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November 30, 2025 • 11 mins

Jimmy Barnes called up to chat about forty years of For The Working Class Man, the upcoming tour in April, and the special connection he’s built with New Zealand across decades of shows and visits.

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome so Radio Hodoki's Off the Record podcasts the Record
with Big Sandy's.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
So it's been forty years since The Working class Man
came out. It was an album that defined a generation
of ossie rock, and it launched you, Jimmy Barnes, into
your solo career, and you're bringing it back to the
stage and I've got you here to talk about the
songs and memories and what it's like looking back after
four decades. Welcome Jimmy Barnes.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hey Beck, how you doing. It's it's an interesting thing.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
It seems like yesterday when I put this record out,
by the way, I mean, because you know, so many
of these songs have been such a huge part of
my life for the last forty years. You know, there's
a whole bunch of them, you know, whether it's I
Died to Be with You, to Night Ride the Night Away,
Second Prize, you know, Working Classman that have sort of
been staples in my set for forty years and feel

(00:54):
like they've always been there. So so this this sort
of just reminds me of you know, I remember recording
the song yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah. I was going to ask, what do you remember
feeling when you first started recording this album. Were you
nervous because you just Cold Chisel?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
It just yeah, yeah, it was. It was.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
It was a sort of one of those you know
moments in my life where I knew it was sort
of make a break.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
I mean, I'd already made bodies Worth.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
I came out of Cold Chisel in December eighty three,
and you know, April eighty.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Four, I made bodies Worth that went to number one. Luckily,
it was a real raw.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I just wanted to make a record, throw something out,
you know, put some put some emotion down on tape
and get out of seat and let people know I
was around. But it went really well and I went
to number one. But I knew that to follow that
up and to make the record that was going to
define my career was going to be it was going
to take some work and so. And it was also
the first record I was making for America, which was
you know, not that that bothers me that much, but

(01:46):
you know, for the record companies and all sort of stuff,
it was a lot a lot more pressure. So I
went I went to America, and literally, you know, I
was I was a bundler nerves and I remember you know,
I think I think the first song that I owned
for the record, you know, I mean, I was, I
was writing with all these writers. I went to write
with a guy called Chas Sanford, who is an incredible

(02:07):
songwriter who'd written Missing You for John Waite, talked to
me for Stevie next, He's written written with Don Henley,
was writing all these really great things and Uh and
I went to UH to write with.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Him, and we did write a bunch of things.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
But in the end, he said, look, I've got this
one song I've been saving for my first solo record.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
It's my first single, but I want you to have it.
And he and he UH.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Played me I Die to Be with You Tonight, and
and as soon as I heard it, I knew that
was going to be a great song for me. It
was a perfect song, perfect key, perfect groove, all that
sort of stuff. So, you know, that was really great
and I thought, Okay, that's you know, that's that's sort
of that's the direction. Then then I received a song.
I received word that Steve van Zandt and Steve Jordan,

(02:49):
who are two of my favorite musicians in the world.
You know, Stevie plays with Stevie van Zend plays with
Springsteen and Steve Jordan plays with the Rolling Stones, you know.
But but they they wanted to write a song form
my record too, and they and they sent me a
song called Ride the Night Away, which once again, when
I got it, I heard this little demo they made.
The demo was actually Steve Vans that playing an acoustic
guitar and Steve Jordan playing drums on the back of

(03:10):
his loan sweep, and it just sounded incredible. So like
I sort of felt, Okay, this is starting to take shape.
And there was a few other things that came along,
and then you know, halfway through the sort of the
writing process in America, I met up with a guy
called Jonathan Kane and Jonathan Jonathan had had a song
called American Heartbeat he wanted me to record, which I

(03:31):
thought was a pretty good song, but it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
I wasn't completely sold on it.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
But when I met Jonathan, I just I realized that
we both had the same taste in music. He was
a really thoughtful about the songs he was writing. He
was an incredible songwriter. So I said, yeah, I'll do
that and we'll work on something else. And a week later,
John sent me a demo of Working class Man, and
at that point I knew like that song, with the

(03:57):
other songs that had already gathered, were going to be
defining songs in my career. So it was so it
was sort of like a weight lifted off my shoulders end.
But then of course I had to record it, get
it out and see how they connected with people. You
never know these things till the record goes out.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
And of course I guess when you're in the studio,
like you've met with the people that have written the songs,
You've got the songs there in front of you, and
when you were recording them, did you realize at that
point what an impact that album was going to have?

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, I had a good feeling about it.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
I mean, I felt like Working class Man was a
song even though I didn't write it. If John wrote it,
after Jonathan Caine wrote it. After we sat and spoket
for about an hour, we were talking about audiences, you know,
in Australia, New Zealand, really in Australia, particularly because he
hadn't been that his band, He's in a band called
Journey and they hadn't toured down this way at all.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Or in New Zealand and the and they and they
really he was really.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Interested in what it was like to work down there
and what the audiences were like. So I was telling
him about our audiences, you know, and our audiences are
very similar in New Zealand as they are in Australia.
You know, there are a lot of working class people.
They've they they worked really hard during the week. You know,
doesn't matter if you're working in an office or you're
in a factory, you're still working class.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Uh, you know, they.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Work hard all weeken in on a Saturday night, kick
the heels up and go crazy and then get back
to work on the Monday morning. I said, the real
staunch you know, you know, soult of the earth people,
people who look after the families, who care about their countries,
and who are and who you know and who.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Really worked hard.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
And so he wrote that song for my audience, which
I just thought was an amazing thing. And when I
heard the lyric and I heard heard the song, I
just felt that not only has it connected with me,
had connected and will connect with my audience. So I
was I was fairly not confident, but fairly you know,
fairly tough at that point in the in the proceedings.
Of course, once I'd recorded them, I was like, when

(05:42):
I finished recording Working Class Man, I knew that it
was still fighting.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
It was going to be you know, career defining.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, defining is definitely the word for it. I saw
you play live in Genderbyne and a straight would have
been early two thousands, I think, And I remember being
a key wee amongst all of the Aussie fans, and
I was bolting out the songs just as much as
everyone else. But I just remember that being quite a
small venue at the time and being blown away.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, we used to go down and do it. It's
up near the snow.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, we used to go down and.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
We do a couple of gigs in the in a
little pub and the snow and uh and and my
family and I would all go skiing together that we
do like Contra Deon just sort of hang up there,
you know, with these people who ran who ran the
ski resorts up there. We knew we we sort of
you know, we knew them all. So it was like
we could do these little tiny gigs, which was great.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
It was great. It was a man from Snow River
was the.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Great and those The great thing about songs like Working
Class Man. You know, you can play it in an
intimate club and people go, this is a song for me.
And you can play it to one hundred thousand people
at the stadium and they'll go, oh, this is a
song for me. You know, the song translates really well
to you know, any sort of format, because that's such
a great song to any sort of I do it
with an acoustic guitar and it works, but but nothing

(06:54):
sounds better than playing it with this band. And and
you know, and when the piano starts the intro you
can just feel the energy of the crowd rise. You know,
their arms go on the air, their eyes light up,
and you know, and you know, the gigs about to
take off.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
And over the years, as you've been playing the songs
from the album, like over forty years, you must watch
the audience reaction change to it as times changed. Do
have you noticed that at all? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:17):
You know, I mean some of the songs that they've
they've you know, there's like I've got to tell you,
first off, one of the great things about coming back
and doing playing playing this album in its entirety is
when you you know, I'm one of those sort of people.
I'm a bit hyperactive, and I make a record every year.
I like to at least make sometimes I make two
and so, so you know, there's a bunch of songs
on that record that after the first six months, never

(07:39):
really played much again because I had new material I
was writing or trying out, or you know, new singles
from new albums, and so there's songs like Promise Me
You'll Call Daylight, you know, boys cry Out for War,
which are real favorites of mine when I wrote them,
but I haven't had a chance to play them much.
So to see how the people still reacting to those
songs is really good. The way people react to say,

(08:02):
Ride the Night Away, which started off as as an
album track, really but it's but it's such a great
driving song that you know, you know, over the years,
I've just seen people more and more and more, you know,
they take to it and and they're they're there from
the first bars and opening bars of the song. So
that's that's a really great thing. But the good thing
is I haven't seen people sort of waning from the songs.
I think, if anything, the songs have grown stronger.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I think so too. When were you last in
New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
I come all the time out, you know, I was
there not so long back. I love playing New Zealand
and it's it's literally the like my home crowd, I mean,
New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
I was lucky enough that New Zealand adopted sort of
adopted us, you know, way back.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
I think it was about nineteen seventy five or something.
We came and played Sweetwater seventy six and with Cultures
and from from that day on, you know, the New
Zealand has sort of have taken us as their own,
which is really great because it's a it's a really
great place for us to play, and it's a different
audience to the Australian audience. You know, there's there's some
there's a slightly different musical taste, not quite as American,

(09:03):
I think. I think there's a lot of British if anything.
If anything, the American influences more soul and more blues
in New Zealand, but there's a lot of British influence there,
and so it's a sort of a different audience again
for us to play. So you know, I'm really I
really love coming to New Zealand, and not only that
I've been going there for that long, I've got lots

(09:23):
of like really really you know, dear friends, and I've
got family there, you know. I mean we muck around
and talk about you know, Neil and Sharon Finn. We
call them the fin Laws, you know, because our kids
have grown up together, and you know, I go and
spend a lot of time with those guys in New Zealand.
My daughter Eliza Jane married a ke Kiwi grandson over
there that I go to and when I'm not touring there,
I come over anyway.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, well, we love having you here. I actually saw ej.
She rocked the stage at for Middle Orchestra and Christ
Church at Wolf Book Arena, which is where you'll be
performing in April. She's amazing.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, she's a great girl and she knows she's such
a sweet, soft singer, and they asked her to do this,
I think because she's been seeing me screen for years
and she's really good at it.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
No, she was amazing. I was just like got my
jaw hit the floor. I was like wow, because I
remember the Ten Lords back in the day and it's like, well,
she's growing up, that's right.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
So you know, New Zealand's literally like a second home
for me, and so every two I do, I try
to make a point of getting over there because you know,
I feel I feel not only a connection, but I
feel like I owe to the audiences there because they
support me, they buy my records and they've been behind
me since day one sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Well, we can't wait to have you over here. And
Ian Moss as well, which is great.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Last time we were there it was a couple of
years ago with Chisel and that was huge for us.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
It was really great.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
So you're looking forward to heading the road with Ian
and coming to New Zealand and we'd like to think
of you as a bloody great New Zealander the Barnzy.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
So that's good.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Wells's marriage, the connections are everywhere procted. But yeah, we're
looking forward to coming and we're really but literally we
started this tour in Australia last weekend and it was phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's phenomenal and you know, must he get something please?
And my set with me. We're having a ball.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
We're really it's really great to celebrate such a milestone
in my life.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
You know, Oh, fantastic well, we're looking forward to it. Well,
thanks so much for your time. Won't take up any
more of your time, Jimmy Radio hod.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Aches Off the Record podcast.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Why not subscribe so they download automatically and don't forget
to rate us five stars?

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Thanks mate.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Find out more about this podcast and the people who
make it at hodache dot co dot nz.
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