Working Class Barnes bares soul
Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Boy (M, 104 mins) Directed by Mark Joffe Reviewed by James Croot ★★★
Wanting to avoid suffering the same sudsy soap-opera style dramatisations of his life as fellow Aussie icons Olivia Newton John and Ian ‘‘Molly’’ Meldrum have done in recent years, Cold Chisel’s Glaswegianborn lead singer has decided to tell his story his way.
Based on his 2016 memoir of the same name and his subsequent stage show, Working Class Boy essentially tells the trauma-filled tale of how the 14lb baby named James Dixon Swan became the rock star Jimmy Barnes.
If you’re looking to hear how he came up with hits like Working Class Man, Good Times or Simply the Best you’ll be sorely disappointed (although he does offer one amusing story about the time he first watched Tina Turner live).
Instead, this feels like a featurelength edition of Who Do You Think You Are? as Barnes revisits his childhood homes and recounts episodes in his life when he witnessed domestic violence, extreme poverty and severe alcoholism.
These sometimes harrowing accounts are punctuated by interviews with his family and friends and a selection of heartfelt songs, some captured from the live tour and others especially arranged (including one with a Chamber Orchestra).
It takes a while for Barnes to even broach the subject of how he got into music, but so compelling and vivid are his recollections of singing, fighting, kissing and hustling on Scotland’s more squalid streets (‘‘and that was just my parents’’) that you sometimes even forget about his later career.
Cleary cathartic for Barnes and equally shocking for his mates (his fellow Chiselers admit they knew nothing about his troubled childhood), it’s clear that exposing his past has made him into a new man.
However, there’s also a feeling that he’s holding back here. His own ‘‘behaviour patterns’’ are only mentioned obliquely, while Barnes himself admits that ‘‘some stuff is too difficult to talk about’’.
No doubt an unauthorised biopic may one day fill in those gaps.