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ON THE COUCH WITH: Jimmy Barnes

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: What’ve you been up to?
Jimmy Barnes: I’ve been touring.

Access All Areas.net.au: Cool, you at the office at the moment?
Jimmy Barnes: I’m at home. I have the day off and I’m loaded up with interviews.

Access All Areas.net.au: Another one of those days.
Jimmy Barnes: It’s okay though (laugh). Coming out touring, so you gotta do it.

Access All Areas.net.au: How’s touring treating you so far?
Jimmy Barnes: It’s good. We’ve had sell-out houses everywhere. I’ve got a fantastic band on the road. We’re doing a great tour. We’re playing all sorts of interesting music, a show which was a two and a half hours long with a short interval and we’re doing an acoustic version of that show, with acoustic guitar and upright bass and Mexican-mariachi harp, which is beautiful plus we play all the hits. And we’re playing from the album, The Rhythm and the Blues. It’s been really good. People are responding really well.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the album, The Rhythm and the Blues. Do you think you’re happy with where you are now in your music career?
Jimmy Barnes: Oh yeah absolutely, yeah. I mean I’ve got a good balance of new, original material as well as just having fun and doing projects like Rhythm and the Blues which is sort of music history for me you know.

Access All Areas.net.au: Some songs are sacred for an artist, like a record you bought during a significant moment in your life. Do you have a song at the moment that you can’t stop playing?
Jimmy Barnes: Um, let me think…Maybe Jackie Wilson, Rick Pettit or something like that. There’s been some old Jackie Wilson stuff that I’ve been playing lately that I’ve listened to since I was a kid. And I sort of can’t stop playing him at the moment.

Access All Areas.net.au: Most artists emphasise on the importance of taking risks and knowing when to take the right ones. And I believe you have with albums like Soul Deep. Do you think you are still taking risks with the artistic direction of your music?
Jimmy Barnes: Oh absolutely. All the time. You take a risk everytime you make a record because you lay your soul on the line. It’s an original record, you know, you’re risking the fact that you’re writing new songs that you hope people will connect with and not necessarily a given that they will. The last record that I’ve made, The Rhythm and the Blues which is sort of a prequel to Soul Deep, it goes back to late ‘40s through to you know, late ‘50s. The actual record I feel people would like because it’s sort of a music history, traces the lineage of music from gospel and jump and jazz through to turning rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly soul. So you know, you take a risk when you’re making every record. But the thing is, I think if you don’t take risk, if you don’t challenge yourself, you don’t really get it, you don’t really get the emotional…it’s not as exciting…Everytime you write a song where you bare your soul, you take risk. For me, I make records that are not really about commercial success. It’s about making records that is what I wanna make. That’s the risk I take. Making the record that I wanna make, and maybe people don’t get it. Sometimes it is, sometimes they don’t…I have to make records that satisfy me.

Access All Areas.net.au: Which song is your favourite, off Rhythm and Blues?
Jimmy Barnes: It changes day to day, there’s a song in there that’s called ‘That’s Right’ which I really like. There’s a fantastic song, sort of a country rockabilly swing, called ‘Reconsider Me’ which is recorded by a black country artist from New Orleans called Johnny Adams, which I really love. But it changes from day to day. I’m liking ‘Red Hot’ at the moment…They’re all really fresh – they’re all favourites at the moment…You do pick songs you love, it’s hard to sing the right one.

Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve recorded Rhythm and Blues in just three days. Did that take you and Don Gehman by surprise?
Jimmy Barnes: No no, maybe slightly surprised but when I presented the project to Don Gehman, I got all the songs, I selected all the songs, and I showed him what I wanted to do. He booked the studio and said, “Well okay, we’ll do three days of recording”, he says “we’ll do a day maybe putting girl singers on and we’ll have a day to fix up any vocals that you wanna fix.” So we did three days recording, we went to look at the songs and most of the songs in the backing record were done in the studio. So we had two songs that we wanted to put girls on so that took about an hour or two, so that was that day where we sort of said let’s see what vocals we wanna pick and change. We listened through it all and we didn’t wanna change any. So all the vocals were done live so ended up taking three days and a extra half (laugh).

Access All Areas.net.au: Have you experienced something like that before?
Jimmy Barnes: I’ve never experienced recording that quick. I mean, Out of the Blue took about eight days, Soul Deep took twelve days. Other records took three months you know, just depends on what’s required…We had great songs already written. We had fantastic players, just the cream of the crop as far as players we could use for this type of material. And we had a great studio and Don Gehman took the reigns and just let us do our thing. What a great engineer, he set up fast and captured what we did without any fuss. So we didn’t have to worry about anything.

Access All Areas.net.au: Sounds great, and there’s another album in the works, a rock album where you’re working with Jonathan Cain again. Can you tell us more about this record and what it would mean to you?
Jimmy Barnes: It’s why I went to America, to write songs for that record. And it was just a side project to do Rhythm and the Blues while I was there…I’ve written 35-40 songs for this record and it’s really starting to take shape. It was written with some great writers and I’ve written a whole bunch of songs by myself, and I’m really enjoying the process. It’s one of those things – I’m saying it’s a rock record as such ‘til I physically get into the studio, once again these things could change on another day – depending on the musicians, the combination of musicians you put together with the producer, and the feel at the time. Things can turn around. Yeah it’s looking really good and I’m looking forward to make a rock ‘n’ roll record. I reckon that’s sort of guitar/bass.

Access All Areas.net.au: Whose opinions do you trust most when it comes to reviews of your music?
Jimmy Barnes: There’s a few different people. My wife’s fantastic because she is brutally honest…at the same time I know there are certain music she doesn’t necessarily get. So there are certain things I’ll get a straight up opinion from her. There’s lot of things I know she doesn’t really – when it’s part of rock, she doesn’t really get it. I have to run off to other people but she’s a generally really good sounding board. Michael Gudinski is a good sounding board – the guy who owns Mushroom Records. We normally have these little parties where we have our friends over like jukebox-jury, you play these songs and everybody tells you what they think of each and they can write it down…even if you don’t like that song (laugh).

Access All Areas.net.au: So do you still get nervous when that happens?
Jimmy Barnes: Yeah I get nervous whenever I put a record out, obviously you want people to like it. But you know, especially your friends, you want the people that you love and the people that you respect to like the record but really when it comes down to it – if I’m happy with it, that’s enough for me to put it out although when people close to you don’t really get it then you start to worry.
Is it harder or easier to slip into the creative process? After so many albums, have you ever found it frustrating to just write and sing?

Access All Areas.net.au: For a while there…for a couple of years I didn’t write much at all. I went through a bit of writer’s block. It wasn’t until I had heart surgery about two and half years ago when I was trapped in my room, I couldn’t move for a couple of months. Suddenly all these songs started flowing again. And what that proves to me was that if I wanna write songs, I have to sit myself down and take time off touring and write you know. I can’t be both things at the same time. If I’m touring, I concentrate, my mind is constantly on the show because I want the show to be great. I want the band to be great. I want everything to work. So if wanna write, I have to take time off and sit down and write, and do it everyday. And that’s when I get better. But there are no shortages of ideas coming so it’s good.

Access All Areas.net.au: Do you think the music you’ve grown up with has greater or lesser influence over young people today?
Jimmy Barnes: You know, great music – whether it’s stuff I listen to from the ‘70s or music from the ‘50s or ‘60s still influences young players. New bands listen to The Faces, then when they listen to The Faces they discover Chuck Berry and they listen to that. So I think music continually sort of feeds on itself which is a healthy thing. I think young bands have the same healthy influences we had and they listen to myself, and they listen to other people as well. You know, along the way if you could influence a few by yourself, I think that’s a good thing too.

Access All Areas.net.au: Do you think that the artist you are now is the same artist that you’ve set out to be when you first started out?
Jimmy Barnes: No ‘cause I started out singing in bands for fun but I’ve learned a lot and changed a lot and grow a lot. My musical tastes have developed and changed. What I look for in a song has changed. As a fourteen-year-old, you just get out there and want something that’s live and brash that you could bang your head to. Nowadays I want more depth in a song and if it’s depth that I could bang my head to at the same time then I’m really happy (laugh). So I still have bit of the old involved but my tastes have broaden and that reflects who I am as a person and as a musician.

Access All Areas.net.au: What is your dream for the next few years?
Jimmy Barnes: Keep writing. I think I’m becoming a better singer all the time, singing better now than I was a young fella, and that I can better songwriter and hopefully become a better person along the way, then I’m a happy person.

Access All Areas.net.au: Lastly, what would you like to shout out to your fans?
Jimmy Barnes: Please keep enjoying the music. Keep coming to the shows. I think live music is something that can’t ever be replaced. Music industry sort of goes through all phases where they think the music is dying because there’s downloading and all that sort of stuff but live music is always the best, and live is where you’re always enjoying rock ‘n’ roll.

Access All Areas.net.au: To experience the real stuff.
Jimmy Barnes: Yeah that’s right, that’s the way it’s meant to be played.

Access All Areas.net.au: Alright, we hope to see you soon. Thanks so much for your time today.
Jimmy Barnes: No worries, anytime. Nice to talk to you, bye!

Interview by Sandy Tan

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

NO one can craft a tribute album quite like Jimmy Barnes.
It’s a musical treat that comes along every decade or so and which always hits the spot with his fans. The good news is the stars have aligned and Barnes has again paid tribute to the pioneers of modern music - this time he’s
dug a little deeper into the music vaults and rediscovered “the rhythm and the blues”.

Think Little Richard. Think Ray Charles. Think Billy Lee Riley, Big Joe Turner, Bo Diddley and Otis Clay…getting
the picture? If you can’t see it, you should be feeling it by now, something Barnes certainly did given the powerful
result of this project. Largely a brand of ever-evolving music from the 1950s, and which Barnes says is a “prequel
to the Soul albums”, he’s aptly titled this record The Rhythm And The Blues. It swings, is chock-full of killer
grooves, rocks infectiously and has a couple of spellbinding ballads thrown in for good measure. Icing the cake are bedazzling horn arrangements and old-school backing vocals that only lend the album an alluring, old-fashioned charm.

With the timing right, and Barnes in the best form of his career, the great man made a dash for the States and to
an L.A. studio earlier this year, hooking up with his longtime friend, Don Gehman (who produced Soul Deep and
Soul Deeper), and an amazing array of gifted artists-cum-old friends to create what can best be described as a
“ball-tearing” tribute album. Incredibly, such a dynamic result took a mere three days to produce.

“It was such a pleasure to make,” Barnes fondly recalls. “Three days in the studio with the musicians of that calibre and singing these type of songs was a breeze. Making records in the 1950s, if they had even eight hours
to do it they were lucky. These guys were recording all live, all in one take and all together – and that’s the way
we approached this record. It was true to how it was recorded in the old days. The only difference is that we had better equipment to make it translate better to modern radio.”

Barnes explains: “Without trying to sound too trendy, The Rhythm And The Blues is a prequel to the Soul albums. This record covers from about 1948 to the early ‘60s and covers all the ground that led to what became soul and what became rock and roll,” he says.

The line-up of the songs alone is enough to make you stand to attention. One listen and you will be moving like you’ve been transported back to a 1950s high school dance in a town hall. It’s a snapshot of the time and covers so many music styles, including the irresistible rockin’ groove of Billy Lee Riley’s classic Red Hot, Little Richard’s rollicking Keep A Knockin’, the swing, jump and jive of Chris Powell’s That’s Right and the mesmerising falsetto of Johnny Adams’ Reconsider Me.

www.jimmybarnes.com

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