As he's releasing his 17th studio album and still basking in the success of his two autobiographical books, Jimmy Barnes is the first to admit he's a lucky guy. Lucky to be still around that is. Following his bleak and troubled childhood in a trashy suburb of North Adelaide, Barnes was determined to make a go of a music career. The birth of Cold Chisel fired him up but he was constantly battling the demons, and taking on self-destructive habits that he fine-tuned over the decades.
Fast forward to 2019 and a phone hook-up with Barnes is a revelation as he reveals a frank road-map that has seen him smoke the pipe of peace with his cocaine and vodka lifestyle. It can't have been easy: a lifetime of self-destruction morphed into a road to self-discovery and, ultimately, redemption.
Alongside the writing of the books, he began to create what would become the record that released just yesterday, My Criminal Record. It's an album that deserves to be heard, just as his autobiographies deserve to be read.
The title track sets the tone, as Barnes explains:
Well I came from a broken home
My mama had a broken heart
And even though she tried to fight it
It was broken from the start
Jimmy: I've got books of the darkest lyrics you've ever heard in your life - books that will never be published.
The earliest lyrics for My Criminal Record were written on planes, usually tapped out on a phone in between shows, and I was writing the memoirs at the same time. The themes for the album began to reveal themselves early on, I'm a story-teller really, so childhood poverty, huge success, self destruction and self-discovery laid the groundwork. But it's a very different exercise trying to tell your story in a song than in the two books the size of a house brick.
Which leads me to the chorus of My Criminal Record:
My family has a record
That's as long as your arm
And I don't want you to read it
Because it's going to do us harm
I keep it locked away somewhere I know
In a cellar that I call my youth
It's my criminal record.
It's the truth
Tony: Jimmy, the sound and the lyrics of this album are live and loud, and in your face
Jimmy: I couldn't have made this record without my live band, because these were the guys who saw me fighting my demons every f****** night. These guys get on stage with me and know that when I am playing the songs, I'll go yeah , this is nice, but can you play it 10 times harder? Like it's the last time you're ever going to play it? I also worked with a number of others in writing the songs that came together for the album. My oldest sparring partner, way back in Cold Chisel days, Don Walker, collaborated on six of the songs; Troy Casser-Daley, Mark Lizotte (Diesel) and Chris Cheney from the Living End also worked on the record. As you can see from the lyrics above, my approach has always been about telling stories, and given my almost 50 years in the business, I have plenty of stories to tell.
One of the best examples, I think, is one of Don Walker's contributions, Stolen Car (the road's on fire). There are two versions on the record; in part one it sounds like the car has already crashed, while in the other take it is like a high speed chase down Thunder Road.
I'm licking up the white lines
Going way too fast
They're coming at me out of the future
Going into the past.
Only Don Walker could have written that. I was furiously sending him drafts of lyrics, and the back and forth would begin. Me spilling my guts, with Don always the perfectionist, crafting and sharpening each idea.
Tony: As we read in your autobiographies Working Class Boy and Working Class Man, Jimmy, you've had to do a lot of work on yourself, to stare down your demons, and it's evident again on this album.
Jimmy: It's very easy to fall back. Luckily one of the things that my childhood trauma made me was hypervigilant. I used to be hypervigilant and defensive and guarded, now I'm hypervigilant about those demons. It's all relative whatever your pain is. My sort of pain, I couldn't take away and I can't let go of it. It's always going to be there, but I'm not going to let it rule me or define me. I can see the patterns starting to emerge, and I now know what to do to try and stop them. Well, most of the time.
The other thing I need to mention is that I reckon I am singing better than ever. Being in better touch with my emotions means that I am better able to express myself in the songs. The raw power and volume is still there but it's modulated by a new self-knowledge and sensitivity. Now I know why I'm singing it. I know why I am feeling it. I know why I have to get it out now, and writing the books helped me identify it. I still sing about the same things but now I know exactly what I am singing about.
One of the better examples of this from the album is Shutting Down Our Town. This is about Elizabeth, my childhood suburb, on the wrong side of the tracks, in Adelaide.
Everything I knew was back there on those streets
Every lesson learned kept me on my feet
But I can't help thinking of the ones I left behind.
Tony: And you have a couple of cover versions on My Criminal Record, Jimmy.
Jimmy: The first one is John Lennon's Working Class Hero, which I included in my solo sets last year. Lennon was such a wounded, dark person, so I related to this song. Every time I sing those words, I think "this is me''. The other cover version is [Bruce] Springsteen's Tougher than the Rest, which for me is a hymn of undying devotion to my wife of 38 years, Jane.
The music
- Jimmy Barnes’ new album My Criminal Record was released yesterday. Barnes’ ‘‘Shutting Down Your Town’’ concert tour stops at the Dunedin Town Hall on Wednesday September 25.
