| Name |
Jimmy Barnes |
| Height |
|
| Naionality |
Australian |
| Date of Birth |
28-April-1956 |
| Place of Birth |
Glasgow, Scotland, UK |
| Famous for |
Singing |
is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer-songwriter. His father Jim Swan was a prizefighter and his older brother John Swan is also a rock singer. It was actually John who had encouraged and taught Jim how to sing as he wasn't really interested at the time. His career as both a solo performer and as the lead vocalist with the rock band Cold Chisel has made him one of the most popular and best-selling Australian music artists of all time. The combination of 14 Australian Top 40 albums for Cold Chisel and 13 charting solo albums, including nine No. 1s, gives Barnes the highest number of hit albums of any Australian artist.
Jimmy Barnes was born in Glasgow, Scotland and arrived in Adelaide, South Australia as a 4-year old on 7 January 1961 with his parents Jim and Dorothy Swan and siblings John, Dororthy, Linda, Lisa & Alan. They eventually settled in Elizabeth. Shortly afterward, Barnes' parents divorced. His mother Dorothy soon remarried, to a clerk named Reg Barnes. After her daughter Lisa was teased by a schoolmate about being adopted, Dorothy encouraged her children to change their surname to Barnes. All of them did except for the oldest brother John, who would go on to be much better known as Swanee, eventually recording a series of albums under that name from the 1980s. This would later cause confusion about Jimmy Barnes and Swan; many thought them to be half- or stepbrothers. Barnes launched his own career less than a month after Cold Chisel's Last Stand tour came to an end. He assembled a band that included Arnott, former Fraternity bass player Bruce Howe and guitarists Mal Eastick (ex-Stars) and Chris Stockley (ex-The Dingoes) and began touring and writing for a solo album. Signing to Mushroom Records, Barnes released his first solo album Bodyswerve. He was now billing himself as Jimmy Barnes, instead of merely 'Jim Barnes' as he had been credited during his Cold Chisel days. The album was immediately successful, entering the Australian charts at Number One on 8 October.
This was the first of a remarkable run of top charting albums for Barnes, as each of his first six solo albums all debuted in the Number One position, a feat that no other Australian musical artist is likely to match. His list of Number One albums now totals eleven, including three Cold Chisel albums. His total of nine No. 1 albums as a solo performer is matched by no other Australian recording artist. The final Cold Chisel studio album 20th Century and the live album Barking Spiders Live were also released in 1984. 20th Century peaked at No. 1 on 23 April. On 22 December 1984, days after Barnes had begun that year's Barnestorming tour, his second daughter Eliza-Jane was born. Early in his solo career, Barnes was determined to break into the US market and signed to Geffen Records for release there.
His second album For the Working Class Man was tailored in this direction, featuring remixed songs from Bodyswerve plus five new tracks including "Working Class Man" that was written by Journey musician Jonathan Cain and would become Barnes' signature tune. Several US musicians worked on the album including Cain, Charlie Sexton, singer Kim Carnes and British drummer Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. The album was released as a double vinyl set and shifted 250,000 copies in twelve months in Australia.
Like its predecessor, For the Working Class Man debuted on the national chart at No. 1 on 16 December 1985. It remained at No. 1 for seven weeks. Titled simply Jimmy Barnes in the US, the album was issued in February to tie in with the release of the Ron Howard film Gung Ho which featured "Working Class Man". Because of this, Gung Ho was released as Working Class Man in Australia.
