Double Happiness
Jimmy Barnes
Jimmy Barnes has been
there and back. He's tasted glory as the most successful
Australian rock & roll singer. He's also struggled
with the pressures of being a tall poppy and he's
wrestled his own demons. It's been a wild ride. Now it's
getting interesting.
At age 16, Jimmy played his
second gig as lead singer on the back of a truck one hot
Saturday at Gawler Raceway in Adelaide, South Australia.
The band would become Cold Chisel. A couple of years
later they had a residency at the Larg's Pier Hotel that
was so packed, fans drove a ute through the back wall to
get in.
By 1978 Cold Chisel was a nasty rock &
soul band tearing up the pubs of Sydney and Melbourne.
Living in flop houses on $100 a month, Cold Chisel
didn't care a rat's for anything but rock & roll.
They signed a record deal although the label had no
expectations for their success. The first single, "Khe
Sahn" was banned from commercial radio. But Cold Chisel
had something more valuable than record company
paychecks or radio jocks – Chisel had genuine fans.
Chisel fans knew that when they bought a ticket at the
door, all bets were off. With Jimmy Barnes out front,
slugging spirits and using his voice to duel with the
soaring guitar lines from Ian Moss, Chisel kicked arse
like rock & roll is supposed to.
Within three
short years of their first album's release, Cold Chisel
was the most successful band in the land. The 1980 album
East, surpassed all expectations selling a quarter of a
million copies straight out of the box. Every ticket on
their now-legendary tours was sold out. People still
talk of the Circus Animals tour where Jimmy sang on a
trapeze underneath a motorcycle delicately balanced on a
tight-rope! Jimmy was a star.
Chisel's records were
instant classics - "Khe Sahn", "Flame Trees" "Saturday
Night", "Rising Sun", "Cheap Wine", "Breakfast At
Sweethearts", "You Got Nothing I Want" .. most have
become national anthems. In 1984 Chisel came to an end
with the largest concert tour ever undertaken by an
Australian band - a record that still stands over twenty
years later.
Within a month of Cold Chisel finishing,
Jimmy Barnes was on the road with a new band, and within
a year of that Jimmy released his first solo album,
Bodyswerve, and it entered the charts at #1.
The next
year he signed to Geffen Records in the US and cut 5 new
tracks that became the album For the Working Class Man -
another #1 debut. The title track was used by Ron Howard
for his film Gung Ho. Artistic differences ended Jimmy's
relationship with Geffen and he recorded 1987's Freight
Train Heart - another #1 debut - on his own terms. The
national tour in support of that album, underwritten by
Pepsi, featured a young Perth guitarist Mark Lizotte
(aka Diesel) who would soon become Jimmy's closest
musical collaborator.
Around this time, Jimmy also
teamed up with INXS and the Divinyls, the Models, the
Saints and the Triffids for the massive national tour,
Australian Made. To celebrate Australian Made, Jimmy and
INXS recorded an Easybeats song "Good Times." The single
topped the Australian charts and was included on the
soundtrack to the film The Lost Boys and subsequently
was a Top 40 hit in the US and a Top 10 hit in the UK.
Jimmy began working with American producer Don Gehman
on the album Two Fires. Released in 1990 and yet another
#1 album, it was Jimmy's most sophisticated set yet. His
songwriting had matured and he had learned how to
control the power in his voice.
On little more than a
whim, Jimmy and Don Gehman cut an album of soul classics
that Jimmy particularly liked. The Soul Deep album was a
massive success with sales to date close to a million
copies.
Jimmy's next album, Heat, was his toughest
yet. Straight up hard rock and some of his best songs
ever. The album was also a success, despite being
swamped in the grunge craze that broke that summer of
1993.
That same year however Jimmy put together the
Flesh and Wood project that featured duets and
collaborations with a number of artists. The emphasis
was on acoustic renditions of songs and letting the
voices speak for themselves.
For twenty straight
years, Jimmy Barnes had been going full bore - writing,
recording, touring - without a break. In the meantime he
and wife Jane had also raised a family of three
daughters and one son. People stopped him in the street
everywhere he went. Jimmy was involved in a number of
major charities - mostly related to youth issues.
After twenty years it was time to take stock. Jimmy
sold his house and cleared the decks. There are only so
many times that you can tour Australia. Jimmy needed to
reassess and recharge. He moved to France and toured
through Europe and the UK. He made the Psyclone album
which was largely under-valued in the changing record
company structures.
After three years in Europe, Jimmy
came back ready to rebuild his career. He continued to
tour and to record and wrote with a number of different
people. His growing musical family and his natural
curiosity led him to explore different kinds of music,
especially in the soul vein.
Jimmy also took part in
the reformation of Cold Chisel. Despite all the
disagreements and the feuds, there was still a deep
friendship between the five members. Getting together
wasn't just a matter of recording some tunes and playing
some shows - it was also a reconciliation.
He then
recorded an album Love and Fear which purged a lot of
demons that had been plaguing him for many years. He
confronted issues that he had avoided by being on tour
and by drinking and taking drugs. He cut another album
of southern music, Soul Deeper, that had a bluesier feel
than its predecessor.
In 2004, Jimmy started
assembling the duets he had recorded over the years. He
was also itching to put some new songs out and so the
idea of Double Happiness began.
The last thirty years
have led to this point. The last ten in particular have
seen Jimmy Barnes develop the many and varied facets of
his music; starting out with raw rock & roll and
educating himself in soul music, country and rock &
roll. Jimmy also chose to continue working with people
who have been an inspiration to him, the likes of Joe
Cocker, and his old mates INXS; but now takes the
opportunity to collaborate and forge relationships with
new friends – Mica Paris, Dallas Crane, The Living
End, Roachford and The Badloves among them, and those
people closest to his heart - his brother Swanee, his
kids and his brother in law, Mark Lizotte. (Diesel)
This is a complete portrait of a multi-faceted artist.
It is also an ambitious project that has in so many
ways been a lifetime in the making, with a range of
different singers, a variety of styles. Just when you
think you know where you are, something new pops
up.