Barnes and The Boss

When rock legends cross paths.

Jimmy Barnes. Picture: Harold David

In The Weekend Australian Magazine today, I write about singer-songwriter Jimmy Barnes, whose forthcoming album My Criminal Record was influenced by his recent experience of telling his troubled life story in two best-selling books. While speaking with Barnes when reporting this story, talk turned to Bruce Springsteen, the American musician with whose later career he shares a few parallels. They sang The Boss’s 1987 track Tougher Than The Rest together on stage at Hanging Rock in 2013, and Barnes’s cover of that song closes the new album.

“I’m a huge fan of Bruce’s, and I have been since 1973, when Don Walker forced me to listen to Greetings from Asbury Park — and he was right, I loved it,” Barnes told me with a laugh. “He’s just a down-to-earth bloke. I went and saw his show in Broadway last year, just after I’d finished my tour, and it was really beautiful. To see someone like Springsteen sit and tell a story then play a song with an acoustic guitar, it just showed the power of a great song. But three quarters of the way through the show, he did Tougher Than the Rest, and his wife Patti [Scialfa] walked out and sang it. It was just gorgeous; I had a bit of a tear in my eye.

“I went out the back later to say hello, and Bruce was obviously tired; he’s just done a big show, and done 300 shows in a row or something like that. He was very polite and nice, but I’d never met Patti before. And I went up and said, ‘Patti, I’m Jimmy Barnes’. She goes, ‘I know who you are — you sing Flame Trees. That’s one of my two favourite songs of all time.’ And I thought, ‘That’s a big statement coming from Bruce Springsteen’s wife!’

“I just think he’s amazing,” added Barnes. “I read his book [2016’s Born To Run], and there’s that whole element of sadness and a darkness to him, which I think is probably why I connected with someone like that, and why I connected with his songs. It comes out in everything he writes; he’s the real deal. And the other thing was, getting on stage with him, not only did he work like a maniac and drove the band really hard, but he was as loud as f . . k, and he was f . . king aggressive. I loved it. It was not what I expected; it was really intense. His amps are all pointing up, so you don’t hear it [when you’re in the crowd], but you get up on stage next to him and it’s deafening. It’s fantastic. He’s a beautiful guitar player, too; I love his playing.”

Is there a chance Springsteen could possibly be as intense a performer as Barnesy, a man who devotes his entire being to every note of every song? “I think he is,” he replied with a laugh. “It’s a different intensity, but he’s as intense as anybody I’ve seen.”