Jimmy Barnes has barely set foot inside Melbourne landmark Pellegrini's at the top end of Bourke Street when a voice pipes up behind him. "Mr Barnes, Mr Barnes, can we get a photo with you, please?"
The young lad posing the question to one of Australia's most loved and recognised entertainers had his even younger brother by his side and Barnes, without a moment's hesitation, was more than happy to oblige. Big smiles all around.
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Moments later, having resumed his seat at Pellegrini's long counter, "Barnsey" was again pushing his espresso coffee to one side as the restaurant owners greeted him with big slaps on the back. "I love coming here," Barnes says. "I've been coming here for years."
This sort of thing happens to Jimmy Barnes a lot. People of all ages want to talk to him, snap a photo with one of Australia's greatest rock'n'roll frontmen or simply say "G'day" and shake the hand of a fair-dinkum working-class man.
![Refocusing: Jimmy Barnes at Pellegrini's.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/l/y/w/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
We meet for lunch while Barnes is in Melbourne for his Stories & Songs show, based on his book Working Class Boy, which last week won the biography award at the Australian Book Industry Awards. How does it feel to be a published author?
"Yeah, it's pretty good," he says with a chuckle. The fact is, putting the harrowing story of his young life out there in the world has been just as helpful to him as he hopes it will be for others.
"Everything that happened to me as a child was the perfect breeding ground for a rock'n'roll singer," he says. "It toughened me up. I was on edge, I was needy, I needed people to like me 'cause it made me feel safe ... and that gave me confidence."
Barnes, 61, has the warm, engaging manner you might expect from the most recognisable member of Cold Chisel, perhaps this country's most revered rockers, who released their debut self-titled album in 1978. That's right. 1978. Sure, Chisel guitarist Ian Moss' face and powerful on-stage-stance has loomed large in Aussie rock for just as many years, but it's Barnes in the bathtub on the cover of breakout 1980 album East. It's Barnes' incredible voice, love of a good time and knockabout attitude that has endeared him to generations of music lovers here and abroad.
![Jimmy Barnes: Finding answers to questions that have plagued him.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/l/y/x/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
It was Barnes, too, who wasted not a minute when Chisel broke up in 1983, launching his solo career less than a month after the band's Last Stand tour. His first solo album, Bodyswerve, came out in 1984 and his second, For the Working Class Man featuring the song Working Class Man that spent 14 weeks in the Australian charts. It was that song, perhaps more than any other, that supercharged his long solo career.
The musicians around him on the making of For the Working Class Man – including Waddy Wachtel, Charlie Sexton and Kim Carnes – speaks volumes about the respect he had garnered at a young age. The list of musicians he has since worked with? It's simply too long to reel off here.
![Cold Chisel – the early years: (from left) Ian Moss, Don Walker, Jimmy Barnes, Steve Prestwich and Phil Small.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/e/4/g/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
In a career spanning four decades he's become more than a rock'n'roll legend in his fans' eyes, traversing genres to become a rock'n'soul star. Barnes' Soul Deep album in 1991 featured duets with John Farnham and was a shift of direction that made perfect creative sense. His musical influences are many and varied and soul music plays a big part in his life. So too does family, first and foremost, followed closely by new challenges.
It all began as a 17-year-old; pre-occupied with "standing in the street looking for fights and drinking" until he discovered he could "make music and make it touch people" if he stuck at it for long enough. However, that takes time. First, that 17-year-old had something to prove.
![Jimmy Barnes at Cold Chisel's Last Stand concert at the Entertainment Centre in 1983.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/l/5/j/q/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
"If I hadn't joined Cold Chisel they would have been a f---in' jazz rock band," Barnes says, dragging himself away from the hugs and smiling faces at the counter towards a table at the rear of Pellegrini's. "'Mossy wanted to play nice, Don (Walker) was into Miles Davis and Steve (Prestwich) was into Yes. I came along and jumped on them, I'd climb on their shoulders, turn their amps up when they weren't looking ... anything to make them play f---in' loud and hard and fast. There's still tension whenever we walk into a room together, but we find common ground that's vibrating, that's waiting to slow down, waiting to go faster ... that's why people like the band.
"By the time we broke up in '83 we'd been in each other's pockets for 10 years," he says, sipping a second espresso. "We'd literally done everything, we fed each other, fought, laughed and we were best mates, we were brothers. After 10 years that started to splinter ... our priorities changed, we started having lives outside of this unit. We had to get away to grow musically, have life experiences and bring those back to the band, when we got back together."
![Loving it: The Last Stand concert at the Entertainment Centre in 1983.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/j/9/4/x/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
Barnes was just 29 when Working Class Man shot up the charts. A little over a decade earlier he was yet to meet the likes of Moss, Prestwich and Walker, the latter he fondly describes as "like a big brother to me, he came from a totally different world" and Walker tapped into something deep within a desperate young Jim Barnes. As he does with extraordinary honesty in recent biography Working Class Boy, Barnes says Walker "took me from this mentality of wanting to beat people to death and drinking every night, to 'there's some hope in this world'."
![Receipt for lunch.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/e/r/0/e/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
The critical shift in Barnes' life happened when he jumped in the back of a tour van and hit the road with Cold Chisel, putting as many miles as possible between his shockingly rough upbringing in the mean streets and households of Elizabeth in South Australia and whatever lay ahead.
It's the same moment in Jimmy Barnes' life that closes the final chapter of Working Class Boy, which charts in graphic detail his early memories of life growing up in Cowcaddens in Glasgow, the family violence, rare moments of joy and the desperation he felt as a teenager in South Australia.
![Jimmy Barnes and interviewer Martin Boulton both chose lasagne for lunch at Pellegrini's.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170606110942im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/l/y/w/y/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwcy2i.png/1496405145393.jpg)
Pausing over the lasagne we both ordered, pots and pans clattering nearby as dishes are rushed from the kitchen, Barnes says he's hopeful his story in Working Class Boy contributes to the discussion around domestic violence and the need for children to grow up in a safe, nurturing environment.
"You see politicians talking about negative gearing or tax on your second home – most people I knew growing up couldn't afford the rent, let alone buying a house, or a second house," he says. "There are so many people living with domestic violence and if you want to stop these problems it's got to be about changing attitudes ... teaching kids and young men."
He's been encouraged by reaction to the book, by "people talking and trying to do their bit" and the positive feedback he receives when people learn he's been seeing a therapist to come to terms with his own troubled upbringing.
"Every time something else unlocks and different things make sense, stuff I thought I'd worked out that I hadn't really addressed.
"It's a real bloke thing, not talking to people because it's not manly to get help. Everything affects you and it doesn't measure how tough you are by being a rock and sitting by yourself. People need to talk, it's not a sign of weakness. I see it as quite the opposite – if you're prepared to get off your arse and put in the yards to make yourself a better parent, a better friend, a better husband – that's showing how tough you are."
There's a second book near completion too; one that picks up from that moment in the van at the start of Cold Chisel's life as a touring and recording outfit that influenced so many musicians and won fans around the world.
Barnes' biggest fans, his family, were also the inspiration for another book.
Och Aye the G'Nye is a collection of poems he drew together from stories he'd made up for his grandchildren. As well as the book and spoken word CD voiced by Barnes, there's a collection of songs he recorded with members of the Wiggles, his son Jackie Barnes and other musicians. There's also talk of developing a stage play based on the stories.
"Och aye is an old Scottish phrase, it means 'yes, just now' and one day my wife, Jane, was talking to my grandson, saying 'Och aye, och aye'. I'm a bit deaf, you know, 40 years of rock, and I thought she was calling him a G'Nu (a word for wildebeest) which is a bit cute, so I've called him the G'Nu ever since. I tell him these stories when I put him to bed, about the G'Nu's new shows and the G'Nu on a cruise ... so it's been a beautiful thing to write them down and do the record with people who really cared about every step of the process."
His son Jackie, daughter Mahalia and son-in-law Ben Rodgers performed with him on the recent Stories & Songs tour, which blends recollections of his own childhood with the songs that lift him up and help him celebrate life. It's a family affair and, quite simply, he looks chuffed to be on stage with those he loves most.
"Normally in my shows, I don't talk very much, it's 'G'day, how are you, lets go' and so this was a different world. I do enjoy communicating with an audience and this is a different sort of communication. I've learnt something new, understanding what an audience feels instead of smashing them in the face all the time.
"I've spent most of my life, my career, pushing out and keeping people at bay, whether it's from sheer volume, aggression of screaming lyrics bang, bang, bang," he says, pushing his open palms towards me. "Since I've written this book (Working Class Boy) I'm more introspective, and part of the reason I enjoyed the writing process is it's me without noise. I'm finding some answers to questions that plagued me for a long time."
THE BILL PLEASE
PELLEGRINI'S, 66 Bourke St, CBD. 9662 1885
Mon-Sat, 8am-11.30pm; Sun midday-8pm.