‘I Felt Like I Was Dying’ – Barnesy’s Shock Confession

A year ago next month, Jimmy Barnes opened the Mushroom 50 Live concert, performing No Second Prize and Working Class Man at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena.

The singer – the Mushroom Group’s biggest-selling artist in Australia – noted that he’d been part of the stable for 40 years. “It’s such an honour to be here,” he said.

What the fans didn’t know was that Barnesy feared the gig might be his last.

“I felt like I was dying,” he reveals in his new book, Highways And Byways. “My fever had gone through the roof, and the pain had gone way beyond being bearable. I had to fill myself with painkillers for the pain, and aspirin for the fever if I was going to have any chance of doing the show.”

Despite his performance earning widespread acclaim – “the raw energy on display from Barnesy’s vocals alone was marvellous,” stated The Music’s review – the singer has no memory of the show.

“I’ve seen it since, and I look like a corpse.”

After the gig, Barnesy flew straight home to Sydney. The following morning, he was meant to fly to Noumea. “But I couldn’t get out of bed … I couldn’t even stand up.”

Barnesy had no idea what was going on. But he knew it was serious. “By lunchtime I was in hospital in Sydney, and I was critical.

“There’s a blood test that shows infection markers in your blood. The normal reading is under five … mine was somewhere around 410. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.”

After “every test known to medicine”, the doctors discovered that a staph infection had settled in Barnesy’s back, leading to sepsis, “an extremely dangerous condition where the body’s defences against infection start to turn on its organs and tissues”.

The singer had surgery, but the bug remained, and soon it would spread to his heart.

“As good as being high as a kite and lying in bed sounds, the drugs were not my drugs of choice,” Barnesy quips. “At this stage of my life I was happy being drug-free, and the painkillers were making me sick.”

Barnesy cheekily asked the nurses if he could go to their Christmas party. “I think I’m feeling better,” he told his wife Jane, who replied: “You look like a ghost, Jimmy.”

He would soon be having open-heart surgery – and it did not go according to plan. “The whole procedure had been more complicated than a heart transplant and taken more than six hours.”

Despite the near-death experience, Barnesy says he “felt nothing”.

“There was no light to head towards, and no relatives waiting to escort me to the next world. Maybe because it wasn’t my time.”

The singer survived and is now back fronting Cold Chisel on The Big Five-O tour, which finishes its Australian run in Sydney on December 4.

• 'Seize The Moment': Cold Chisel On The 'Health Crisis' That Inspired Their 50th Anniversary Run

Jimmy Barnes is the biggest-selling rock star author in Australian history. Highways And Byways – a collection of stories about family and friends, music and memories – is his fourth memoir, following Working Class Boy, Working Class Man and Killing Time.

In his new book, Barnesy concludes: “We never have enough time. You think you have nothing but time on your side, then it suddenly catches up to you and runs you down.”

You can order your copy of Highways And Byways via Harper Collins.