IT WAS a vicious and unprovoked attack. There I was minding my own business when Jimmy Barnes strolled over and casually broke every bone in my hand. Sure, the judge will probably call it ‘a handshake’ but I know that Australia’s answer to Bruce Springsteen – and, no, it wasn’t a rude question – was just trying to teach a lily-livered Pom like me a lesson.
“No way,” he laughs in a drawl that’s situated half-way between Glasgow and Sydney. “That Crocodile Dundee thing is such a hype. You’ve got your Bondi Beech macho men, sure, but Australia today is such a mixed and multi-racial society that those lager-guzzling, cricket-watching sexist types are very much in the minority.
“That whole image stems, I reckon, from the fact that Australians invariably speak their minds. The English mightn’t like someone but they won’t abuse them in public whereas we’ll come right out and say it and damn the consequences. That gets misconstrued as aggressiveness when actually we’re just being honest. You even get politicians appearing on TV and calling their opponents ‘wankers’ – Paul Keating, the prime minister, did that and nobody batted an eyelid. His predecessor, Bob Hawke, was a star too. Here was this guy, a self-confessed alcoholic and major womaniser, stumbling from one scandal to another and people loved him.”
Yeah, as much as you know he’s thinking it, you can’t imagine John Major popping up on News At Ten clutching a half-drunk bottle of vodka and calling Margaret Thatcher “a haggard old crone.” A nation would applaud if he did but us Brits are just far too reserved for our own good.
TAKING THE PISS
Barnsey, as he’s affectionately known down under, is in Dublin to lend a little promotional welly to the release of his Heat album. The suite of rooms he’s occupying at the unthinkably expensive Berkeley Court Hotel bears testimony to his superstar status at home – seven consecutive number one LPs, over 4 million units sold and the ability to put more bums on stadium seats than even INXS. As is often the case, the roots to Jimmy’s success are buried deep in his parents’ record collection.
“I was lucky,” he reflects, “in that I grew up listening to Ray Charles, Little Richard, John Lee Hooker and all those other guys who have an instinctive love of music. In fact, it made me into a snob. I hated Australian bands as a kid and it wasn’t until I discovered Free and The Faces that I realised white singers could be soulful too. It was Paul Kossoff and Rod Stewart that made me think, ‘hey, perhaps I can do this’.”
Equipped with this freshly-gained insight, the then 17-year-old Barnes put together Cold Chisel, a crank it up and belt it out R’n’B outfit whose penchant for loose living and gratuitous yobbishness earnt them the same sort of notoriety that the Sex Pistols were enjoying 3,000 miles away.
“We started in 1973 but no one would give us a deal until 1976 because we had this reputation for fighting, drinking and fucking which was, I have to admit, thoroughly deserved. You’ve gotta remember that the Australian charts were dominated at the time by stuff like Sherbet – do you remember ‘How’s That’? – and Cold Chisel was a reaction to that blandness. Midnight Oil and INXS started up at around the same time and it was us three that gave birth to the idea of a credible Australian rock scene.
“Our finest hour,” he continues with a wicked grin, “was appearing on this awards show organised by the main TV network, ABC. They had a weekly programme called Countdown which we’d continually refused to appear on because you had to mime but that year we’d won virtually everything and they agreed to let us play live. We rehearsed our song straight and they loved it but as soon as the red light went on, we started smashing up the set and generally taking the piss. They’d done fuck all to help us up ‘til then and that was our way of getting our own back!”
ON A ROLL
And what does Jimmy make of the present generation of beer drinkers and hellraisers?
“The good thing about our wild times is that none of it was ever contrived. I went to see Guns ‘N’ Roses last year, and they weren’t bad, but the support group they had, Skid Row, were the epitome of manufactured bullshit American rock ‘n’ roll. They were throwing all these shapes and saying ‘fuck’ a lot but it was complete designer rebellion. What made it worse is that they cornered me backstage and started telling me how great I was and I just wanted to get the shit out of there.”
Barnsey’s disregard for the poodle perm brigade doesn’t, however, extend to Bon Jovi who he jammed with last year in California.
“Well, Jon got his haircut, so he’s alright now! No, I was recording in San Francisco with Jonathan Keane who’s a friend of their’s, we’d finished early for the night and he suggested that we go and catch their show. We arrive and word filters back that they want me to join them on stage and next thing I know I’m up there in front of 40,000 people with a bunch of guys I’ve never met.”
More Rab C. Nesbitt than The Boss, the stockily-built singer cuts an unlikely dash as a sex symbol but normally has enough bras and knickers thrown at him on stage to start up his own lingerie shop. How does he get on with that other standard bearer of Aussie manhood, Michael Hutchence?
“He’s got great taste in women – Kylie Minogue, Helena Christiansen . . . Michael’s on a roll there! Our paths keep crossing, so we’ve become pretty good mates and I admire the way INXS have kept perservering, over the course of eight or nine albums, and established themselves as a global phenomenon. They’ve had the patience to do that while I’ve gone across to the UK and the States, played the odd gig but never really got stuck in – until now that is. Without wanting to sound arrogant, I can’t get any bigger in Australia and I’m ready for a new challange.”
And if that desire to conquer virgin territory means that your’s truly will never be able to peel an orange with his right-hand again, so be it!