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Jimmy Barnes Biography & Facts

James Dixon Barnes (né Swan; born 28 April 1956) is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer. His career, both as 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. Barnes has achieved 15 solo number-one albums in Australia, more than any other artist. Additionally, Barnes achieved five more as the lead singer of Cold Chisel, bringing his combined sum to 20 number-one albums in Australia, comfortably eclipsing the Beatles (with 14), Madonna and Taylor Swift (12), Eminem and U2 (11). Early life Barnes was born James Dixon Swan in the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow, to Dorothy and Jim Swan. His father was a prizefighter. His maternal grandmother was Jewish, but he was raised Protestant. He called his childhood environment a "slum" of alcohol and violence, saying that his mother had him and his four siblings (John, Dorothy, Linda and Alan) before she was 21. His older brother, John, also later became known as a singer under the name Swanee. John encouraged and taught Barnes how to sing, as he was not initially interested. He and his family arrived in Australia, when he was five years old, on 21 January 1962. They originally lived in Adelaide, though they eventually settled in nearby Elizabeth. Another sister, Lisa, was born later that year. Shortly afterwards, their parents divorced. His mother remarried, to a clerk named Reg Barnes, who died on 3 September 2013. Jimmy adopted the name James Dixon Barnes, after his stepfather. Cold Chisel 1973–1983 Barnes took up an apprenticeship in a foundry with the South Australian Railways in 1973, but the love he and his brother had for music led him to join a band. In 1974, his brother Swanee was playing drums with Fraternity, which had just parted ways with the singer Bon Scott. Barnes took over the role but his tenure with the band was brief and, in December 1975, he joined a harder-edged band called Orange, with the organist and songwriter Don Walker, guitarist Ian Moss, drummer Steve Prestwich and bass guitarist Les Kaczmarek. In 1974, Orange had changed its name to Cold Chisel and began to develop a strong presence on the local music scene. Barnes's relationship with the band was often volatile and he left several times, leaving Moss to handle vocal duties until he returned. After a temporary move to Armidale, New South Wales while Walker completed his engineering studies there, Cold Chisel moved to Melbourne in August 1976, and then three months later shifted base to Sydney. Progress was slow and Barnes announced he was leaving once again in May 1977 to join Swanee in a band called Feather. However, his farewell performance with Cold Chisel went so well that he changed his mind and decided to stay in the band. A month later, WEA signed the band. Between 1978 and 1984, Cold Chisel released five studio albums and won numerous TV Week / Countdown Awards. The band broke up in December 1983, its final performances at the Sydney Entertainment Centre running from 12 to 15 December 1983. Solo career 1980s In November 1979, Barnes met Jane Mahoney (born 1958 as Jane Dejakasaya in Bangkok, Thailand), the stepdaughter of an Australian diplomat. Barnes began a relationship with her. They married in Sydney on 22 May 1981 and Jane gave birth to their first child, Mahalia, named after Mahalia Jackson, on 12 July 1982. They have four children (Mahalia, Eliza-Jane, Jackie and Elly-May - all musically known as The Tin Lids). Barnes launched his solo career less than a month after Cold Chisel's Last Stand tour came to an end in December 1983. He assembled a band that included Arnott, the former Fraternity bass guitar 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 single, "No Second Prize", in August 1984, which peaked at number 12 on the Australian charts. His first solo album, Bodyswerve, was released in September 1984 and debuted at Number One on the Australian charts. On 22 December 1984, days after Barnes had begun that year's Barnestorming tour, his second daughter, Eliza-Jane ("E.J.") was born. Barnes's second album, For the Working Class Man, was released in December 1985 and included the tracks "I'd Die to Be with You Tonight" and "Working Class Man". For the Working Class Man debuted on the Australian national chart at No. 1 in December 1985 and 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 used "Working Class Man". The Jimmy Barnes band that toured Australia in support of the album included Howe and Arnott, with the keyboard player Peter Kekell, the former Rose Tattoo guitarist Robin Riley and the American guitarist Dave Amato. With the release of the album in America, Barnes and a band of Canadian musicians hand-picked by his North American management team toured with ZZ Top. It was the first time since 1981 that he had toured without his family, as Jane was pregnant. Shortly after their son Jackie (named after Jackie Wilson) was born on 4 February 1986, she and the children joined him in the US for the rest of the tour. In 1986, Barnes recorded two songs with INXS, a cover version of the Easybeats' "Good Times" and "Laying Down The Law", which he co-wrote with INXS members Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence. Both songs appeared on The Lost Boys (1987) soundtrack. "Good Times" was also used as the theme song for the Australian Made series of concerts that toured the country in the summer of 1986–87. Australian Made was the largest touring festival of Australian music talent that had ever been attempted to that point. Barnes and INXS headlined and the rest of the line-up was Mental as Anything, Divinyls, Models, The Saints, I'm Talking and The Triffids. The shows began in Hobart, Tasmania, on 26 December and concluded in Sydney on Australia Day, 26 January 1987. A concert film of this event was made by Richard Lowenstein and released later that year. "Good Times" peaked at No. 2 on the Australian chart and No. 18 on the UK Singles Chart. In October 1987, Barnes released "Too Much Ain't Enough Love", which became his first solo number-one single. His third album, Freight Train Heart, was released in December 1987 and peaked at number one. Freight Train Heart had moderate success outside Australia and as recently as 2003 was named as one of the top 100 rock albums of all time by the British magazine Powerplay. In November 1988, Barnes released his first solo live album, Barnestorming, which became his fourth solo number one album. A version of the Percy Sledge standard "When a Man Loves a Woman" released from the album peaked at number 3. In the middle of 1989, Jane Barnes went into Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney with pregnancy complicat.... Discover the Jimmy Barnes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jimmy Barnes books.