives together, dragging ourselves up and down the east coast of Australia, screaming at people until they couldn’t ignore us any longer.

  Steve hit his stride as a songwriter too. ‘Forever Now’ was commercial but different from anything else on the radio at the time. He wrote haunting melodies for me to sing and he even wrote the basis of the guitar hook that Ian plays throughout the song. Ian made it beautiful but the note choice came from Steve’s head. And to this day ‘When the War is Over’, a beautiful song written by Steve for that album, still haunts me. Some nights, I have to stop myself breaking down as I sing it. The loss of Steve is still a raw nerve.

  WE WERE STILL IN a tailspin that would ultimately break up the band. We fought more often and I in particular stormed off whenever I could. I drank more and drugs became more available to us, well to me anyway. I never wanted to be alone with myself. I hated it. I hated me. So I was taking more and more. All I wanted from life was not to feel anything. I was consuming ridiculous amounts of booze and cocaine. It was getting to the point where I was never doing a show unless I had lots of hard drugs.

  My drinking had slowly gotten worse and worse as the years went on. I started to take more speed so I could remain standing up. The speed would counteract the booze and then I would have to drink to counteract the speed. Once cocaine became readily available in this country, things got a lot more expensive. Speed had been cheap. Most people couldn’t give it away, unless I was around. But over the course of a few tours and a few recording sessions, I developed a preference for cocaine. My spending increased overnight. Soon, I needed to find more money to keep up with my lifestyle. Everyone would give you drugs while they were with you but if you wanted to hold onto them for yourself, you had to buy them.