Jimmy Barnes at The Civic in Auckland. Photo / Tom Grut
Jimmy Barnes at The Civic in Auckland. Photo / Tom Grut
REVIEW
For a guy who once said he was sick of talking about himself, Jimmy Barnes sure does talk a lot. About his family. About himself. And about his family again.
Thankfully, he can still sing. And scream, less than a year after having open-heart surgery.
His family, too, can sing ― wife Jane and daughter Mahalia among the talented loved ones joining him last night at the Civic in Auckland.
He started his gig in the Hell of a Time tour with Working Class Man and went on for two hours without a break, but with many an anecdote.
“We think it’s going to feel like you guys are sitting in our lounge room,” he said before the tour.
Barnes was back in the city where he reputedly hit rock bottom.
According to Australian current affairs shows, he didn’t go to rehab until his mid-40s, a few years after being out of his mind on booze and cocaine when he sang at the Sydney Olympics.
He relapsed, hitting pits of despair at an Auckland hotel room in 2012 with a suicide attempt.
But his candid interviews in recent years about addiction, abuse, self-destruction and redemption have probably helped a few people confront their demons.
His funniest anecdote last night was about Joe Cocker.
Cocker had been sober for a while but when Barnes met him, he quickly swilled three-quarters of a wine bottle and told the shocked Australian working-class hero: “That’s not drinking, it’s only wine”, or words to that effect.
Jimmy Barnes took his Hell of a Time Tour to the Civic in Auckland. Photo / Tom Grut
Some in the crowd probably hoped for a belting rendition of Khe Sanh. Barnes did deliver a Cold Chisel favourite with Flame Trees and had a range of songs from across the decades.
During one extended conversation in line with the intimate lounge room theme of the tour, I alighted to the toilet and on the way asked a fan what he thought of the show.
“I like the talking. That’s the way Jimmy does it,” was the response. The fan told me he was already planning to see Barnes in Brisbane soon.
Maybe I was an outlier wanting to hear more songs about Short Fat Fanny and truckers and gangs and alcoholics and factory workers and the rough-as-guts people from the Adelaide outskirts.
The average punter might not care so much for the talking, but the fans seemed to like it.
Barnes got a few pulses racing with a powerful rendition of The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond, and with his cover of The Weight, enough for anyone who’s seen Easy Rider or had Glaswegian blood to feel good.
