Working Class Man by Jimmy Barnes

Author:Jimmy Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS TO be the band’s swan song. But we had died long before we got to the studio. Steve was gone, and in his place was Ray Arnott. Ray had filled in for Steve a couple of times when Steve was sick. He played simple, straight, four-on-the-floor, rock’n’roll drums. Nothing fancy, nothing that wasn’t needed. We had all been fans of Ray’s since we’d seen him play with The Dingoes back in Adelaide in the old days. But as good as he was, he wasn’t Steve. Steve was inventive and he knew how to swing a track like no one else. Steve was our brother and he thought the same way we did. Ray was up against it from day one in the studio. We were fractured and falling apart. The songs were works in progress. If we hadn’t been breaking up, we would have kept writing for another year or until we were ready. But suddenly here we were without our drummer, making the record we didn’t want to make. Our last.

One of the songs that was written before Steve left turned out to be one of the best songs the band ever recorded. We used the demo version with Steve playing drums. ‘Flame Trees’, written by Don and Steve, was a song about going back to your hometown and looking at the life you used to live, the people you hung around with and the places you used to go. This song has taken on a lot of different meanings for me over the years. I left a lot of things behind. Maybe more than most people have. And sometimes driving in a car or drinking with mates in a bar can take me back to places I never want to revisit. When I think about going back to Adelaide, I think about nothing but pain and have nothing but bad memories. As the years have gone by, more and more bad memories have surfaced and the song has been even more painful to sing. Some nights, it’s all I can do to make it through without breaking down, but it has remained one of my favourite Cold Chisel songs to this day.

Every place I left behind me held ghosts of my past, and as I ran away from them I created new memories and new ghosts that I wanted to leave behind. More people I could never look in the eye again. More people who I hurt or who hurt me. I spent ten years on the road with Cold Chisel during our first life and we never stayed still long enough for anything, let alone the past, to catch up to us. Life on the road saved me. I could fall into the car and drive away from anything or anyone. If I was lucky I might never have to face up to anything. But Australia is a small place really. We always had to go back to places that held memories I preferred to leave behind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.