Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but spending substantial time with adored Australian rock legend Jimmy Barnes is rather like being in the company of a celebrated academic of modern music history.
Don’t get me wrong — Jimmy hasn’t morphed into some lofty academic. He still wears those tight T-shirts, and whenever he’s onstage with the band he just can’t leave, Cold Chisel, that corroded Australian-steel voice still blasts across an arena.
“I literally make records so I can go out live,” he tells me. “There’s something about when I stand in front of an audience and sing — I feel that it makes me a better singer and I feel more connected. I feel like my feet are more solid than on the ground.”
Cold Chisel carved out a reputation for wild live shows through the 70s and 80s. (Supplied: Marc Christowski)
But he’s also a deep thinker, and as I tool around Botany Bay, driving Jimmy in a vintage Mercedes, we slot a mixtape, crank up the volume and this rock legend talks me through the advent of American gospel, through to soul, rock, pop and beyond.
His music knowledge is encyclopaedic, enthusiastically shared and deeply understood.
He’s slapping the dashboard, singing out loud and right at home.
“It’s a glamorous life, rock and roll,” he laughs. “You spend an hour and a half on stage and then the rest of the time you’re in the car.”A restless sort of creativity
Jimmy absorbed music through his skin: the impoverished Scottish immigrant hearing 1960s rock on crappy car radios; inhaling Gospel music on the couch with his punishing father; kicking in the back door of the Apollo Theatre in Adelaide to hear Tina Turner.
In conversation, he has every singer, every song at the tips of his fingers — the song’s construction, the player’s influence — and he comes alive like the teenage fan he was and always will be.
Watch Creative Types with Virginia Trioli: Jimmy Barnes on ABC iview
“My brother John was my big influence when I was a young singer because he had great records and was in blues bands. He had great musical taste,” he says.
“I used to hear this music coming out of his bedroom and I’d try to sneak in when he was playing it and he’d throw me out. But when he’d leave, I’d be in there playing his records to my friends.”
I hung out with Jimmy for the first episode of our new series of Creative Types, and while so much is known about this legendary performer, it was incredibly revealing to frame our conversations only from the point of view of his own creativity: its outlets and frustrations; peaks and successes; and the revelations of potential that surprised even him.
Jimmy Barnes has won seven ARIA awards, and has been inducted into the Hall of Fame as both a solo artist and a member of Cold Chisel. (Supplied: Jesse Lizotte)
“I have a restless sort of creativity — and I get it in the silence a lot,” he says.
“I dunno who said it, but the best prime ministers are the ones who turn up for the job. The best plumber is the one that arrives. You’ve got to turn up for the job to be good at it. And the same with the creative.
“I try and write every day. And that way you get into a flow, you have a path where you can stop the chaos that’s running around your mind and just let it flow for a while and you can write.”
Shake it up
As he’s written so movingly in his award-winning autobiographies, Jimmy has come a long way from the self-destructive, self-loathing place that almost killed him as a younger man.
These days he talks with real fervour about the latest book he’s read, the vegetables he’s harvested from his garden, the next meal he and his beloved wife Jane are going to prepare, and the next book he’ll write — a novel, this time, set in Scotland, the country his family left all those years ago.
But the music always comes first.
“As a band, you have to shake it up all the time. You can’t just get up and do the same show every night. So, there’s still an element of danger where things can go horribly wrong. Because that’s where you learn and you find your feet. You’ve got to keep that going all the time.”
Steve Prestwich (second from right) was the founding and long-term drummer for Cold Chisel. He died in 2011. (Supplied)
Following the death of Jimmy’s beloved “brother” in the band, Steve Prestwich, the celebrated session musician Charlie Drayton joined as drummer, giving Chisel, Jimmy says, a new lease on life.
“We’re not quite as heavy as we used to be, and I think that’s made us better, challenged us and made us play closer. And I don’t have as much control.
“It’s not about bludgeoning people to death anymore. It’s more about killing people softly with the grooves.”
Watch Creative Types with Virginia Trioli at 8.30pm Thursdays on ABC TV or stream anytime on ABC iview.