Jimmy Barnes has always epitomised Aussie manhood for me. When I was six years old, Barnes’s second album, For the Working Class Man, was played a lot in our XD Falcon. The tape cover had flames all over it, and a sweaty, angry-looking guy in a white singlet in the foreground. He growled and wailed about his heart, blue denim, boys and men, and war and winning. He looked tough and he sang tougher. My dad loved him. We all did.
Even before that album, Barnes had come to define an idealised version of Australian masculinity: abrasive yet charming, he was a no-bullshit bloke who worked hard and drank harder. He had emotion – too much of it, probably – but he only expressed it through loud, aggressive rock music.
In Working Class Boy, both the 2016 memoir and Mark Joffe’s new documentary, the brutal reality of Barnes’s hard-drinking, fast-living version of manhood is laid bare. Its genesis lies not in some kind of proud, honourable tradition, but in poverty, alcoholism, neglect, abuse and gang violence. It was all his father knew in Glasgow, and it was all Barnes knew as he grew up in the troubled Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth. When they were in pain, they drank to forget it. And they were in pain all the time.
The interplay of repressed pain and misguided stoicism is rampant across Australia, and perhaps particularly so outside of our nation’s cities. Having grown up in a country town, I know it intimately.
In the early 90s, my family was hit hard by the recession. My extended family seemed to be struggling with things, too. Marriages fell apart. Through it all, I never heard the adults talk about their feelings. But I knew when things were bad – there was more yelling and more drinking. This was particularly true of the men. They were usually kind and never violent, but the worse things got, the more they seemed to drink.
As I got older, I saw my peers follow the same path. My male schoolmates didn’t really talk about their feelings, unless they got drunk and ended up overwhelmed and in tears, only to dismiss it all the following day. In my broader community, machismo ruled, whether among the footy jocks or the surfers.
The documentary’s opening scene includes a traditional Scottish song sung around a kitchen table. In the memoir, Barnes explains that singing together was an essential part of life in Glasgow. In this world, music seemed to be the only outlet for pain that didn’t cause more pain, and that didn’t compromise toughness. Within this narrow model of masculinity, singing was allowed.
Joffe’s documentary foregrounds the importance of the songs to the story by punctuating spoken-word storytelling with powerful live performances. During the Q&A at the documentary’s world premiere, Barnes emphasised the vital role of music in his life: “[it] has been my release … and it’s been what’s kept me alive”.
The men I grew up around didn’t have Scottish verses or their own band, but they had records, tapes and CDs. And they had Jimmy Barnes.
From Working Class Man in the XD tape deck to Khe Sanh screamed in unison as the pub wound down for the night, I have witnessed countless men feel Barnes’s pain and find their own release in vocal union. Barnes has always given men permission to express intense emotion without breaching the masculinity contract. This paradox is nowhere more profound than in Flame Trees, in which Barnes gives voice to some of the most moving lyrics about country towns ever written, while simultaneously dismissing such emotions as “sentimental bullshit”.
Barnes’ second memoir, Working Class Man, opens with a story of a drunken blackout after a 2012 show that led to an unsuccessful suicide attempt. The masculinity that Barnes had modelled all his life had well and truly failed. In recent years, with suicide rates and domestic violence in Australia reaching epidemic proportions, it has become clear that the same is true across the nation.
By opening up about his traumatic past, Barnes is working to redefine our collective understanding of masculinity. While he used to think therapy was for “pussies”, he now openly credits it with helping him turn his life around, and urges others to ask for help if they need it. He’s pushing to keep issues like domestic violence and family poverty in the national spotlight, and is vocal in his compassion for refugees and his stance against racism, even in the face of disapproval from some of his bread-and-butter fans.
“Over the last two years I’ve just started to find my stride and I think I’m going to start doing really good things now,” Barnes said during the Q&A. By offering men a new model of manhood – one defined by vulnerability, honesty and empathy – Barnes is undoubtedly on track to do great things. But this is less a new beginning than a natural evolution: Barnes has always been there for men in pain, hurting alongside them and offering them a way to cope. Now, he is offering them a way to heal.
• Working Class Boy opens in cinemas around Australia on Thursday 23 August
