Looking Back

So where does someone like Jimmy Barnes start when he’s thinking about putting together something to celebrate the fact that he’s been rattling around the traps as a solo artist for 30 years? As a solo artist he’s looking at a discography that sprawls across 14 studio albums, 12 live albums, seven EPs and 63 singles and counting. What he knew was he didn’t want to do another greatest hits album. Remembering the Standing On The Outside album that Warner had pulled together to celebrate the Cold Chisel legacy by invited various artists and bands in to reinterpret those classic songs, Barnes had an idea. So he started ringing around.

"I spoke to The Living End, they said, ‘We want to do Lay Down Your Guns."

“Well, I mean, I spoke to Diesel, said, ‘D’you want to do one?’ He said, ‘I wanna do I’d Die To Be With You Tonight.’ I spoke to The Living End, they said, ‘We want to do Lay Down Your Guns.’ I spoke to Shihad, they said, ‘We wanna do Love & Hate.’ So really, a lot of the songs chose themselves. There was stuff like When Your Love Is Gone – I just wanted to hear John [Farnham] sing it,” he chuckles. “He’s such a great singer.

“Still On Your Side was the obvious choice, for me, for Bernard [Fanning], you know? I sent two songs to Tina [Arena] and she came back, ‘I want to do Stone Cold,’ and the version she’s done is just phenomenal. Then Mahalia [Barnes] picked Stand Up, ‘cause she wanted to do something funky and Sly & The Family Stone-ish. David [Campbell] Walk On – the opening lines of Walk On talk of finding the Great White Way, ‘David, you’re from Broadway, come here, you’re singin’ it!’”

The process of recording 30:30 Hindsight began with Ride The Night Away, which originally appeared on Barnes’ second solo album, 1985’s For The Working Class Man, co-written by “Little” Stevie Van Zandt from Springsteen’s E Street Band.

“Steven sent me the song,” says Barnes, who opened for Springsteen on his Australian tour this past March, “yet we hadn’t met, so I went up to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jimmy,’ and he said, ‘I know who you are, you got my song,’ and we started talking and he told me the story of how it came about. [Drummer] Steve Jordan kept coming ‘round and playing drums on his couch until he said, ‘Okay, I’ll write a song with ya,’ and we wrote this song.

“So I said, ‘Can you get a day off to record it?’ And he said, ‘I’ve gotta fly to Lillehammer and do this film as soon I finish this tour.’ I said, ‘Well fine, I’ll fly there,’ and he said, ‘What are you doin’ tomorrow?’ I said, ‘I’m free,’ and he said, ‘Okay, I’ve got the day off – let’s do it then.’ So he came over to my house expecting to maybe spend an hour, maybe two – he played lead guitar on the track – and walk away, and he just had such a great time in the house he ended up staying for 15 hours and it was just such great fun, he’s a lovely chap and full of great music stories. At one point he said, ‘I scour New York lookin’ for soul singers – there’s a house full of them in here!’” Barnes laughs.

Also on board for the recording was producer Kevin Shirley, who produced the last Cold Chisel album, 2012’s No Plans. “After No Plans I did some other stuff with Kevin for [guitarist] Joe Bonamassa – I did a version of Lazy for the Re-Machined album celebrating the 40th anniversary of Deep Purple’s Machinehead album, and then Joe did a version of Too Much Ain’t Enough for his last album, Driving Towards The Daylight – I went to Vegas and sang it in the studio with him.

“Kevin and I had spoken about this record [30:30], and while Joe was working with me on it [he’s on Stone Cold with Tina Arena], he met Mahalia, who was doin’ back-up vocals and he’s just now finished an album with Mahalia of Betty Davis songs – she was married to Miles Davis – one of those ferocious San Francisco soul singers.”

Also joining Barnes on 30:30 are Baby Animals, Jon Stevens, Keith Urban and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who was in The Babys and co-wrote Working Class Man, as well as Cain’s current band, Journey.

“But me and Kevin, we’re mates now, and he’ll say, ‘What sort of drum sound do you want?’ and I’ll say one of my favourite drum sounds was on How The West Was Won, and he’ll say, ‘I did that record.’”

And yes, Cold Chisel are about three-quarters through recording another album, which should be out next year.