Rough Guide to Jimmy Barnes

Euro Barnestormers issue 2, 1995

From the beginning to the release of HEAT

The Rough Guide has been put together for Jimmy's newer fans, and for those who have been enjoying the music for longer but have been unable to come by any background information.

Jimmy Barnes was born James Dixon Swan on April 28th, 1956, in Cowcaddens, Glasgow, to Dorothy (nee Dixon) and James Swan. He is one of six children.
In 1960 his family boarded a boat to Australia, landing in Adelaide on 7th January 1961. They settled in Elizabeth, a satellite of Adelaide, and a tough working class area.
Jimmy's parents separated and his mother remarried, to Reg Barnes. All of the children except Swanee (Jimmy's older brother John Swan) changed their surname by deed poll to Barnes.

At school, Jimmy was a good student and a keen footballer, but was increasingly drawn towards music through the influence of Swanee, who had begun touring with bands at the age of thirteen. Jimmy joined Elizabeth West High School aged fourteen, where he started getting involved with high school bands.He started singing when the singer of one of his earliest bands was sacked, and became greatly influenced by the vocal style of people like Paul Rodgers, singer with Free (who incidentally was one of Jimmy's fellow artists at Gibson's night of 100 guitars in June 1994 and hogged the bloody stage for half the night...)
Jimmy dropped out of high school at 16, and took up an apprenticeship as a moulder with the railways, which was "just the pits"

The Cold Chisel Years

After less than a year on the railways, Jimmy had started rehearsing with a band called Orange. The band was formed by Leszek Kaczmarek, with guitarist Ian Moss, an electrician from Alice Springs, keyboard player Don Walker, from North Queensland, who at the time had a career with the defence department in Weapons Research, and drummer Steve Prestwich, whose family had recently emigrated from Liverpool. It was Swanee who suggested that Jimmy, then seventeen, should audition for the job of singer.
At first, Jimmy had to overcome his shyness on stage, singing with his back to the audience to avoid eye contact (seems difficult to believe now...).

Orange soon became known as Cold Chisel, and served their apprenticeship playing the tough Adelaide pub circuit - if bands weren't up to scratch, the crowds soon let them know!
Chisel's recording line-up was completed when Kaczmarek was replaced by Phil Small, who was suggested by Ian Moss.
Jimmy briefly left the band in 1975 to play in a band with Swanee, but was back in Cold Chisel before long. After several years of touring, Chisel finally signed with Warner's and WEA, and started recording their first album in 1978.
When Khe Sanh was released as a single, it was banned straight away due to its lyrical content, a move which ensured publicity for the band.

In 1979 Jimmy met his wife, Jane Mahoney, in Canberra. She quickly became a major influence in his life, and also a major inspiration for his songwriting. (eg Rising Sun, Little Darling).They married in a Sydney Registry Office in 1981. (Jimmy and Jane now have four children, Mahalia, Eliza-Jane, Jackie and Elly-May).
Meanwhile, Chisel's popularity had kept on growing, and in 1981 they were invited to appear on the Countdown/TV Week awards. They trashed the stage, much to the delight of their fans.
Although they had gone from strength to strength in Australia, Cold Chisel decided to split up after a disastrous tour of Germany in 1983. They reunited for a final tour, named The Last Stand, and their final studio album, Twentieth Century. The first Sydney show of the last stand sold out in 35 minutes, and eventually more than 60,000 tickets were sold. The last Cold Chisel gig was at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on Dec.12th 1983.

Solo Career

Within months Jimmy had put a new band together, and had signed to Michael Gudinski's Mushroom record label. This was the first time that Jimmy had been in complete charge of the material that was recorded. Mark Opitz was enlisted as producer, and they started with two of Jimmy's songs from Chisel days - Daylight and No Second Prize. The first Solo LP, Bodyswerve, was released in September 1984, and reached no. 1 within two weeks of its release.

In 1985 Jimmy got an American deal with Geffen records, and spent three months working with respected songwriters and musicians such as Desmond Child and Jonathan Cain.
His second studio album, For the Working Class Man, featured five new songs alongside remixes from Bodyswerve. It sold 250,000 copies in the first year of release alone.
In America, the album was released under the title Jimmy Barnes in February 1986, and the song Working Class Man appeared on the soundtrack of a film, Gung Ho, which starred Michael (Batman) Keaton. Jimmy then toured America supporting ZZ Top, and focused himself with two hours' karate training each day. During this period he met Jeff Neill, who has worked with Jimmy ever since.

With his popularity still growing in Australia, Jimmy was invited in autumn 1986 to co-headline the Australian Made tour with rising stars INXS. For the occasion, they recorded the Easybeats' song Good Times together. Good Times reached no.2 in the Australian charts, and was later featured on the soundtrack of The Lost Boys.
Jimmy was later offered the theme song for Rocky III, however after 8 hours of recording, the producer came in and started to try to tell Jimmy how to sing. Jimmy, unimpressed, threw a chair through the glass window of the control room and left. Enter Survivor.......

Jimmy and family moved to California, where the next album was due to be recorded. However, he was becoming unhappy with the way things were going with Geffen, and eventually returned to Australia after recording sessions with Jonathan Cain and Neil Schon (Journey). All ties with Geffen were later severed.
Jimmy booked in at Rhinoceros Studios, and the raw material that he had started work in in America became the album Freight Train Heart. Diesel (Mark Lizotte) was called in on guitar duties. On Jimmy's next tour, Johnny Diesel and the Injectors were signed up as support act. Thus Diesel ended up playing two sets per night.
Jimmy toured throughout 1988 , and several live performances were recorded. Jimmy and Michael Gudinski decided that it was time to release a live album, called Barnestorming after his first solo tour.
Barnestorming topped the charts, and was supported by another Barnestorming tour, which was sponsored by Pepsi (although nobody beleived for one minute that Pepsi managed to usurp Jimmy's customary vodka bottle from the stage.....)

Needing a new American deal, Jimmy signed with Atlantic in 1990. He got the creative freedom that he wanted, and began working with producer Don Gehmen on Two Fires. The album was launched in August 1990, and the single "Lay Down Your Guns" was an instant hit in Australia, becoming Jimmy's fastest selling single to date.

In 1990 Jimmy had Freight Train Studios installed in his home in Mittagong. This meant that a planned Christmas break soon turned into something more intense...."....Soul Deep was initially conceived as a spare time project, but soon turned into something much bigger"
The release of Soul Deep was put on a backburner for a year as Two Fires was still selling strongly. Soul Deep was not anticipated to sell as many copies as other Jimmy Barnes albums, but in fact became his biggest album to date.

In 1992, Barnes and Diesel went to Amsterdam to record with Tina Turner; her song "Simply the Best" was to be the new theme for the NSW Rugby League.
By this time, Jimmy was looking for a new direction in which to take his recording. Bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers were using a variety of influences to bring an edge to their music. Jimmy decided that his first recordings after Soul Deep were too "Nice", and began putting together material with a raw, stripped back to its roots feel. The resulting album, Heat, was supported with an extensive European tour.

This is where the first instalment of the rough guide ends. Acknowledgements to Toby Cresswell (for information from the biography "Too Much Ain't Enough"), and Mushroom Records (Australia and UK) (for providing press releases).

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