Shake, rattle & roll

Jimmy Barnes recruits a Stray Cat and Jools Holland into his rockabilly supergroup for a new album

- GRAHAM REID

With the physique of a Clydeside welder and laughter-filled lungs like industrial bellows, Jimmy Barnes is a combustible ball of electric enthusiasm.

It’s late March and he’s in Auckland, ostensibly to talk up his new album, The Barnestormers, recorded remotely during a Covid lockdown with Londonbased pianist Jools Holland (whom he has yet to meet in person), Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom in Los Angeles, and Kevin Shirley (bassist-producer) and Living End singer-guitarist Chris Cheney isolating in Australia. It’s an enjoyable rockabilly record that Shirley seamlessly welded together after each player laid down his separate part.

That’s supposedly the topic, but the former Cold Chisel frontman is just back from five weeks’ R&R in Thailand with Jane, his wife of more than 40 years, whom he mentions as if we know each other from backyard barbies.

He’s so energised that questions are just a key in the Barnesy ignition. So, what does he do when he’s just a 67-year-old husband, father and grandfather? Turns out he’s writing another book. After his autobiographical Working Class Boy and Working Class Man, this would be … Working Class Pensioner?

“Nah,” he laughs, like gravel down a drainpipe. “It’s fiction.”