For someone who loves science fiction and fantasy, I sure seem to be reading a lot of biographies lately. I’m currently reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, the same author who wrote Leonardo Da Vinci (which I reviewed some months back).
Why? I like to read stories about successful people. Perhaps it’s a writer thing – figuring out what makes people tick. Perhaps it’s just inspirational. Both, probably.
Which is why I read Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes. What makes one of Australian’s most successful rock icons tick?
I didn’t know what I was getting into, that’s for sure.
Working Class Boy is about a rock star who went through hell before he even went through puberty, and who came out badly broken because of it. Despite his brutal upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he rose to fame and fortune and become an inspiration to millions.
Written in his own words, Working Class Boy isn’t about his rock star life however. That’s the next book: Working Class Man. Working Class Boy is about his childhood and what made Jimmy Barnes who he is today.
It’s a harsh story. Brutal, actually. Yet it’s inspirational too.
Jimmy’s story begins in Glasgow, Scotland, where he was born, and Glasgow was a harsh place to grow up in at the time. Although some things got a little more liveable, mostly it got worse when his family moved to Adelaide in South Australia in search of a better life – immigrant workers looking to escape a difficult life. What they crafted was another one that was even worse. His parents’ worst enemies seemed to be themselves, and so Jimmy’s home was full of alcohol abuse and domestic violence.
For Jimmy and his brothers and sisters, living in a neighbourhood which fed everyone’s worst problems ensured that surviving to adulthood was more about luck and your ability to give better than you got than any real choices.
Life in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth was easily one of the harshest neighbourhoods in Australia at the time (probably the harshest), and many didn’t survive it.
Thanks to Jimmy sharing his story I can imagine what his childhood was like, and to be honest, I get choked up just thinking about it. I can’t imagine the authorities would allow similar conditions these days, but that doesn’t mean everyone has it good either.
This is a story about a kid who made the best of a really bad situation, about a kid who had virtually nothing, looked for trouble and turned to anything else that would help him feel better for even a few minutes, whether that was sex, drugs or alcohol. The people around him were no different. And yet, he still made something great with his life.
I doubt I could do Jimmy justice if I tried to relate any of his stories. It’s his story after all, so let me simply say that I were to ever meet him, I’d shake his hand.
Working Class Boy isn’t just about his ability to survive, it’s about his capacity for forgiveness and about crediting the people who helped him survive. Even more than that, it’s about being honest with himself, something few people have the courage to do.
Working Class Boy is definitely worth the read; just make sure you’ve got some tissues handy.
You can grab a copy of Working Class Boy on Amazon or wherever else you buy books.
