I’d been nobbling myself for years
SOBER, 2003
WALKING BACK ON STAGE for the first time since rehab was scary. I had done only a handful of shows in my life sober or straight. Never both. I didn’t think I could do it. I walked around backstage, even more nervous than when I was having trouble standing up in the past. I found a space to be ALONE and sat down and tried to settle myself.
I said the serenity prayer. I didn’t know if it would help. It had worked while I was in rehab, maybe it would help outside too? I hadn’t suddenly taken to believing in God by the way. It was just meditation. I was asking anyone or anything that was out there to give me help. I wasn’t fussy. I just needed all the help I could get. There was something about looking inside for strength that I liked too. I had always told people I could do anything I put my mind to, even when I didn’t really believe it myself. If I said it enough times, someone would believe it. Hopefully it would be me. I needed it to be true.
I walked on stage. It was a small pub in Melbourne and the first thing I noticed was how close the audience was. The stage was only about one-foot high so I was looking straight into their eyes. How did I let things go so far downhill? Now I was sober, I could see that I had driven my career into the ground. I was playing in a pub with a few hundred people in it. I was glad I was sober now. I had work to do. No matter what state I was in, I would have to dig deep and work my way back up into the light. I knew how to work, it didn’t scare me.
‘Yeah, fucking Barnesy! You twat. Let’s go!’
I could smell the booze on their collective breath and the sweat dripping down their backs. I tried not to gag but I did at first. I was off to a great start because I hadn’t really smelled anything for years. It was a good sign. But I could see how pissed they were and it worried me.
‘It’s a pub show for fuck sake, that’s exactly why people go to them. They can get pissed and see the band,’ I told myself. I didn’t look into any one person’s eyes for the first half of the show. I kept mine shut and tried to feel what I was doing. The first thing I noticed was that it was easier to breathe, which meant it was easier to sing. I had done a thousand gigs with a head full of coke, struggling to get air into my lungs. With all this newfound air coming past my vocal cords they worked the way they were designed to. I could sing really well. I was getting a spring in my step. I would not throw in the towel again. Things slipped into automatic pilot. I didn’t have to worry. I could stop panicking and allow myself to be in the moment and just sing. It was easy. The show finished and I walked off with a towel over my head and I sat in the corner of my dressing room. I wasn’t worn out. I wasn’t gasping for air like I had been lately. What was happening? My sound guy ran into the dressing room.
‘Fuck me, Jimmy. I’ve mixed you for years and that was the loudest you’ve ever sung. I had to turn your microphone down by at least a third or you were going to blow up the fucking PA system. Your pitch was good too. Welcome back, you fucking idiot. You should have done this years ago.’
I thought for a second. I felt like I could do another show right away. That’s when I knew that I’d been nobbling myself for years. I couldn’t have made my job any harder if I’d tried. So now I knew I could sing straight. But I would have to get used to seeing my audience this way too. There were people absolutely mindless in the front row, watching the band. Well, I think they were watching the band. I had seen one guy, his eyes rolling back and booze spilt all down the front of his shirt, with his arm around a girl who was blowing kisses at me. Lucky his eyes were rolling, I guess. I had been told I would need to keep my distance from drinkers for a little while. That’s what they told me at AA as well. If the people you hang around with drink or take drugs, change the people you hang around with or you will relapse so quickly you won’t even see it coming.
But I wasn’t going to be one of those guys. I had met guys like that in the States. ‘Hey man, I don’t mind you having a good time but could you not do it around me,’ they’d say.
I didn’t know what the fuck they meant. ‘What, you want me to have a good time by myself and a shitty time around you? I fucking do that anyway. You are as boring as batshit,’ I used to joke, but they never laughed. Now I knew why. I told myself that no matter how hard it got, I would never stop my friends from getting smashed. I could take it. It was my problem, not theirs. And that’s what I did. Some nights it was hard, other nights it was harder, but I had to be strong. This went on for years.
BEFORE REHAB I HAD tried to write a book. Somehow I wanted to purge myself. Spilling everything out and onto paper might help me get through it. But as I have said before, I was so out of it I could only make light of the state I was in. I didn’t understand what I was up against. In fact, if the truth be known, I think that I’m only just starting to see it all now, and it still scares me. It did occur to me to write again now that I was clear-headed and fresh from rehab but I really didn’t have any answers yet. I had spread all the pieces of my life out on the table, like pieces of a jigsaw. But I had lost the box, so I didn’t know what the picture was supposed to look like.
I had been a lunatic and I had almost gotten whiplash from slowing down so quickly. Every night I would fight the urge to deal with things the old way. I knew that model was broken so I took all the shit that was running through my head and I shoved it as far back as I could. Hopefully I would never see it again. Everyone kept telling me how well I looked and how well I was singing. How proud they were of me. How much nicer I was to be around. But inside it was a battle. All that shit that had been unlocked at rehab wanted out. It wanted to be dealt with. I just kept saying, ‘No. I’m not ready to talk to anyone. I can do this alone.’
I was a stubborn bastard. Then, at night when no one was around, I would cry and look into the mirror. Just like I used to when I was smashed. I could see the other me, still there. The real me.
‘Fuck off. You’re not going to win. I can do this. I can do this.’ Then I would try to stop myself from breaking down and crying. I would not be ready to write for another few years, if ever.
Tsh Tsh Tsh . . .
Later, when I wrote my first book, Working Class Boy, I talked about my mum’s life being like a pressure cooker, ready to explode. That feeling was back. Only this time, it wasn’t my mum.
Tsh Tsh Tsh . . .
Stop it. I don’t want to hear it. I would turn the music up, do anything to distract myself – well, within reason now.
Tsh Tsh Tsh . . .
This time it was me. I was the pressure cooker. I was the time bomb. I was ready to blow. I would knock myself out with a sleeper and hope that I wouldn’t dream. I wanted peace. Nothing else. Just peace. I would wake up and the sound would be gone. I was all right. Every day started this way and then slowly as the day progressed . . .
Tsh Tsh Tsh . . .
… it would return. This was a battle I knew deep down I couldn’t win, but I had to try.
IN THE MIDDLE OF 2003 Cold Chisel was back. Ringside was on the road. The band wanted to play again. I wanted to play with them. Even Cold Chisel had gone down a few rungs on the ladder. The tour before, we were doing Entertainment Centres, about 12,000 people a night. Now we were doing Hordern Pavilions, more like 5500 people. We told ourselves that it was because we wanted to do smaller venues, but no one really wants to do smaller venues, and don’t believe them if they say they do. But we would do the best shows that we could. I had hardly ever sung straight with Chisel and I wanted to do it and do it well. It was so much easier this time. The band were relaxed and happy to be around me, although I could tell that they were still a little wary in case I fell apart.
Every day Steve would walk up to me. ‘How’s it going, our kid? Are you holding up all right?’
I was fine. It was always a bit of a battle but I had fought much worse. ‘Yeah mate, I’m good. Thanks for asking. You just do your fucking job and I’ll do mine.’
Steve laughed. ‘You know, you are a bigger twat sober than you are pissed. I think I liked you better before.’
But I knew he was kidding and he knew I was only kidding too. It was our way of breaking the ice. I needed to know that the boys were all behind me and they were. Every night before the show I went through my little ritual. Remember I said I have compulsive tendencies? I just had to change what I was compulsive about. So instead of being compulsive about destroying myself, now I was compulsively moderate.
I would get to the gig at least an hour before the show. In the old days that gave me enough time to get drunk and consume all the drugs I needed to get through the night. But now that meant I could walk to the stage and get a feel for the place, then find a room backstage and put out my clothes and look at the set. Play a bit of music to calm me down. I used to play the whole Highway to Hell album every night for years before I went on. Now I only played some of it. Then I’d sit and try to meditate. I wasn’t always successful, by the way. I would say the serenity prayer and I was ready to rock. But if that routine was broken I was at a loose end, unsettled, unfocused. I thought that as long as I stuck to my routine I would be all right. Simple. But the fact that when it was interrupted I was thrown so far out of whack was a big warning sign and I knew it.
The Ringside tour was difficult for all of us. We had never played in the round before. The audience was all around us, which meant we couldn’t have our usual wall of amps and gear to hide behind. The guitar amps had been almost like security blankets for us. We could wind and wind them up until they were so loud that we would settle. All of us were like that, I soon found out, not just me. But for Ringside all our gear was under the stage. It was bare. It was as if we were standing naked up on the stage. That took a lot of getting used to. It was just one more thing to distract me from my real problems. I could worry about that instead of worrying about the drug dealer in the third row, who I hadn’t seen in years, with the two hookers on his arms, motioning for me to join him after the show. In the old days I would have been obsessed with the idea of taking off with them for the rest of the show. Not now though. I had enough on my plate. I had to get this band to rock. And I was happy. I had a job to do. My friends needed me to be at the top of my game. I wasn’t digging myself a hole anymore. I was getting on with it. Sure it was hard, but it had been so much harder before. And I didn’t want to turn the heat up under the pressure cooker at any cost. If it blew again, the damage this time would be total devastation.