Jimmy Barnes On His 'DEFIANT' Life: 'I Think My Best Work Is Still Yet To Come'

Jimmy Barnes has always been defiant—in the kindest sense of the word.

He’s a fighter. He’s rolled with the punches life has thrown at him, from surviving a violent childhood to grinding away with Cold Chisel, securing hit after hit as Aussies fell in love with their hard-rocking, bluesy sound.

Following the band’s implosion in 1983, Barnes went solo and clawed his way to the top—he became Australia’s Working Class Man, alright. But behind the scenes, he was dealing with addiction, a lifelong battle in which he eventually won. In the last few years, he’s had to fight new battles: Jimmy has undergone several major operations, including a life-threatening open-heart surgery. Any time he got back up, he faced another health setback.

It’s all of these experiences and the recent 50th-anniversary tour with Cold Chisel that informed Jimmy’s excellent 21st album, the aptly-titled DEFIANT, out on Friday, 6 June, via Mushroom Music.

“Nobody lives this long without copping some knocks, and I’ve taken my fair share, particularly lately,” Barnes explained upon announcing the album. “But none of us can control what life throws at us. We can only control how we respond, and, for better or worse, I’ve never liked to take a backward step.

“It’s no secret that this has caused me some problems over the years, but I’ve finally learned how to turn my stubborn Scottish streak into something positive – something that helps me survive. I didn’t set out to do it deliberately, but now that the album is finished, I can see there’s a recurring theme about the satisfaction you can get from fighting back. That’s why it’s called DEFIANT!”

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He kicked off the album campaign with a double single, New Day, and Beyond The River Bend, the former featuring Troy Cassar-Daley and Laurel Edwards in the music video.

You might think that, given the album title and Barnes's description as a fighter, the resulting music would be hardened and angry. It’s anything but.

On DEFIANT, Barnes embraces the musical inspirations that have stayed with him throughout his life, from American soul and blues artists like Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Little Richard to the rock and roll and country that we’ve heard across Cold Chisel and Jimmy Barnes albums.

This week, Barnes releases the new single The Long Road. Driven by a country groove featuring acoustic guitars and drums, the song effortlessly blends Barnes' iconic screams with the guitar solo and showcases his inimitable singing voice. To capture the feeling he wanted in the song, he teamed up with singer-songwriter Michael Paynter.

A close friend of Jimmy’s son and drummer, Jackie Barnes, Michael Paynter plays in ICEHOUSE’s band and works with Michael Delorenzis as part of MSquared Productions, co-writing and producing songs for Australian country artists like Casey Barnes, Hayley Jensen, Taylor Moss, and many more. Paynter currently portrays Jesus in the current Australian performances of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Phoning in with The Music ahead of the release of The Long Road and DEFIANT, Barnes reveals, “I wanted to make it a storytelling song.

“You talk about the struggle and the things you’ve done wrong and the things you’ve done right in life and then sum it all up in the chorus. I love the way the chorus takes off because, let’s face it, I was a wild young man on a mission for a long, long time until about last week [laughs]. And so, there’s a lot to release when it hits that chorus.

“There’s that recurring theme of redemption, and in the whole record, there’s a recurring theme of being defiant, and I mean defiant in the nicest possible way,” Barnes tells. “For years, people have been telling me I wouldn’t be singing in six months. And I say, ‘No, I’ll sing higher and better and stronger.’ I’ve been doing that every year. But also, you know, your health, the mental issues that people go through—this is well documented from writing my books, and I struggled with a lot of depression and trauma.

“Growing through all that was about: you have to pick yourself up and move forward and keep moving forward. Don’t take a backwards step. The Long Road is about that long road to perdition. You’re just going to be there, but you’re not going to stop trying to make yourself a better person. You have to make yourself better than who you were and where you’ve come from.”

Barnes quips that he’s been “a defiant bastard” since he was a “young fella.” “I don’t like being told I can’t do something; it makes me dig my heels in more and work harder,” he admits. “It’s not just being stubborn, it’s going: ‘No, I can be better. I can do better. And I want to push myself to be better all the time.’

“I continually say that. This record coming out, I think it’s probably going to be my best record to date. And I think my best work is still yet to come. You know, I’m going to keep improving until the day I drop. That’s what I want to do. I’m defiant. I want to keep moving forward and not step in the same river twice.”

He adds, “There’s also redemption involved with that, too. You know, where you make mistakes, and if you can look at your mistakes and say, ‘Okay, every mistake is an opportunity. Everything I do wrong is where I’ve learned from.’ Once again, that adds to that whole thing about moving forward with life and becoming a better person, becoming a better human being. And that’s part of what the message of this record is about, too.”

DEFIANT is a rock record that Barnes wrote with the intention of playing the songs live, which is fitting, seeing as he’s taking the album on tour just one day after its release. The tour has been met with extraordinary demand; tickets are selling like hotcakes, and extra dates have been added in multiple cities.

Barnes explains, “Quite often I make records [and] I just write songs and think, ‘Oh, this is a good song,’ but then I don’t always think, ‘How am I going to play them live?’ If they work live, I put them in. If they don’t, they’re there whenever I want to play them. But this record was actually not constructed [like that].”

For DEFIANT, Barnes asked himself the simple question of whether the songs would work in a live setting, and it’s safe to say that the answer is a resounding yes.

“I’m really looking forward to hitting the stage and giving these songs a bit of a run because I think once we put them in a live band setting and in front of an audience, they’re going to take on a whole new life again.

“The thing is, after coming off the back of five months of Cold Chisel touring, which was awesome—it was one of the greatest tours I’ve ever been involved in, which was incredible—as much as I loved that, I’m so excited about getting back in front of my own band again,” Barnes says.

Barnes describes his band as different to Cold Chisel, stating that it’s “a lot more intense in a different way.”

Cold Chisel presents the blues and soul side of his artistry, while his band is “a lot more blunt force.” He chuckles, “As much as we play subtle, we like to take things and hit them harder. [It’s] such a great contrast to the Chisel shows. A lot of people have been following me for years went to the Chisel shows for the first time, and will see new things in my shows after watching Cold Chisel.”

The Cold Chisel shows saw the band playing to enormous crowds, primarily in massive outdoor spaces. For the DEFIANT tour, Jimmy is heading indoors to put on a show in your local theatre. “There’s some intimacy playing in a venue with a roof on it,” he laughs, adding that his forthcoming shows will have the added intensity of happening indoors.

“I like when you can see most of the audience,” he says. “You can actually connect with them visually. You can look them in the eye until three-quarters away, down the room. It’s pretty personal, and you can feel that connection with your audience.

“You can see how they’re responding, whether it’s the intensity of the band or the feel of the song, or whatever it is. You can adjust things on the fly, reach out more and make the band work harder. And we all do that when we work a room.”

DEFIANT opens with the rousing track, That’s What You Do For Love. A classic Jimmy Barnes number, the song features a stacked list of collaborators: guitarist Joe Bonamassa, Journey’s Jonathan Cain (who penned Working Class Man), Jason Bonham (the son of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham), his daughter Mahalia Barnes, and longtime studio collaborator Kevin “Caveman” Shirley. And for fans who have seen Barnes live in the last 18 months, they’ve already heard it.

Another song featuring collaborations with Michael Paynter, Barnes says Paynter wrote the song specifically for Jimmy after digging into his books, calling back to Jimmy’s 1987 album, Freight Train Heart.

“He wrote that song, and it was tipping its hat back to 1987, to Freight Train Heart, to the songs I wrote with Jonathan Cain, which was a really great period for me,” Barnes shares. “That song, we got to play it live for 18 months, but it really developed its own character when we recorded it.

“It was funny—we recorded the song, and I did the vocals. Kevin was in Nashville, and Jonathan Cain was in the studio. [Kevin] said, ‘I want to play you this.’ And Jonathan loved it and said, ‘Let me play on it.’ To have Jonathan playing on it; it’s like going full circle and not only acknowledging the great path I set on in 1985 when I first met Jonathan Cain, but also shows how those songs have carried through to my modern repertoire.”

As for Jason Bonham, the drummer has wanted to work with Barnes on multiple occasions over the years. Barnes tells, “I’ve met Jason quite a few times, and we’ve been trying to get together at work, but it’s a bit difficult because my son, Jackie, is my drummer. But Jason keeps wanting to play on stuff for me, and I’m such a huge fan of his father. It was really nice to have him contribute to the record.”

On the late album track, Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t, Barnes is somewhere between AC/DC riffs and the country groove heard earlier on the record. He says, “I wanted to have that country swing. I think it’s reminiscent of ‘70s Rolling Stones, you know, sort of country crossover stuff. I wanted to feature the players, but give the track a lot of air, a lot of space to swing, as opposed to just sort of making it heavy for the same time.”

The title track features piano not too far from what we hear on Working Class Man, while things change once again on the album closer, Sea Of Love. On that track, Barnes incorporates balladry with old-school rock and roll inspired by Wilson Pickett, and completes the mission statement for DEFIANT.

“Over the last couple of years, I’ve been playing with that song. When I was recording and writing it, I thought that it felt like an early Wilson Pickett song,” he reveals. “I’ve been in a rock band for 50 years, but I grew up wanting to be a soul singer. I was listening to Black singers as a young man; I wanted to be like Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Little Richard, and people like that.”

Barnes’ defiance in the face of mental and physical health issues is downright inspiring. Writing books has helped him on his journey to acceptance and reclaiming positivity. A man with many creative outlets, Barnes is currently working on his first-ever fiction novel.

“I’m in the process of writing a novel — writing fiction is much different to writing non-fiction,” he says. “So, I'm trying to get into fiction. The last book, Highways And Byways, is actually 90% based on facts.

“Writing that book was great for my songwriting because as much as I like songs to be based in reality so that I can feel the emotions of them, I don’t want to be tied to just the one outcome. I want to bring a song, and if I want to be joyous, I want to make it joyous. So, I don't want it to be depressing because that’s how the situation might have ended. I want to show light at the end of the tunnel.”

Detailing how the books he’s written contrast with his work as a songwriter, Barnes says, “I’m enjoying writing at the moment. I think writing books, not only has it helped me get in touch with myself so I can write more honest and better lyrics, I think the actual writing books has made made me a better lyricist as well.

“Working Class Boy was so liberating for me. There was all this trauma and pain that was killing me, and it was blocking me emotionally as a writer. I could only get in one state to perform, and writing that book liberated me. I felt free after doing it.”

He adds, “[After writing Working Class Boy], I could write about tougher things in my life without being overwhelmed by them. I could write about it and see hope, as opposed to ‘It’s all dark.’ It freed me up, and it allowed my lyrics to become much more open-ended. It wasn’t just predetermined by the way I started the song.”

And Jimmy Barnes is a testament to getting to the light at the end of the tunnel. Even on the DEFIANT album cover, which shows his face in black and white, he’s a man who’s survived plenty but hasn’t become nihilistic.

“I like the cover because I wanted it to be, you know, ‘Look at me. This is what I am. This is who I am now,’” he explains. “There’s no frills. It’s just, ‘I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m standing here right in front of you.’

“That’s what I want this record to be about. I want it to be positive, but also about being able to face anything and keep moving forward, being able to face it and knock you down, stand up and keep moving again. Learn from it. Move on. That’s the recurring theme: it’s not about that classic thing of being not happy and knocked down. It’s about how many times you get back up.”

DEFIANT will be released on Friday, 6 June, via Mushroom Music—pre-order/pre-save the album here. Tickets to the DEFIANT tour are on sale now via the Frontier Touring website.

Presented by Frontier Touring, MG Live & Triple M