Barnesy’s a knockout
Coast gig caps off top week
REVERED Aussie rocker turned acclaimed author Jimmy Barnes will cap off one of the biggest weeks of his life with a free show on the beach in Surfers Paradise tonight.
Sydney artist Jamie Preisz was named winner of the 2018 Packing Room Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW on Thursday for his portrait of Renaissance’ man Barnes posed as a prize-fighter.
Barnes said Preisz’s portrait captured something he had been trying to say in his memoirs, Working Class Boy and Working Class Man.
“It sums up my past and my future,” Barnes said of the painting.
Barnes became one of the biggest-selling Aussie autobiographers of all time when his two memoirs, 2016’s Working Class Boy and last year’s Working Class Man, surpassed combined sales of 400,000 copies.
There was more cause for celebration when on Thursday when Barnes was named biographer of the year for Working Class Man at the Australian Book Industry Awards — a year after he won for his first memoir.
The honours followed another big milestone for Barnes, who celebrated his 62nd birthday last week.
“I celebrated with family and friends. We had a huge Thai feast and played a little music,” he said yesterday.
Despite his success as an author, Barnes has put down his pen — at least for now.
“I will write again but not for a little while. I find it hard to concentrate when I’m touring but as soon as I finish I will start again,” he says.
Barnes is back on the Coast to play a free headlining set at Surfers Paradise LIVE tonight with Daryl Braithwaite.
“We have played on beaches before but it will be the first on this beach. I will be bring a full, rock show band,” he says.
Barnes is halfway through a 35-date tour telling stories from Working Class Man and performing related songs — a tour which brought him to the Coast last month to play The Star during the Commonwealth Games.
Asked what he thought of the opening and closing ceremonies, Barnes says he “didn’t see any of them and was way too busy to play them at the time”.