 How
Euro Barnestormers started
I first heard of Jimmy back in the eighties when I saw the film "The Lost
Boys", where he joined forces with INXS to record Good Times for the film's
soundtrack. It was a while later that I heard "Barnestorming...Live" and
from then on I was hooked. My most extreme "fan" moment was probably the
time I ran up a large overdraft going to see Jimmy play at the Arapaho
club in Paris, which involved a lot of complicated stuff like making sure
my French was up to scratch enough to book the tickets over the phone,
plus trying to explain (unsuccessfully!) to the bouncers why I needed to
take my camera in with me..... Complete madness, but well worth it - to
this day it's one of my all-time favourite gigs. Then through a series
of good luck and strange coincidences, I ended up co-running Jimmy's European
Fan Club for almost 2 years, so read on if you want to know the history!
The story dates back to July 1994 when I met Jacquie Daniels at
a signing session that Jimmy was doing at Tower records in London. We got
talking about how impossible it was to find up-to-date information when
your favourite singer lived on the other side of the world, and after a
dodgy bottle of wine & too much beer started getting ideas in our heads
about starting a small-scale fanzine, for people like us who wanted to
swap stories, tapes, photos, record hunting tips and anything else we could
think of in our Barnes-starved universe! Later that day we met Jimmy's
then manager, Vince Lovegrove, who listened to us and gave us permission
to have a go. I don't think he ever expected to see us again, but the next
day by chance we saw him at Wembley Arena (Jimmy was playing at the Gibson
Night of 100 Guitars concert, my seat was right on the aisle and I managed
to grab a very surprised Vince as he walked past) and arranged to meet
& talk about the idea. Between July and November the whole thing escalated,
so much so that by the time we set foot in the offices of Mushroom UK,
our little fanzine idea had developed into a full-scale European fan club.
There were, of course, several underlying factors at work. At this
time Jimmy had just moved to the South of France, and was beginning to
concentrate on his European market. So it was a golden opportunity
to rally existing European fans, and to work on expanding the fanbase.
Enter a couple of enthusiastic and seemingly capable fans! At that time,
Barnestormers Australia was virtually non-existant, there was nobody dealing
with fan club mail, and so in addition to the information-starved Europeans,
we soon began to build up a large database of Australian fans who were
anxious to know what was going on on this side of the world. Talk about
role reversal!
We were helped out by Australian Barnes fan Phillip Shoppee , who kept
us up to date with the Aussie side of things, and wrote a regular column
for the newsletter. Between December '94 and April '96 we published six
newsletters with the help of Mushroom UK, where we spent as much time as
we could. Unfortunately due to circumstances largely beyond my control, I had to make the difficult decision to leave in May '96. Jacquie was able to get funding for a
seventh and final newsletter, which finally saw the light of day in 1997,
after Jimmy's much publicised return to Australia. The publication of the
seventh newsletter coincided with the European release of the Best of Jimmy
Barnes album (which went out in Australia under the more relevant title
"Barnes Hits"). Unfortunately after Jimmy's return to Austalia, European
channels of communication pretty much dried up once again, and Jacquie also
called it a day, as it was no longer possible to provide an up to
date information service.
I had a great time while it lasted, and these pages are intended
to share my memories with you.
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