Jimmy Barnes thought he could escape his demons. He just had to keep singing, keep pouring his guts out on stage every night, keep drowning himself in drugs and booze.
For years, the iconic rocker affectionately known as ‘Barnsey’ pushed himself to the point of oblivion, but no matter what he did, the ghosts of his past would always find him.
Jimmy found fame as the lead singer of Cold Chisel. (Credit: Image: Patrick Jones)
“I managed to stop myself from thinking about those demons for a long time,” Jimmy, 69, tells TV WEEK. “As long as I was moving and working, I seemed OK, but soon it all got a lot harder.”
Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man, based on the best-selling book, and the follow-up to Working Class Boy, is an honest and often brutal account of Jimmy’s life – from the highs of rock stardom with Cold Chisel and a successful solo career and the joy of starting a family with his now wife, Jane, to the terrifying lows, where he “flirted with death, practically every night”.
The self-destructive path he was on was “only going to be temporary”. Jimmy thought if he could keep moving, he could stay one step ahead of his past, until he couldn’t and his life blew up in his face.
“The movement wasn’t enough to stop the feelings that were welling up inside me, so I started drinking more and taking drugs to stop feeling anything,” he says. “Eventually, no amount of drink or drugs could stop the pain I felt. That’s when I knew I was going to have to fight or die.”
Jimmy (centre) with his Cold Chisel bandmates. (Credit: Image: Getty)
The film by Andrew Farrell, who served as an executive producer on Working Class Boy, doesn’t shy away from Jimmy’s darker moments. Like when he was on stage singing at the 2000 Sydney Olympics closing ceremony to an audience of millions around the world but was so out of his brain on drugs and alcohol, it was, for him, all a dizzy blur.
And then, when he reached his nadir, Jimmy shut himself in a room and contemplated ending it all.
“I never loved myself and I didn’t care if what I was doing was killing me,” Jimmy recalls. “Deep down I think I wanted to die.
“I spent my whole life desperately trying to get people to like me so I would be safe, but I never felt safe, so I guessed that meant that nobody really liked me… I did feel like an imposter and, looking back, I was trying my best to show everybody they were right to not like me.”
It must have been hard for Jimmy to watch footage of himself during that time. While he acknowledges it was painful to revisit this part of his life, he knew he had to “tell it all”.
“I think it’s good to look back on those times every now and then and remember to keep moving forward and keep working on myself,” he says. “I have only really just begun to heal and I still have a lot to learn.”
Cold Chisel were massive in the 1980s in Australia. (Credit: Image: Getty)
In Working Class Boy, Jimmy revealed a childhood marked by abject poverty and domestic violence. When, at 17, he left his home in Elizabeth, Adelaide he found a new family in Cold Chisel that offered him a way out of town and, importantly, safety.
Deep-thinking songwriter Don Walker, who was studying for a degree in physics at university, majoring in quantum mechanics at university, became like an older brother to Jimmy.
“Cold Chisel were the functional family I never had,” Jimmy admits. “Those guys were my brothers. They cared for each other, and they cared for me. They didn’t know what I was going through, but if I had let them in, dropped my guard for a minute, they would have tried their best to help me.”
The film includes footage of Chisel performing on stage which show why the band became known as the one of Australia’s greatest live acts. While Don, guitarist Ian Moss and the rest of the band laid down the musical framework, Jimmy was given free rein to be the wild frontman.
“I got an incredible sense of freedom when I sang on stage with Cold Chisel,” Jimmy says. “Even in my wildest days, when my whole world was falling apart, they were the times when I could breathe. When I was singing, the weight was lifted off me and I was free.”
What shines through in the film is the unwavering love and support Jimmy has received throughout it all from his wife, Jane.
Indeed, Jane, the daughter of an Australian diplomat, has been the rock to his roll.
“Jane is the best person I know,” Jimmy says. “She has shown me love when I didn’t feel I deserved it.
“She has seen me at my worse and still loved me; still managed to make me hope for a better life. I like to think I would still be taking this journey if Jane was not around, but I wouldn’t really want to. She is everything to me.”
Jimmy on stage at the 2025 TV WEEK Logie Awards. (Credit: Image: TV WEEK)
Jimmy and Jane have a new cookbook, Seasons Where the River Bends, inspired by their home garden in the NSW Southern Highlands, which Jimmy says was written for their children. “These are the dishes they ring us late at night asking for recipes for, so they can cook them for their friends and families,” he says.
While Jimmy has faced health challenges in recent years, including open-heart surgery in 2023, he declares he’s now “ready to take on the world”.
“I’m very lucky when I think about it,” he says. “But I try really hard to keep myself in good shape so I can do what I love and be here for my family.”
Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man airs November 17, 7.30pm on Channel Seven and 7plus
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