Working Class Man

by Jimmy Barnes

  Jackie met and married a beautiful Australian–Malaysian girl, Stephanie. Steph became like a daughter to me from the minute we met. She is loving and warm and has become a fantastic mother. Jackie and Steph have two little girls who look like china dolls. Their names are Isabella and Zoey. I am totally smitten with the pair of them. Jackie studied percussion at Berklee College of Music in Boston and, since graduating, has played drums in my band. He is one of the best drummers I have ever seen but, more importantly, he is a good man and a great father.

  Eliza-Jane left home to tour the world with her close friends Liam Finn and Ceci Herbert. They have been friends since they were toddlers. Neil and Sharon Finn have been close to us forever and our children feel as comfortable with them as they do with us. They are a great family. We call them the Finn-laws. EJ has toured and recorded with Liam and also sings with Ceci, her partner in crime for a long time now. She has even been fortunate enough to sing with Neil Finn on and off for a few years. She is very lucky to be performing with one of the world’s great singer-songwriters. Working with Liam led her to meet a good friend of the Finn family, Jimmy Metherell. Jimmy is a gentle caring fellow who can cook, and he plays piano and guitar and sings well too. They are not married but I think it’s just a matter of time. We think he’s a keeper.

  Elly-May met Liam Conboy, a tall good-looking Scotsman from Aberdeenshire, when he was on a working holiday in Australia. They had a whirlwind romance and got married and had a beautiful baby they called Dylan. They are both wonderful parents who care for each other and are still in the process of working their lives out. We can’t ask for more than that. We just hope that they will all be happy. Elly will hopefully make her first record very soon.

  My three girls, Mahalia, EJ and Elly-May, all sing with me. And even Jane has taken to the stage and sings with me every night. I feel truly blessed to be able to make music with my family. Life is good and it’s only getting better.

  I am a loving grandfather and Jane is the best grandmother I have ever seen. My grandkids just love her and so do I. I can see in their eyes how much they love her, every time they look at her. Just like when my children were small. Her whole life is devoted to them. I’m the same, I can’t get enough of them. I am still a rock’n’roll singer and our lives are far from normal but, when it all comes down to it, we are just like any family. We laugh and we cry together. We share good times and bad. But most importantly, we love each other. Now all I need is more time to spend at home with all my children, new and old, and their beautiful families. There are just not enough minutes in the day, and time keeps ticking away.

  My grandchildren have sung a few songs and given them to me as Christmas presents. I suspect at some point I will see the new Tin Lids. Just like my children did so many years before, my grandkids think that everybody makes music. Some of them have already let me know that they want to sing and play music too. I wonder if they need a manager.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I can feel the change

  FAREWELLS, 2012–16

  THE ROAD HAS TAKEN so many of us. Some die of loneliness. Some die in a crowd. Some die because they just work themselves into the ground. But whatever way they have gone, I have lost a lot of friends.

  In March 2012, I got the news that my dear old friend Vince Lovegrove had crashed his Kombi van into a tree. Vince was like me in a lot of ways. He never coped well with pressure either. He had settled into a calmer, peaceful life, living up in the Byron Bay area, but it didn’t last. The roads are very bad around there and late one night he died. He had found peace. I sang at his funeral. It was hard. Vince had lived a life full of joy and pain at the same time.

  Charley lost his beautiful Chrissy in 2013. It was all too much for her to fight. Multiple sclerosis and breast cancer eventually wore her down. Charley was heartbroken but I thought I could see relief in his eyes. Chrissy wasn’t suffering anymore.

  The world was sad the day that Chrissy left. She was the toughest girl to take on the music industry, and she did it with a style like no one else. The last time Chrissy sang on stage was with Cold Chisel on Light the Nitro. Chrissy joined us and sang ‘Saturday Night’. What a moment it was to share the stage with Chrissy and Charley. We were all meant to be there for each other.

  Ian Smith had been part of my life for many years, running tours and managing bands. Everyone in the music business knew him as Smithy. He left us in 2014. Ian battled liver cancer with the same strength and enthusiasm that he’d tackled life. Nothing could beat Smithy. He had fought a raging battle with hard drugs and won. He had been through the wringer a few times. But he still came back smiling. He was a great man and a dear friend. When he thought life couldn’t give him any more, he had found the love of his life, Caroline, and was finally happy. That was when the cancer struck.

  Smithy used to say to me, ‘Look Jim. I’ve done it all and I’m surprised that something hasn’t killed me before. I can face this. I’ve done all I need to do.’

  He was sad to leave his beautiful Caroline behind, but she was like a rock for him. He was never alone. I went to see Smithy when he was in palliative care. He looked calm and at peace. I wanted to feel that at peace too. As I walked in, there were a few old friends of ours waiting to say goodbye. Mark Pope was there along with Richard Clapton. Richard looked like he’d had a big week. As I sat next to Ian’s bed holding his hand, I said quietly to him, ‘You know what, Ian? You look better than Richard out there. He looks like he should swap places with you.’

  I don’t know if he heard me but he would have laughed. I did. I laughed for both of us. It was the last time we would have a laugh together.

  We all waited to find out about Eric. He was a tough guy. He had worked hard all his life. He was big and afraid of no one but his diagnosis had been too late. The cancer had spread. Eric, as tough as he was, couldn’t beat it. He fought for a few years, taking one step forward and two steps back. Eric and Patti, his wife, were never apart over those years. He was lucky to have her with him. She loved him so much.

  When Eric died, we were all left with a gaping hole in our hearts. Eric was as much a part of the new touring Cold Chisel as any of us. He had become the big brother of the tour. No matter what camp you were in, the band, the management, the crew, the truck drivers or the merchandising, Eric was a part of your job. He had been the glue that held us all together. We had all laughed, cried, screamed and fought with Eric at some point on the last few tours and now he was gone.

  I often sit now and wonder how I made it through and so many didn’t.

  COLD CHISEL WENT BACK into the recording studio with Kevin Shirley in 2014 and started making The Perfect Crime, our first album that Steve didn’t play on, though I could feel his spirit on every track that we recorded. By this time Charley was as much a part of the band as I was. We had found our sound again. Making this record was easy. Well, easier than most of the records we’d made. I was no longer smashed for a start. I could sit still and listen to what was going down without wanting to escape from the band or myself. It was funny that the single was called ‘Lost’, because I wasn’t anymore. For the first time in a long time, I knew where I was and where I was going. The song was classic Cold Chisel. Don’s chord changes were as tricky to sing over as ever. But once I found the way they moved, the melodies were perfect. In 2015, the song charted. We hadn’t been on the singles charts for a long time.

  By mid-2015 we were going out on tour and I was ready. I didn’t need to dry out or go to rehab. I was focused and fit. I took Jane and the kids to Thailand for a little break before we started. It had always been a place where we could drop our guard and relax for a while, even in the midst of all the chaos. But this time a bomb went off, right next to where we were staying.

  On 17 August, we were walking from our hotel to a restaurant to eat. We had a few of our grandkids with us so it wasn’t easy. Bangkok roads are crazy and there were roadworks all around the area. I came up with a plan to get the pram across the
main road to the restaurant. It was what my kids call one of my short cuts, which by the way always seem to take much longer to get anywhere. Jane calls it the scenic route. But because of the pram they all agreed to follow my directions. We ended up going a long way around and as we walked between two buildings we heard an almighty bang. No more than fifty yards from us a bomb had exploded, killing at least twenty people and injuring hundreds more. Had we not taken my short cut, we would have walked across the road, exactly where the explosion occurred, and been blown to pieces.

  The bomb was hidden in a small shrine where people went to pray and make wishes for their families. When the wish comes true, they go back and give thanks. I had kneeled in that shrine many times asking for peace and help. It seemed like a particularly cruel target.

  The reason I’m telling this story is that I can now see that even with all the things that had happened to me as a child and as an adult, I was still a lucky person. Friends and even buildings were falling all around me and I was still standing. When times were at their worst, I found Reg Barnes. When I needed help and a way out, I found Cold Chisel. And on that day in 1979 in Canberra, I found the one person who would give me a reason to go on living. My Jane. I have some sort of inner sense that pulls me from the darkest place at the right time. I missed the 2002 Bali bombing by minutes as well. Someone or something was looking out for me. I know we make our own luck and I know that I am a fighter, but something was helping me.

  THE ONE NIGHT STAND tour started with a bang, the sound of pyrotechnics exploding as we played four songs before the NRL Grand Final. The band was set up on the field, within swinging distance of the crowd. I remembered something my father told me, when I played football as a kid. He’d say, ‘I don’t care if it’s leather or human, destroy it.’ So we were ready to crash-tackle anybody that moved, and we smashed our way through the set and then headed north, up the coast.

  Every night we gave everything. This was what Cold Chisel did. Gave everything. We knew that it could end at any time. We had learned that from the loss of our mates.

  The climax was in Sydney in December 2015. We would be the last Australian band to play the Entertainment Centre. Elton John played the very final night, but the place was already crumbling as we played. I could feel the brickwork shaking as the band crashed our way through our final songs. This was where we’d played our final Last Stand so many years before. And we had one last chance to say goodbye to all the memories this building held.

  That last night we thought about all our friends who had shared the road with us. Friends who were gone now. Steve, Thorpie, Alan and Billy, Bon, Vince, Hutch, James, Smithy, Chrissy, and of course Eric. So many mates who we wouldn’t see again. We had torn this hall apart so many times in the past and now it was the last night. We wanted to tear it down again for everyone who had left us. The encore kept going on and on.

  ‘What about this one?’ Don shouted over the roar of the crowd and started another song. We must have played eight songs in the encore that night. I could see Bailey, the production manager, looking at his watch, willing us to stop, but we didn’t. We just kept playing. We didn’t want to say goodbye. It was too final. We played for ourselves, for the audience and for our old mates who couldn’t be there.

  Eric had hated it when we finished with ‘The Last Wave of Summer’. He thought it was too slow and self-indulgent. ‘Leave them with one of your big hits. Oh sorry, you guys never had any,’ he’d quip as he got the crew started on packing up the gear. We had all loved him, even when he was tearing strips off us. The last song we would ever play at the Entertainment Centre was especially for our lost mates.

  There’s a cold winter comin’

  I can feel the change

  It’s the last wave of summer

  We’ll ever see again

  Let’s ride

  EPILOGUE

  I RUSHED TO NEWCASTLE after I received a call from my sister Lisa. ‘You’d better get up here again. I think this is it. The doctors have given her something to help her pass without pain. They don’t think she will last long.’

  I had been up and back a few times that week but I knew that this time it could be it. She could only fight for so long. Even Mum wasn’t that tough. I arrived and the house was full of family. It looked like no one had slept. Their eyes were all sunken and ringed with red. I could taste the tears on their cheeks as I kissed them and said hello. I walked into Mum’s room. The light was low and no one said a word. We all sat, taking turns to be next to her and hold her hand. Maybe for the last time. We waited for Mum to die.

  ‘All this silence is killing me. Never mind what it’s doing to Mum,’ I joked, but no one laughed. I grabbed my phone to see if there was something appropriate to play at a time like this. Then I remembered a playlist I had made the night before. It was as if I had known I would need it now. I pressed play. The sound of bagpipes filled the room.

  Mum hadn’t responded to anything for days but as I held her hand I was sure I could see her eyes flicker. Look, there it was again. It was as if she was trying to fight her way back, away from death’s door and back to the light, to her family one last time. She opened her eyes and squeezed my hand.

  ‘She knows you’re here, Jim,’ my sister Dot whispered.

  ‘Hi Mum. We are all here with you. We love you.’

  Dot laughed but her eyes filled with tears at the same time. I couldn’t speak. Then Mum closed her eyes again and drifted away. That was the last time my mum was with me.

  MUM CHOSE TO BE buried in the ground. Cremation was out of the question. She’d been burned enough by life and didn’t need any more in death.

  About eight years before she died, Jane and I had given Mum a little schnauzer puppy. She called him Oscar. Oscar would become the only shining light in her life. She adored him and doted over him. Oscar was treated like a prince. He had his own bed next to hers so she could watch over him. It was as if all the love she was too scared to show to another human came pouring out of her and into her ‘wee dug’.

  Oscar had died suddenly about six months before Mum did, basically of the same types of cancer that she eventually had. If I didn’t know better I’d say that he was trying to take her disease and pain away, trying desperately to save her. But he couldn’t.

  From the moment Oscar died, Mum let go of her life. ‘I miss ma wee boy, Jim. I don’t want tae be aroon’ wi’out him,’ she told me. Even her family weren’t enough to keep her here. She wanted to go with her wee man, Oscar.

  The last time I looked at Mum she was lying in her coffin, clutching Oscar’s ashes in a jar tightly to her chest. He was close to her heart. I knew her heart had stopped beating but he had found it when she was alive, when no one else could. I was sure he had found it again. And they were together.

  AT THE CEMETERY, THE family waited in silence for Mum to arrive, each of us looking like the old headstones that marked the graves from a hundred years before. Broken and crumbling and falling apart. I stood over the empty grave. I don’t know why but I needed to see where she would rest. As I stared down into the cold damp earth, my eyes filled with tears. I swallowed hard and walked back to the car to wait with Jane. I needed to hold her hand and feel the warmth of her touch. Everything seemed to be dying around me. But not Jane.

  The hearse pulled into the carpark and we all gathered around the graveside. I couldn’t look at my brothers and sisters or anyone else. They were the same. Staring blankly out into space. Lost and alone. We moved to the car and the signal was given to pick up the coffin and walk to the grave. The sound of bagpipes rang out across the cemetery. This was it. It was almost over.

  As Mum’s coffin was lowered into the ground, a gust of wind swept through the trees. A flock of white cockatoos danced on the breeze, dipping down as if to look on us one last time before disappearing into the distance. Mum was gone.

  I expected to feel empty as I left the cemetery, but I didn’t. I was left with a strange sense of closure and peace. It was
as if the roller coaster I had been riding all my life had slowed down, and in that moment I could breathe.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AND I THOUGHT MY childhood was hard to look at. This was even harder. The mistakes I made and the pain I caused myself and the ones I love have at times been almost too hard to revisit. But that’s what I had to do. Just like in my first book, the writing was part of the healing process. In Working Class Boy, I learned to let go of a lot of what happened to me as a child. The cover said it was a memoir of running away. As I was editing that book my mother died. I never got to talk to her about all of this. I think it was probably for the best. She saw things through her own eyes, not mine. No one else has seen what I have seen in my life. No one else has been in my shoes.

  Writing that book, along with all that I have told you in this one, helped me make sense of my life. I spent almost a year talking about my childhood on my Stories and Songs tour. And I have learned a lot more about myself. I have also learned that some things can’t be fixed. But I’m not running away anymore. I’m facing up to everything that life can throw at me and I’m doing all right. You can’t run from life or it will run you down. I used to think I was running out of time. Deepak once said to me, ‘You know, Jimmy, people who say they are running out of time, run out of time.’