A Quote by Jimmy Barnes

Cold Chisel had their moments, but basically, they were all decent, quiet chaps. I was just a lunatic. Those guys didn't know what had hit them when I joined the band. — © Jimmy Barnes
Cold Chisel had their moments, but basically, they were all decent, quiet chaps. I was just a lunatic. Those guys didn't know what had hit them when I joined the band.
The late '90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn't get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country—it seemed laughable. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself.
When the band first formed, everybody had been sidemen. So they said, 'In this band there are no sidemen,' and when I joined the band, it was still the same. There were some power struggles emerging, because Henley and Frey had sung all the hits at that point.
The darkest moments for me weren't necessarily winding up in the hospital or anything like that. It was those quiet moments alone when I just hated the person I had become.
I think the Cosmic Psychos were a band that was highly influential on the Seattle so called grunge scene. I know that Kurt and Nirvana were fans, they played shows with Pearl Jam. Even thou the Cosmic Psychos never had the commercial impact or success that those bands had, they were still a major influence on them, and I think a lot of it had to do with the spirit and the sound of their music.
I was actually wilder before I joined Cold Chisel. I was really wild.
I take a lot of pride in beating guys like Kyle Dake or David Taylor or these guys who have been basically bred to do this from Day 1. The best camps, the best high schools, the best universities. I never had that. It's not necessary, but I never had any of the frills a lot of those guys had.
Anyone who grew up in the crack era - you know, I grew up in that era - knew that there were also people out - and there are still guys to this day that are out there, you know, obviously drug dealing - but those were the guys who had access and had money. And some of those guys felt responsible to create opportunity for other people and were also aware of the dangers of their work and often aren't really the ones that are encouraging kids to get into drug dealing.
I know how to use computers. I was one of those guys on Myspace who had one of those fake hit counters.
Once I had the band, Jason [Moran] and John [Patitucci] and Eric [Harland] - it's very exciting to have that trio of just world-class guys - I already knew it was going to be fantastic. I didn't really tell them anything about it. They didn't know what they were going to play beforehand.
You gotta understand also that teenage kids just don't have the experience and the studio technique. I mean, in those days it wasn't electronic like it is today, where you can hit a drum and, you know, the engineer does it all. In those days, everything was live and you had to have decent sounds, and through the years you get to weed out what's bad and what's good.
I see The Gap ads as being a great example of how branding has changed. Those Gap campaigns are pop culture. They've been incredibly powerful. They have had the kind of effect on culture that a hit band has. Just look at The Gap's Khaki swing ads, which were music videos. They had this tremendous impact on the industry - suddenly everything started looking like Gap ads and it became difficult to know who was co-opting whom and who was creating culture.
Its cool when I meet young guys from other bands who say how much an impact Aerosmith has had on them and how much they like me.I'll give 'em that 'C'mon you don't mean that' routine, but in my heart I know where they're coming from. If I had grown up in the '70's and was into rock n' roll, I know the kind of impact Aerosmith would have had on me. I know the kind of impact that Elvis and Jagger had on me, and while I'm not comparing myself to those guys, I can relate.
When WWII ended, the Cold War started, and the interest of the Western world was not to completely break Germany. So all those Nazis who had been controlling the country now had the power to rebuild it. I think there were many of them who just continued their life in society; it's a very known fact.
Ann and I were the main writers in Heart. We had the leadership role, and the guys in the band sometimes had a hard time with that.
That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around - half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean - but people usually go by looks.
I was lucky that I had parents that had had supernatural experiences, so I could talk to them openly without them looking at me as some lunatic.
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