Jimmy Barnes recovering after open heart surgery to treat bacterial infection
The Australian music icon has gone under the knife for open heart surgery to treat a bacterial infection just a few weeks after boasting he was feeling ‘the fittest I’ve been in decades’.
Jimmy Barnes has undergone open heart surgery for the second time, the rock singer and Cold Chisel frontman wrote in a social media post on Wednesday morning.
“Unfortunately I got some bad news late yesterday … despite everyone’s best efforts the bacterial infection I’ve been battling over the last fortnight has apparently now spread to my heart,” he wrote.
“It’s infected an otherwise healthy valve that was replaced some years ago due to a congenital defect, so I’ll be getting open heart surgery over the next few hours to clear out this infection and put in a clean valve.”
“Obviously this is going to take me out of action for a while,” wrote Barnes, 67. “I know lots of other people are battling even worse things but it still feels hugely frustrating. Just a few weeks ago I was the fittest I’ve been in decades!”
On Wednesday night, Barnes’ wife Jane wrote on social media that the singer had made it through surgery and was recovering in an intensive care unit.
On November 26, Barnes performed two of his biggest hits – No Second Prize and Working Class Man – to open the Mushroom 50 concert at Rod Laver Arena, to mark the 50th anniversary of Mushroom Records, his longtime record label.
Soon after that appearance, which attracted 557,000 metro viewers on the Channel 7 broadcast, the singer was diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia, which caused him to cancel concerts planned in Noumea – on the Rock The Boat cruise – and at By The C festival in the Victorian coastal town of Torquay.
For an artist who prides himself on the ‘show must go on’ mentality that sustained him throughout Cold Chisel’s ascension in the late 1970s and into his highly successful solo career, such health setbacks always sting.
In November last year, Barnes was forced to cancel concerts to undergo urgent back and hip surgery.
“As everybody knows, it’s against my religion to blow out gigs but the doctors tell me I need an operation as soon as possible and it will really limit my movement for a few months,” he said at the time. “As much as it kills me to inconvenience everyone, I have to get this fixed so I can jump around onstage for another 50 years.”
Having undergone open heart surgery in 2007 to replace a faulty aortic valve, too, the singer knows well the long road ahead to getting back on stage.
“As you can hopefully appreciate, this has all happened very suddenly so it’s going to take a few days for everyone to figure out what’s going to be doable with my upcoming shows,” he wrote on Wednesday. “I’m really sorry for all the inconvenience this will cause but please be patient while my team works hard to figure things out. A new plan will be announced as soon as possible.”
“In the meantime I’d like to thank my darling Jane for her around the clock love and care over the last few weeks in particular – as always I’d be lost without her,” he wrote. “I’d also like to thank the doctors and nurses who’ve been amazing and all the people who have sent me ‘get well’ messages. You’ve all lifted my spirits and I’m sincerely grateful.”
After his 2007 open heart surgery, “the doctors told me I would feel good in about eight or nine weeks, but I should take it easy and not work for at least 12 weeks, just to be sure,” Barnes wrote in his memoir Working Class Man. “I lay in bed and tried to keep still. Jane was my nurse and she would be up and down the stairs all day, checking to see if I needed anything. But I was miserable. I didn’t like having so much time to sit and think.”
“As a rule, I would keep myself busy so that I couldn’t think about the bad things I had done in my life, but now here I was,” he wrote. “I tried to remember anything from the time when my heart was stopped but I couldn’t. If there was something to learn from it, it was that your memory isn’t much good without your heart.”
But in 2007, aged 51, Barnes wasn’t much interested in taking it easy, nor heeding doctors’ orders.
After eight weeks he attempted to fulfil an agreement to perform a concert in Malaysia that he hadn’t cancelled prior to going under the knife, just in case he felt up to it.
He did – or so he thought.
“I got to the show and felt fine,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, I was so happy to be singing again that I worked too hard. I screamed and shouted my way through the set. By the time it was over I had bad pains in my chest. I had done too much. The doctor was right and I was wrong.”
“We caught the next plane back to Sydney and I was taken directly to hospital,” he wrote. “Fluids had collected in my chest cavity and were pressing on my heart. They would have to open me up and drain the fluids. I was in hospital for four days. The doctor wanted to keep me in but I assured him I would do nothing but rest in my bed. And that’s what I intended to do.”
Until nine weeks later, that is, when the stir-crazy singer’s cabin fever prompted him to call his long-time agent, Frank Stivala, who offered him two shows in Queensland.
“On the Saturday night I played a late show in Brisbane,” Barnes wrote in Working Class Man. “I was a little sore but I was all right. I didn’t tell anyone that I was in pain. The next day we had a midafternoon show in the direct Queensland sun. We played for two hours and then I collapsed. The chest pains were back. We travelled to Sydney and the doctor sent me back to hospital. This time they drained the fluids with long needles they stuck into my chest. At least they didn’t have to open me up again.”
Now older and wiser, Barnes is much more inclined to follow doctors’ orders.
He recently released an expanded edition of his 2022 release, Blue Christmas, which included a revised version of a song titled If Santa Forgets, which his children – Mahalia, Eliza-Jane, Jackie and Elly-May – first released in 1991 under the name The Tin Lids.
His collection of festive cover songs debuted at No.1 on the ARIA album chart last year, marking his 15th turn at the top as a solo artist. The expanded edition, meanwhile, debuted at No.14 earlier this month.
“Given the serious nature of this operation I probably won’t be posting again [on social media] for the next few weeks so all the best to you and yours for the holidays,” he wrote on Wednesday. “Here’s hoping 2024 is full of much better things! Love from Jimmy.”
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