"He doesn't look a day older than he did when I saw him play Wollongong in '93," a roving courier tells a shop assistant, nodding towards Jimmy Barnes, who was seated, fittingly enough, between the Australian Fiction and True Crime aisles, as he launched his new memoir Working Class Boy in a Sydney Dymocks today.
The smattering of fans lined up for autographs and cheery photo ops contrasted wildly with the book's tone, a harrowing portrait of the Cold Chisel rocker's rough childhood, first in Glasgow and then in Adelaide's northern suburbs, a maelstrom of drunken abuse, family violence, fear and loathing.
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"It's pretty traumatic, putting it all out there. I feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders," Barnes said.
"But if I can shed a bit of light, a bit of hope at the end of the tunnel, then it's a good thing to share."
The book, a near mea culpa from Barnes, traces the lines from his own desperate upbringing, where his dad would wander home furious and penniless from epic drinking sessions ("If you sat next to him at a pub, you'd think he was a terrific bloke – but he was violent and he beat my mum") through to his own booze-fuelled days in Chisel, neglecting his own son, TV personality David Campbell.
"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," he writes in the book's touching epilogue.
The book's focus on his Glasgow childhood rather than his rock 'n' roll days might also serve as a timely reminder to some, including those racists who infamously tried to "borrow" his song for an anti-Muslim rally last year, that one of Australia's greatest ever rockers was a migrant kid, praying at the twin altars of soul music and Rangers FC.
There's a story of young Jimmy, trying to fit in with the locals, taking a dessert spoon to a jar of Vegemite. The self-poisoning eventually led to a closer camaraderie with the other outcasts, the ones with "prosciutto and provolone cheese" sandwiches – not to mention, more schoolyard head-kicking, "sticking up for these little Italian and Greek kids".
![Jimmy Barnes hopes to break the cycle of shame and fear of his childhood with new book.](/web/20160921001554im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/j/k/j/5/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grjjos.png/1474281482797.jpg)
"It was a tough thing being a migrant and, really, we came to this country with a lot of problems as a young Scottish family – alcoholism and violence and the fear that we brought from northern Britain. But we managed to rise above it and contribute to this community," said Barnes, slamming the anti-immigration rhetoric working its way into our government halls yet again.
"It's one of the beautiful things about Australia, that people do get to share this life here, away from trouble. We're a whole country full of migrants – we need each other and we should help each other."
![Jimmy and brother Alan with their mum on the front porch of their home in Elizabeth. 'That is the door Mum used when she ...](/web/20160921001554im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/j/k/d/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grjjos.png/1474281482797.jpg)
According to Barnes, the courage to delve deep in the book and tackle the ugly and unspoken parts of his past came from an unlikely source: former Australian of the Year and anti-domestic violence campaigner, Rosie Batty.
"Particularly in this country, blokes don't talk about the kinds of issues I talk about in this book – being ashamed and being afraid are not very manly things to say. But, you know, I'm as tough as the next guy," he said.
It's pretty traumatic, putting it all out there. I feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
Jimmy Barnes
"I'm not afraid to say that I went through it and I lived through it – if we can start men talking about violence, talking about fear, talking about things that are difficult to talk about, I think it's one more step forwards."
The singer even recently announced that his upcoming intimate Stories & Songs Tour would be drawing attention to the work of the Luke Batty Foundation, "just to acknowledge the work [Batty's] doing," he said.
![Working Class Boy, by Jimmy Barnes](/web/20160921001554im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/j/k/b/5/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.grjjos.png/1474281482797.jpg)
"I'd seen Rosie at the Australian Of The Year awards, and I just absolutely admired her strength, her courage, just being able to talk about something that was such a raw and open wound for her," Barnes said.
"These are issues that scarred me for life. Before I started to deal with this stuff, writing it down, it was killing me, really. I try to handle myself as a positive person, but I look back now and I see I spent most of my life running and trying to drink myself to death."