Working Class Man

Jimmy Barnes

Jimmy Barnes was another discovery thanks to the record reviews in Scope magazine. Scope was the closet thing you could get to porn in apartheid South Africa, there were many people who were part of ‘the struggle’ in different ways and as school boys we ‘struggled’ to find pictures of chicks who didn’t have stars painted onto their nipples and we ‘struggled’ to get hear UK Punk Rock. The Nat’s had the country in a death grip of Dutch Deformed suppression and Scope was one of the things that made life a bit more pleasant. They had some really good album reviews and the second I read the review for Freight Train Heart by Jimmy Barnes I knew I had to get this album

Jimmy Barnes was another great discovery, no-one I knew had heard of him and he just struck a chord with me in the way Springsteen did. The opening slide to the Track Driving Wheels and then the sound of the piano coming in before that fantastic voice kicks in is one of the greatest things I have ever heard. This song is so good that when I bought Black Adder 3 I used it as the opening song to get that car out of the show room and onto the highway. The video for No Second Prize is a better video but just check out the whole album you won’t regret it.

JAMES DAUBENEY