Jimmy Barnes’ daughter Elly-May Barnes is ready for her close up: ‘I don’t feel the need to complain’
After touring with dad Jimmy Barnes, Elly-May Barnes – who lives with cerebral palsy – is ready for the spotlight, revealing star power of her own with the release of her first album.
Stellar
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Ever since she arrived into the world 14 weeks premature, weighing just 750g and being given a 50-50 chance of survival, Elly-May Barnes has charged through life in the fast lane.
The youngest daughter of Jimmy and Jane Barnes even made her recording debut as a toddler, harmonising with older sisters Mahalia and Eliza Jane and brother Jackie in their pop group The Tin Lids, which resulted in the 1991 top 10 album Hey Rudolph!
The self-confessed daddy’s girl then persuaded her father to let her join his line-up of backing singers when she was just 12.
“I was born too quick,” Barnes tells Stellar with a smile. “We did The Tin Lids when I was two, I went out with Dad and did everything so quick.”
So when it came time for Barnes to step out on her own as a musical artist, she knew she had to slow things down to find her true voice.
The end result, decades in the making, is her solo debut No Good.
“I rush everything and I speak too quick and I’ll say things without thinking,” the 34-year-old singer says, “and I didn’t want to do my album that way.”
Years before No Good took shape, Barnes served her rock ’n’ roll apprenticeship with her Dadda – as she calls her famous father – and broke out of the family band to create her ongoing Sydney cabaret show, Glittery And Unhinged.
It’s a bonkers romp through her favourite songs by David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick and Bob Dylan, with cameos from her friends and family, who happen to be some of the biggest names in Australian music.
Her father, as well as her older brother, singer and TV host David Campbell, and uncle Mark Lizotte (aka singer-songwriter Diesel, who is married to her mother’s sister Jep), have been regular guests.
And Ian Moss and Don Walker, her father’s former bandmates from Cold Chisel, Davey Lane of the power pop group You Am I, and artist and producer Shane Nicholson have also served as foils to Barnes’ schtick and serenades.
“The cabaret is an insight into my mind,” she explains. “My therapist once came to see the show and needed a bit of recovery time”.
During a performance a few years ago, Barnes sang a haunting version of the 1993 hit ‘Creep’ by British rock band Radiohead.
She released it as her debut single last November, a deliberate choice to augment her poignant and defiant scream into the universe about living with cerebral palsy pain and going through dozens of surgeries on her legs and back to improve her mobility.
In some cases, she says, people who have witnessed her struggle to walk believe she’s drunk.
“I’m pretty positive. I don’t mope,” says Barnes, who shares a nine-year-old son, Dylan, with her ex partner.
“I don’t feel the need to complain all the time. While I’m in constant pain, it’s not something I feel the need to dwell on. However, it is something that still needs an outlet,” she adds. “‘Creep’ gave me a big, powerful release, because when you are positive all the time, you can’t hold on to things. That will make you sick. You need to let it out. And music does that.”
Although her first single may be a cover, Barnes has been writing her own songs for years, honing her craft with friends such as Lane as well as Jackson Freud, the son of James Freud, the late frontman of Australian rock band Models.
When she began putting together the material for her debut record a few years ago, she sought advice from Walker, who suggested she remake Cold Chisel’s 1984 hit ‘Twentieth Century’. (She did, updating it to ‘21st Century’.)
During phone calls seeking Neil Finn’s feedback on her works-in-progress, he offered her a previously unreleased song called ‘She’s A Thought’.
“I’m obsessed with that song because Neil really wanted it to be very much me even though it was him writing it,” Barnes says. “The process of being able to learn from Neil is something so special.”
While Nicholson and Lizotte produced her record, the one person missing from the circle of trusted friends and collaborators on No Good was “Dadda”.
“I thought he needed a rest,” Barnes jokes about why she didn’t ask her father to write for, or sing on, the record.
However, she adds, “It’s my album and, of course, everyone is gonna have something to say about it already. I love my Dadda and I’ve asked for his input and advice on plenty of things because I’m a complete daddy’s girl, but I really wanted to make this completely something that’s come out of my brain. And his is not the most subtle voice when it comes to backing vocals.”
Now that No Good is ready to be heard by the world, Barnes wants it to be seen as well. To do that, she is stepping up her quest to make venues more accessible for disabled artists and fans.
“Stairs are really sh*t [for me],” she says bluntly. “It’s been really refreshing when venues ring me beforehand and ask what they can do that a previous venue didn’t, and to find crew members who will do anything to make it work. I’m lucky to have that experience but a lot of people don’t get that.
“And that’s the issue. It deters disabled artists from performing,” she adds. “I want to take my No Good rock act to festivals, but they’re not keen because they’ll be worried they have to accommodate the things I need. That’s been the discussion everywhere that I’ve gone, and that needs to change.”
No Good will be available online and in stores from April 12.
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