Highways and Byways

Jimmy Barnes

Jimmy Barnes is a Scottish-born rock singer-songwriter who grew up in Adelaide. His career, both as a solo performer and as the lead vocalist of the legendary band Cold Chisel, has made him one of the most successful and distinctive artists in Australian music history. A prolific songwriter and performer, Jimmy has been a storyteller for more than forty years, sharing his life and passions with Australians of all ages at over ten thousand gigs throughout his adopted homeland. In the process, he has amassed more number one albums in Australia than The Beatles: five with Cold Chisel and fifteen as a solo artist, including the iconic For the Working Class Man as well as My Criminal Record, Soul Deep and Blue Christmas. Across his career Jimmy has sold over 12 million albums and he has been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame twice. Jimmy's childhood memoir, Working Class Boy, became a number one bestseller and won the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for Biography of the Year in 2017. His sequel, Working Class Man, won him a second ABIA for Biography of the Year in 2018. He is the only author to win back-to-back ABIAs for a non-fiction title. Having sold more than 500,000 copies, the books have become Australian classics and established Jimmy as one of our finest storytellers. The Stories & Songs live production, based on the memoirs, sold out more than a hundred shows, attracted unanimous critical acclaim and inspired the documentary film Working Class Boy, which topped the box office in late 2018. In 2021 Jimmy published two more bestsellers -- Rosie the Rhinoceros (a children's picture book with illustrator, Matt Shanks) and Where the River Bends (a cookbook co-written with Jane Barnes). Jimmy lives in New South Wales, with his wife, Jane.