STACK #167 Sept 2018

MUSIC FEATURE

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From a terrified child to the fiercely loyal family man he is today, Scottish-Australian icon Jimmy Barnes explains how sharing his story became less about himself, and more about the wider conversation it might inspire. Words Zoë Radas

“That story about Mahalia, for instance,” Barnes begins, referring to his recollection of watching the film Imitations Of Life (1959) with his father, and being so blown away by a female singer in the story that he waited until the very end of the final credits to discover her name: Mahalia Jackson. “It was sort of a big moment in my life,” he says with wonder. “I literally, as a seven or eight-year- old, sat there and I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to call my first baby girl Mahalia.’” And, of course, he did – Mahalia Barnes, named for the ‘Queen of Gospel’, performs regularly with her father and appears all over the album. “She’s an incredible singer,” Barnes says. “We sang together since she was a young kid. I used to encourage her: ‘Come on baby, try not to sing

O ften when a person can’t remember an especially disturbing incident in their life, it’s because they’ve repressed it, or ‘blocked' it out. Jimmy Barnes says that in his therapist’s opinion, the clarity of his memories comes from the very fact of his trauma; the abuse and neglect young James Dixon Swan experienced in his formative years heightened his perception to such a degree, he is able to recall being close to 10 months old, in the suburb of Glasgow where he was born on the living room floor. But amongst these stories from his award-winning autobiography Working Class Boy – which Barnes turned into the acclaimed Stories & Songs stageshow, then the recently- released documentary film, and now the soundtrack format, which includes some of the spoken-word versions of his tales – there are moments which are quite the opposite of grim.

Mahalia Barnes

David Cambpell

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SEPTEMBER 2018

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