Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man (Documentary)

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Director: Andrew Farrell
Producer: Andrew Farrell,Anthony Griffis
Featured Subjects: Jimmy Barnes,Jane Barnes,Mahalia Barnes,David Campbell

One of Australia’s true rock’n’roll legends continues his transformation into a candid storyteller in this moving, fascinating tell-all doc.

After finding fame with pub rock legends Cold Chisel, Jimmy Barnes became an Australian icon through the success of his solo career. Having escaped his hard-knocks upbringing, married the love of his life and released a string of number-one albums, the man known across the country simply as ‘Barnesy’ had seemingly made it. But financial issues, heavy drug use, gruelling tours, a failure to crack the US and the spectre of childhood trauma all still weighed upon him, eventually finding their release in words – as this intimate new account reveals.

Much as Mark Joffe’s Working Class Boy (MIFF 2018) drew from Barnes’s bracing account of his childhood, this new documentary from Andrew Farrell – who served as an executive producer on the earlier film – picks up where that film left off, following the arc of the singer/songwriter’s 2017 follow-up memoir, Working Class Man. Exploring the successes and slippery slopes of his adult years, Barnes recounts his ascent in the music world, reconciling his career with relationships and family life, and the self-destructive lure of substance abuse. As with its predecessor, Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man is driven by its subject’s trademark honesty, a refreshing contrast to the self-mythologising at the core of so many rockumentaries.


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Director Andrew Farrell and featured subject Jimmy Barnes are guests of the festival and will be in attendance at the Thursday 21 August session of the film.