Working Class Boy (30 page)

H
ow I became Jimmy Barnes is a bit of a long story. In fact, it's such a long story that I've had to write two books to tell the whole thing. This book is the story of what shaped my life. The good, the bad and the very, very ugly. It's the book I had to write first if I was going to make any sense of what was to come. Everything I am is because of the things that I talk about in this first book. In the second book I will try to tell you about how all this early stuff shaped what came later – the rock'n'roll years.

It wasn't easy to write. There's a lot of my past that I wanted to push out of my memory and never see again. But I couldn't. I tried to drown my past in every possible way, but as long as it was festering inside me I could never really move on. My childhood affected every step I took over the rest of my life. It twisted the way I thought and the way I interacted with normal human beings. Eventually I realised that these wounds needed to be brought out in the open and aired if I ever wanted them to heal.

So I started trying to write things down. My first attempt was actually back in the early nineties. At the time I'd almost gone broke and it had me wondering what I was going to do with my life. I seemed to be on a downhill slide. So I started to write my story, not really knowing what I was trying to
achieve. I thought that maybe I could skim across the surface of my past, dealing with as little as possible, and then it would stop haunting me.

I'd written about thirty thousand words by the time we moved to France in 1994. Moving away from Australia brought me a short period of relief. My past – like everything else – seemed a long way away and my writing slowed down. My computer sat on the bookshelf collecting dust until one day we were robbed and the computer was gone. I hadn't backed anything up or written anything down, so my first attempt at writing this book ended there.

I didn't try to write it again until about the year 2000. Everything I wrote that time was twisted by copious amounts of drinking and all the drugs I was taking. I still have that stuff somewhere and some of it's almost funny, but there's nothing in that version about the real issues. I actually can't bear to read it now. I skirted around everything and made light of the worst moments of my life. Once again I got to around thirty thousand words and came to a brick wall.

Eventually I realised that I was never going to be able to write this story until I faced up to a lot of things. It then took me many years of therapy, battling alcoholism, drug dependence and guilt, to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I'd seen that light before, by the way. In the past it always turned out to be a freight train coming to run me into the ground, but this time I think things have changed for good.

I remember the exact moment when things changed. It was about eighteen months ago. I was sitting in a hotel room somewhere in the middle of a tour. I'd watched every movie on the movie channels except one. It was a dark South Australian murder story called
Snowtown
.

I was suddenly dragged back to my childhood. Don't get me wrong, we weren't serial killers – well, not that I know of
anyway. But everything in this movie looked like where I grew up. It looked like our street. In fact, it looked like our house. The floodgates opened and I couldn't hold back the past any longer. It just washed all over me. So I began to write. I really didn't lift my head again until I had well over a hundred thousand words. Suddenly a year was gone and I'd written down most of the stuff that I'd been running away from for most of my life. I felt at peace for the first time since my earliest memories of being a little boy back in Glasgow.

One day I was talking to a mate of mine, Neil Finn, and he asked me, ‘So, what are you going to call your book?'

At that stage I had no idea, but if you've ever heard Neil's songs you'll know that he's very good at painting a picture in just a few words. Anyway, he said, ‘You'd have to call it
Working Class Boy
, wouldn't you?'

I thought, ‘Shit, I wish I'd come up with that!'

The name stuck from then on but apart from that one bit of help from Neil it's entirely my story. It's a story that I had to write on my own – the story of a working class lad from Glasgow who grew up in the northern suburbs of Adelaide where things definitely weren't pretty.

This book would not have been possible without the love and understanding of my family. My wife and children have watched me work my way through this stuff long before I even knew I had stuff to work through. They were there with me when I was at my highest, and believe me I was high. And when I hit my lowest they were there to reach out and help me up. They laughed with me and at me, and cried with me.

I sat and read parts of this to my two dogs, Snoop Dog and Oliver, when I was too ashamed to read it to anyone else. Thanks boys.

Thanks to Mum, Dad, Reg and my siblings. Our lives were made bearable by having each other. Without you guys I couldn't have made it through. Thanks for sharing my joy and my pain.

I know that life is full of lessons to be learned and my children will have to learn their own but I hope I have broken the cycle of shame and fear that plagued my childhood. I know their lessons won't be as hard as mine. So don't be afraid. Go out and live, laugh and love. Life is good.

I'd like to thank John Watson for being my manager, a great friend and an even better sounding board as I wrote this. You helped me make sense of my ramblings.

Thanks to Andrea McNamara for getting me started, Helen Littleton and Nicola Robinson for pointing me in the right direction, even when I didn't want to go that way, and Scott Forbes for reminding me how to speak Glaswegian.

Now that I have made some sense of this stage of my life, I truly believe that I will be better equipped to tackle my next book: the years I spent on the road making music and building a family.

There were times throughout my life when I didn't think I was going to make it. But I am so glad that I did. You have to be able to hold your head up high and say, ‘Fuck it, I made some big mistakes, but everybody does. I can live with mine.'

1. Da, his favourite granddaughter Dorothy,
and his ‘wee dug' Jackie. This photo says so much: my Da with the only person he liked to spend time with, and the one who shared his life, his dog. The walls in this photo sum up Glasgow for me. The chalk drawings and marks were not just graffiti. The streetlights were always broken so drunks would leave a trail marked on the walls to find their way home, a bit like Hansel and Gretel.
2. Elizabeth Dixon and John Dixon.
My Da and Granny in happy times in Glasgow. I don't remember them together a lot. Granny would go around to his house and look after him but she couldn't live with him.
3. The Scottish Western Districts Championship cup, 1953.
Dad won many cups and trophies. This is the only one we have left. Mum smashed them or threw them out or at him when they fought.
4. My dad, James Ruthven Harvey Swan.
In his heyday. He wasn't that big but he could fight as good as any man, in the ring, in the house or on the street. He thought fast and punched faster.
(A
LL IMAGES
: B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
)

1. The Hut, 1952.
Mum and Dad by the sea with John. My mum was very young and beautiful. Dad was fit and handsome. These days didn't last too long.
2. My dad with Dorothy and John.
The van in the background looks a lot like the cars that Dad would buy to fix up. Way beyond saving.
3. On the street in Glasgow.
Dorothy, young Alan, myself and John. The Royal Bar in the back was the scene of many a bloodbath.
(A
LL IMAGES
: B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
)

1. Aunty Maude and me.
Aunty Maude was Mum's sister. Apart from my granny, hers is the only family I ever saw again after leaving Scotland. Her son Jackie and daughter Joanne are the only cousins I know and I love them very much. We all need family.
2. John, Linda, myself and Dorothy with Mum and Aunty Maude.
I'm not sure where we are. It might be Port Seton on the only holiday I remember in Scotland.
3. Linda, John, Dorothy and me at the beach.
Scotland wasn't famous for its beaches but it looks like it was famous for very high bathers. The sky is grey and it looks fiercely cold. It must be midsummer.
4. John, myself, Dorothy and Linda in Glasgow.
John used to say that my ears were so big I looked like a taxi with the doors left open.
(A
LL IMAGES
: B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
)

1. Dorothy, myself, Linda and John
on board the SS
Strathnaver
, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We had escaped the horrors of Glasgow and landed on a ‘luxury' cruise.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
)
2. Mum on board the ship.
While the boat was a luxury cruise for us kids, Mum soon realised that she had escaped from fighting on the streets of Glasgow by jumping on board the
Titanic
. Any hope of saving her marriage was sinking fast.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
) 3. The SS
Strathnaver
.
To us, this was our ride to a new life. It would take us away from everything that was stacked up against our family and give us a break. Well, that was the plan.
(© W
EST
A
USTRALIAN
N
EWSPAPERS
L
IMITED
)

1. Me sitting outside our Nissen hut
at the Gepps Cross Hostel. It was so hot inside. Outside the air moved occasionally. Inside the air only moved when Mum and Dad threw things at each other.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
) 2. That's me aged six.
There are a few photos around with me as a kid with no front teeth.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
) 3. Elizabeth, City of Tomorrow.
Slow down. Who were they talking to here? It could have been the trucks that rolled in from the north, carrying food to the hungry immigrants who would fill the houses yet to be built. Or were they talking to themselves? Let's think about what we are building here. Will this work? They could be talking to the families who couldn't wait to get there and get hold of their dreams. Maybe it was written for kids like me who would be running around the streets. Look at the dry prickly ground under the sign. This sort of ground cover would ambush young shoeless boys like me. My feet hurt just looking at this picture. Elizabeth, City of Tomorrow? It seems like yesterday I lived there.
(C
ITY OF
P
LAYFORD
H
ISTORY
S
ERVICE
)

1. Twenty-odd miles from Adelaide,
somewhere on the main highway that led north to the dead heart of Australia, lay Elizabeth. It was flat, hot and dry. This was as far from Glasgow as my folks could run. It was in the middle of nowhere. But everything was laid out nice and neat. Each separate area had its own shops, its own school and its own football grounds. They all had the same problems though.
(C
ITY OF
P
LAYFORD
H
ISTORY
S
ERVICE
) 2. Me and Alan with our mum
on the front porch of 45 Heytesbury Road, Elizabeth. That is the door Mum used when she left us. The door always slammed because it was attached to a spring. When she left we didn't hear a thing.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
) 3. Hamming it up
in the front yard. Mum tried to grow a lawn but it didn't work. Nothing grew well at our house.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
)

1. Lisa, our little pizza pie,
Linda, myself and Dorothy on the back porch. I get a feeling of emptiness when I look at pictures of this house. We were always hungry and our lives were empty. It was hard to feel love in this house.
(B
ARNES
F
AMILY
C
OLLECTION
) 2. The train at the Elizabeth West shops.
The things I saw from the front of this train still crash their way into my dreams and I wake up gasping for breath, hoping I never have to think about them again.
(C
ITY OF
P
LAYFORD
H
ISTORY
S
ERVICE
) 3. If I saw this postcard
I wouldn't be booking my next holiday here in a hurry. I don't know if ‘beautiful' is the right way to describe Elizabeth in the early days, but the place had a lot of potential when they first built it. Some of that potential was reached; some was lost in the haze from the heat that rose from the red dirt. But what really makes a place great is the people that live there, and a lot of great people have come from Elizabeth, and still live there.
(C
ITY OF
P
LAYFORD
H
ISTORY
S
ERVICE
)