Jimmy Barnes - Killing Time: Short stories from the long road home

Contents

Working Class Boy is a stunning piece of work relentless, earnest, shockingly vivid. Barnes... doesnt just have a scarifying story to tell. He has a grippingly effective way of telling it: one that does full justice to the grim facts without overcooking them... You cant fake such a tone. You have to earn it.

The Australian

Nothing will prepare you for the power of Jimmys memoir. A fierce, graphic, bawdy account of his working class childhood truly harrowing, and yet often tender and funny. I couldnt put it down because, above all, it is also a story of resilience and bravery.

Sam Neill

Visceral, brave, honest. A deep, guttural howl of a book, it speaks of the pain and hurt that haunt so many men. And it may just save lives.

Magda Szubanski

Barnes writes with verve and style to present a fascinating story of flawed and compelling personalities, not least his own. The result is unexpectedly compelling.

Rolling Stone

Barness way of addressing the reader directly, while largely ignoring his rock-star status, edges towards a unique voice.

The Listener

Reading about [Barness] harrowing early life gives a greater understanding of both the belting lyrics and the softer, sometimes haunting, music he has produced... This moving account... shows in grim detail the enormous effort Jimmy had to put in to become the man he is.

Booksellers New Zealand

Praise for Working Class Man

Rare is the man who has lived this hard, this fast and this dangerously only to survive and chronicle it all so superbly.

Lisa Wilkinson

All the mind-boggling excesses and the emotional extremes are revealed here, with brutal honesty and sparkling wit. Jimmy has found his real voice, and its imbued with a spirit of generosity that knows no bounds just like the man himself.

Neil Finn

What a brave writer... The legend who strides the stage with so much power and charisma reveals the boy who hid in a cupboard then found salvation in song, the rock star who had it all and spent it all, and the man who loves his family and his music.

Lindy Morrison

Jimmy has always been a force of nature, living on the edge, giving high-octane performances... Yet, as this book shows, his wrestle with his hidden demons was taking a huge toll. Something had to give, and this searingly honest account lays it out in spades.

Peter Garrett

A story as dark as pitch but so compelling, so powerful and at times so close to unbelievable how can this man still be alive? it sets a new bar for rock n roll survival stories... What lifts this memoir is its searing honesty, and Jimmys tender, sincere regret for what the circus he ringmastered did to his own wife and family. Also to himself.

Jennifer Byrne, Australian Womens Weekly

This is a story of excess and success. This is a story of pain and gain. Most of all this is the story of an inspiring love affair like no other. Working Class Boy broke my heart. Working Class Man has put it back together.

John Purcell

Only a fool would declare the circus animals rage spent. But in these two books, hes broken it down and owned every part of it with the kind of honesty, clear-eyed insight and riveting storytelling that miraculously defies the damage done.

Sydney Morning Herald

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HarperCollinsPublishers

Australia Brazil Canada France Germany Holland Hungary India Italy Japan Mexico New Zealand Poland Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States of America

First published in Australia in 2020

by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

Copyright Freight Train Music Pty Limited 2020

The right of Jimmy Barnes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollinsPublishers

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale 0632, Auckland, New Zealand

A 75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom

Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower, 22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3, Canada

195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA

ISBN 978 1 4607 5948 6 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 4607 1310 5 (ebook)

ISBN 978 1 4607 8605 5 (audiobook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Cover design by Mark Campbell, HarperCollins Design Studio

Cover image Jesse Lizotte/Trunk Archive

All photos from the collection of Jimmy and Jane Barnes unless otherwise noted

This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife, Jane, and my darling children.

I love you so much.

I also dedicate this book to the memory of my dear schnauzers, Oliver and Snoopy, who passed away in 2019.

I miss you guys so much.

I cry for you every day.

Contents

When I was deciding on a title for this collection of stories, I had a number of ideas I tossed around in my head and shared with others. Again and again, though, I came back to the phrase killing time.

Partly, it was down to the fact that Id recently provided the lyrics for a Don Walker song with that title on the last Cold Chisel album, Blood Moon lyrics that I was particularly happy with and meant a lot to me. But mainly it was because its a phrase that has many meanings for me and conjures up particular periods and events in my life, many of which Ive written about in these pages.

I spent most of my childhood killing time, waiting for something to happen. Something good. But it never seemed to come along. As I recounted in Working Class Boy, my first book, I was always hoping my mum and dad would get it together, but they never managed it and eventually our family fell apart. So I bided my time and escaped into my own world, as kids often do.

Then I started school and thought everything would be better: Id get away from home and my life would change. Instead it just led me to another set of problems. Suddenly I had to fit in, which was hard for me to do, and that pressure made school just another scary place. To get through it, I kept my head down and tried to fly under the radar. Just killing time till school finished and I could escape elsewhere.