Jimmy Barnes has been there and back. He's tasted glory as the most successful Australian rock & roll singer. He's also struggled with the pressures of being a tall poppy and he's wrestled his own demons. It's been a wild ride.

At age 16, Jimmy played his second gig as lead singer on the back of a truck one hot Saturday at Gawler Raceway in Adelaide, South Australia. The band would become Cold Chisel. A couple of years later they had a residency at the Larg's Pier Hotel that was so packed, fans drove a ute through the back wall to get in.

By 1978 Cold Chisel was a nasty rock & soul band tearing up the pubs of Sydney and Melbourne. Living in flop houses on $100 a
month, Cold Chisel didn't care a rat's for anything but rock & roll. They signed a record deal although the label had no expectations
for their success. The first single, "Khe Sahn" was banned from commercial radio. But Cold Chisel had something more valuable than
record company paychecks or radio jocks – Chisel had genuine fans. Chisel fans knew that when they bought a ticket at the door,
all bets were off. With Jimmy Barnes out front, slugging spirits and using his voice to duel with the soaring guitar lines from Ian Moss, Chisel kicked arse like rock & roll is supposed to.

Within three short years of their first album's release, Cold Chisel was the most successful band in the land. The 1980 album East, surpassed all expectations selling a quarter of a million copies straight out of the box. Every ticket on their now-legendary tours was sold out. People still talk of the Circus Animals tour where Jimmy sang on a trapeze underneath a motorcycle delicately balanced on a tight-rope! Jimmy was a star.

Chisel's records were instant classics - "Khe Sahn", "Flame Trees" "Saturday Night", "Rising Sun", "Cheap Wine", "Breakfast At Sweethearts", "You Got Nothing I Want" .. most have become national anthems. In 1984 Chisel came to an end with the largest concert tour ever undertaken by an Australian band - a record that still stands over twenty years later.

Within a month of Cold Chisel finishing, Jimmy Barnes was on the road with a new band, and within a year of that Jimmy released
his first solo album, Bodyswerve, and it entered the charts at #1.

The next year he signed to Geffen Records in the US and cut 5 new tracks that became the album For the Working Class Man - another
#1 debut. The title track was used by Ron Howard for his film Gung Ho. Artistic differences ended Jimmy's relationship with Geffen and he recorded 1987's Freight Train Heart - another #1 debut - on his own terms. The national tour in support of that album, underwritten by Pepsi, featured a young Perth guitarist Mark Lizotte (aka Diesel) who would soon become Jimmy's closest musical collaborator.

Around this time, Jimmy also teamed up with INXS and the Divinyls, the Models, the Saints and the Triffids for the massive national tour,
Australian Made. To celebrate Australian Made, Jimmy and INXS recorded an Easybeats song "Good Times." The single topped the Australian charts and was included on the soundtrack to the film The Lost Boys and subsequently was a Top 40 hit in the US and a Top 10 hit in the UK.

Jimmy began working with American producer Don Gehman on the album Two Fires. Released in 1990 and yet another #1 album, it was
Jimmy's most sophisticated set yet. His songwriting had matured and he had learned how to control the power in his voice. On little more than a whim, Jimmy and Don Gehman cut an album of soul classics that Jimmy particularly liked. The Soul Deep album was a massive success with sales to date close to a million copies.

Jimmy's next album, Heat, was his toughest yet. Straight up hard rock and some of his best songs ever. The album was also a success,
despite being swamped in the grunge craze that broke that summer of 1993.

That same year however Jimmy put together the Flesh and Wood project that featured duets and collaborations with a number of artists. The emphasis was on acoustic renditions of songs and letting the voices speak