Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  Once we had selected the right girls, Gary suggested that we give the crowd a little bonus. As well as the dancing girls, we would slip in a few drag queens, something they would never expect. We hired Anthony, who has become a friend of my family since that day, and his friend Anthony from New Zealand. Australian Anthony was a shy, handsome young fellow who transformed into a seven-foot-tall gregarious blond bombshell, stage-named ‘Amelia Airhead’. Amelia was afraid of no one and could reduce most straight men to frightened, slightly effeminate slaves in seconds. New Zealand Anthony wasn’t that big either and he too was a bit shy. But when he became ‘Tess Tickle’ he was larger than life and was trouble with a capital T, wrapped in sequins. I thought this would be the perfect combination. The wilder the show was, the more I liked it. The more distracted the audience were, the more places I had to hide, and the less chance of people noticing how out of it I was. But they did notice. I practically glowed in the dark by the time the tour started.

  During the first few shows we got the dancers out for a few songs, the last one being ‘Pretty Little Thing’. Now this song sounds like music to strip to. The girls would come out grinding and go through their routine until, at the climax of the song, they would line up along the front of the stage, ready for their big reveal. By this point it was more menacing than sexual. The music would come crashing to a halt and the girls would drop their gear and then, bang! The front row of guys, leering and drooling over the girls as they dropped their last tiny items of clothing, hands stretched out, touching the air in an attempt to get to them, would see that two of the girls they desired so much were actually boys. Their hands would snap back to their sides and the smiles would disappear from their faces as they turned to one another in shock. How could Cold Chisel do this to them? This was unfair. Chisel were a butch band. They shouldn’t confuse their audience by making them lust over naked boys.

  The dancers would exit the stage, leaving G-strings and feathers everywhere. Half the crowd would be cheering and the other half laughing. A few blokes would be looking down at their shoes uncomfortably, waiting until the lights went down so they could limp out of the auditorium. We loved this part of the show. I waited for it each night. But then something strange happened. We were at soundcheck one afternoon and we noticed that Steve had not arrived. The doors would open soon and there was no word from him. We were worried that something might have happened to him. Finally, we got a call. Steve was not going to do the show if the dancers were on with us. He thought it was disgusting for a band like us to have young naked girls out on the road. Not to mention boys too. What were we doing? We were taking advantage of them.

  Had he missed the joke? He had appeared to be as amused as the rest of us over the first few nights.

  ‘Tell Steve to grow up and get here before I kill him,’ I joked to the tour manager.

  ‘No Jim, this is serious. He said he won’t do the show unless we stop the girls. He doesn’t want them on the road and he won’t play if the band is paying for something like this.’

  I was furious. ‘Tell him if he’s not here soon we’ll get someone else to play,’ I screamed. The rest of the band and Rod grabbed me. Steve was serious. We needed Steve to play, but he was getting grief from his wife. It wasn’t right. But that was it, the girls were taken out of the show.

  The tour lost a lot of its sting that night and I lost interest. The band had folded to outside pressure. We had never done that before. No matter what anybody said, if we liked it, we did it. Full stop. Wives, record companies, managers and promoters had all tried to tone down the wildness of Cold Chisel live and we had told them to fuck off. Now here we were changing a major part of the production halfway through the tour because it was a bit risqué and offended someone who wasn’t even a member of the band. I’d had enough. I loved this band; it was like my family. But now, like my family, they were making decisions about my future and I had no say in it. I was no longer in control of anything. I had lost control of my life, I had lost control of my sanity and now I was losing control of my career. I had to do something that was on my terms. I would not lay down.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I paid out of my own money for the strippers and dancers and Gary to come on the road anyway. Every night, they would be standing side of stage as my guests. After every show I would hit whatever town we were in arm in arm with two seven-foot-tall drag queens as security. Steve was furious. At different times during the set I would walk out with a pink sequinned G-string and drape it over his drums and tell him they were coming out to dance in the next song. The blood would drain from his face. Fuck it if you can’t take a joke, Steve.

  Some shows were filmed. Cold Chisel likes to document things. We have a dear friend called Robert Hambling who went everywhere with us, filming and taking photos. So there is an unreleased film of the Last Wave from start to finish, the making of the album and the tour. When, after the dust from the tour had settled we watched the film back, we were stunned. I went from looking like a normal healthy singer at the start of the film to looking like Gollum, skinny and pale, with crazed eyes and fear written all over me. Over the recording of the album I had fallen so far that I looked like I was about to die. It hurts to see it now. The rest of the band don’t like watching it either. We were all going through our own pain at the time, but none as obviously as me, I’m afraid.

  I have a record of my fall from human to something I can’t describe. I remember every night screaming ‘Let’s ride’ and wanting the wave to crash down on me and end it all. But I kept standing and so did the band. It would take more than a few hiccups to stop us. In fact, it would take death itself to come knocking at our doors before we changed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  read my lips

  POINT PIPER, SYDNEY, 1999

  I USED TO SEE blokes in bars with LOVE and FEAR tattooed on their knuckles. I thought they were just thugs, but around the turn of the millennium, I had those words tattooed on my psyche. To me, there were only two emotions. Love and fear. And depending on which one was strongest at the time, I would react accordingly. Unfortunately, fear seemed to rule over me most of the time. I had painted myself into a corner. Every step from the time I was a young man had taken me further and further from a place of love. I loved my children, I loved my darling Jane. But my conditioning and my behaviour had taken me to a place where I thought I was going to lose them, a fearful place. My reaction to fear was to fight. It’s like I always put myself into the corner, where I felt most comfortable. With my back against the wall and nothing left to lose, I could lash out and spit venom at the world.

  As I write this I sound like I am describing my mum. In fact, I think I might have used very similar words about her in my last book. But the difference is that my mum had nothing and still she was afraid of losing it. I had everything to lose.

  I started writing songs for an album that I’d decided would be called Love and Fear. It was the perfect album title for me at that time. I could sit and come up with catchy phrases that summed up my state of mind at the drop of a hat. I just couldn’t take it any further, and help myself. I came up with a name for my management company. ICU. Intensive Care Unit Management. This was exactly the kind of management I needed, but unfortunately the guy I chose to manage me was not qualified for the job. He couldn’t manage to find a fuck in a brothel with a handful of fivers – an old saying, but sadly it was true. Instead of being a caring nurturing manager, which was what I needed at that time, he was more of an ambulance chaser. And I was always in the ambulance. Anyway, we didn’t last long and he left. I think he took the ICU name, which was a shame because I thought it was quite funny.

  I started writing songs while we were living in a house that we bought in Point Piper. By the sound of that address you would think I was doing all right. We lived in one of the best streets in one of the best suburbs in Sydney. But it wasn’t me who got us into the house, it was Jane with some help from her Thai father. Once more I was being thrown h
elp. By this time her father must have thought I was on my way out. He never made me feel bad about any of the help he gave us. He was just being a dad, doing whatever he could to help his children get ahead. But I was sabotaging us with every step I took.

  THE SONGS ON THE album reflected the way I was at the time, jumping from angry battle cries one minute to mournful pleading for forgiveness the next. A couple of songs I had written a year or so earlier, on a writing trip to America. My favourite place. My publishers had set me up with a writer in Nashville, who according to them was very good. I could stay with an old friend, Rick, so the trip wouldn’t cost me a fortune. Rick was the engineer Don Gehman had used for a few records we worked on. I had heard some of Rick’s writing during that period, so I thought we could also write together while I was there. Rick had married Maja, a girl I had known since she was a child. Her mum was like part of Jane’s extended family.

  I turned up at Rick’s house and immediately met a few of his wilder mates, who could help me find drugs. I scored enough to keep me going for a few days, got myself wired, and then headed off to the big Nashville writer’s house. To say I was uncomfortable going to a stranger’s house in the shape I was in would be an understatement.

  The taxi was almost there when the cab driver announced in some sort of Southern drawl, ‘The house you are looking for is right down this street, sir.’ I looked for the number. I hoped the songwriter would be a nice quiet guy, not some loud-mouth with a huge ego who I would have to put up with for the next few days.

  ‘Yes siree. If I’m not mistaken that is the house right there.’

  Ahead, in this small suburban street, was a house with a huge banner outside, displaying a picture of a guy I presumed was my writing partner and the words ‘NASHVILLE’S NUMBER ONE SONGWRITER’ in letters big enough to see from space. I leaned towards the driver and said, ‘Don’t slow down, just keep moving,’ and then I ducked down in case the songwriter was waiting outside.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. Is this where you asked to go?’ The driver was confused and was still slowing down.

  ‘Just keep moving. Don’t stop. In fact, put your foot down.’

  We sped off. There was silence in the car for a minute, then the driver asked, ‘Can I drop you somewhere else, sir?’

  I didn’t know anywhere to go, except for the place I’d scored the coke. Rick had told me that these guys were crackheads but they were good musicians. So that’s where I went. To write with a bunch of crackheads instead of, according to his banner, Nashville’s number one songwriter. I hung out with these guys all day and went back to Rick’s apartment a little later. Me and the crackhead guys didn’t write anything memorable. Funny that.

  Rick was in trouble with his wife by the time I got to his place. Probably because we had partied too hard. He was sitting upright in his chair, waiting for me.

  ‘I got a little studio set up in the spare room. And I got an idea for a song. Let’s go,’ he barked at me. We went into this small room in a small apartment and wrote a wild, fast, loud rock song called ‘Sorry’. It was basically both of us saying sorry to the world for being fuck-ups, but it was sarcastic. Neither of us was sorry at all, although I had a lot to be sorry about.

  I woke up next morning. Maja was sitting alone in the kitchen. Her eyes were red from crying.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maja.’ I offered my apology.

  ‘Yeah. So I heard over and over the whole night, Jimmy. I’m sorry too. Sorry I had to be here.’ She didn’t even look at me.

  I left and headed to LA to write with Tony Brock.

  Tony and I had written a lot together but only when I was fucked up. I arrived and scored more coke and we started writing at about seven o’clock in the evening. By seven in the morning I was sprawled on the couch mindless while Tony sat obsessing over a drum loop that was way too dark and way too complicated to ever use again. No one but us would ever really get this song. I think it was the last thing I ever wrote with Tony. We aren’t really friends anymore. We blew ourselves apart.

  The song was called ‘Blind Can’t Lead the Blind’. The title says it all. It ended up sounding like a post-apocalyptic cry for help. Very hard to listen to right to this day.

  I WENT HOME WITH next to nothing. Jane and I started fighting as soon as I got there. The drugs were doing so much damage. I remember storming out of the house one day after a fight. I intended to go to my studio above the garage and get smashed. As I walked down the garden path, a friend turned up. This friend was very nice but he was a hippy. He grabbed me and hugged me. I could smell the patchouli oil straightaway.

  ‘I’ve come to read your Tarot cards, Jimmy.’

  I was in no mood for a reading. I wasn’t in the mood for anything. I took a step back and pushed him away. ‘Read my lips. Fuck off.’ And I continued storming off to the studio. But he followed me. I picked up my guitar and turned it up as loud as I could so he couldn’t speak to me.

  Karaang Karaang. It was deafening. But every time I stopped for a second, he was there.

  ‘Jimmy, do you want to talk?’

  Karaang Karaang. I drowned him out. I pretended to be recording and pushed the red button. Karaang Karaang.

  ‘I’m here for y –’

  Karaang Karaang. He wouldn’t leave. He was very persistent.

  ‘Let’s talk, Jimmy.’

  I wasn’t ready to talk at all. I grabbed a pen and paper. ‘You want to fucking talk, do you?’ I screamed.

  ‘Talk about hate. Talk about fear. Talk about trust. Talk about you. Talk about me.’ I was yelling as I wrote what I thought were a nasty set of lyrics about Jane. I continued with my rant and by the time I looked up again, he was gone. I had calmed down. I read the diatribe I had scribbled on the page. In front of me were a great set of lyrics. But they weren’t about Jane at all. They were about me. It was the best song I had written in years, ‘Love and Hate’.

  Then there was ‘Time Will Tell’. This was me with my back against the wall. Nowhere to turn and no one to turn to. Even my friends would tell me to just let go. ‘You’ve done the wrong thing, Jimmy. Take your punishment like a man.’

  But I wouldn’t.

  ‘Fuck you. You might take it on the chin but not me. I won’t lie down like a dog.’

  I started to write the song.

  I will not lay down with just a whimper

  I will not be strong because it’s simpler . . .

  I will not be told because I’m not waiting

  No sacrifice can take away the hating.

  This was what my mother would have sounded like on performance-enhancing drugs. If I was going down, I was taking the whole world with me. I was angry with myself and so drug crazed I couldn’t see a way to back down. And if I was going to burn in hell I would take everything I treasured with me. This was a bitter, cold place.

  ‘Thankful For the Rain’ was me accepting that I had lost everything. And I was going to be noble and learn from the experience. I was thankful for all the pain I was feeling. It was a chance to grow.

  But I wasn’t thankful, and it wasn’t a chance to grow as far as I could see. I jumped from writing that song to writing ‘Temptation’, a song about obsession and addiction and poison.

  JUST AS MY ALBUMS were selling less and less, I was playing to smaller and smaller crowds. I was becoming a joke. Well, that’s the way I saw it. I would walk on stage having not slept for days, or weeks sometimes, my eyes hanging out of my head and my nose red raw from shoving handfuls of anything that was available up it as fast as I could. I was sure that people were coming to see me fall. I tried not to. I tried so hard.

  Most times, I would struggle to find a voice. Most nights I did it, but there were a few I find painful to remember. I remember a show in Melbourne, in some small club that I would never have played a few years earlier. Here I was, trying unsuccessfully to fill it. My guest list was bigger than the audience I was pulling at this time.

  Jane and I had been fighting even more than norm
al and I was more out of it than I had ever been. I walked on stage and opened my mouth to sing. Nothing came out. My voice had always worked. But there I was, in front of an audience that wanted me to fire it up and there was nothing. I drank more vodka. Nothing. I drank hot water and honey. Nothing. Even at my worst shows in the old days I could always use sheer willpower to get through. This time I had none. I had nothing to give. My tank was empty. All that had got me this far had been the will to be liked and now I didn’t care. I hated myself and I was sure that the world hated me too. I stopped trying to sing and stood at the mic, alone.

  ‘I can’t do this. You deserve better. Go to the front desk and get your money back. I’ll try to come back when I can sing,’ I croaked with my head slumped. Maybe I should have been making this speech to Jane and my kids. But they couldn’t go to the door. There were no refunds in real life. The band were looking at each other. I was always the one who never gave up. I used to threaten them if they thought about lying down. And here I was on my knees.

  I walked off. Shattered. Ashamed. I had done this to myself. I deserved to feel ashamed.

  I crawled out of the show and into the car. I went back to my hotel and tried to drink myself to death. I didn’t even have the balls to kill myself. I wanted the booze to do it. I woke up and it was another day. It hadn’t ended. I would have to go out and try again.

  THE ALBUM WAS ALL like this. Jane wrote songs with me. Sweet and hopeful. My songs were crying one minute and lashing out the next. It was a painful record to make. But when I hear it now, I can see that my songwriting had improved in a lot of ways. Once again I had written lyrics about the real me, the pain I was feeling, and although I had found no real answers to my problems, I could see those problems a lot more clearly by the time I finished it. I should have had those words tattooed on my forehead. LOVE and FEAR.