Most people I know think that I’m crazy – but anybody who actually knew Billy Thorpe didn’t think that.
When I was a young kid growing up in Adelaide he was a big pop star – a well-dressed, nice young guy seen on television every week. Mums liked him. He was one of the biggest stars in the country and he moved to Australia from Britain just like I did. Sitting there watching him sing on the telly, I wondered what it would feel like to be that lucky. But back then it seemed luck was never on my side. I was just dreaming.
The next time I saw him he had changed. In just a couple of years he had thrown away the nice suits, grown his hair and turned into the loudest and hardest rocking singer in the country. This time I knew it had nothing to do with luck; he had taken life by the throat and was squeezing everything he could out of it. This was what I wanted to do. Fuck luck, I was going to shape my own destiny just like Billy.
I used to sneak into the Octagon, the local dance hall in Elizabeth, and watch Billy tear the paint off the walls. Girls would be screaming and fainting every time he moved his leg. Every bloke in the place almost put their necks out as they tried to copy the way he moved when he played guitar. Billy was The King.
In 1972, I climbed out of my bedroom window and ran away from home with my older sister and her friends, to go to the infamous Sunbury rock festival. I lay for eight hours in the back of a station wagon on top of their camping gear, breathing in the smoke that billowed from each of them as they passed around joint after joint. They talked about Billy Thorpe and how great it was going to be to see him live at a fucking rock festival. I was high on life. They were just high.
To cut a long story short, I got to the festival, was given a handful of pills and ended up in a hospital tent for two days. Eventually I woke up and walked back to the place where I had left my sister. She hadn’t even noticed I was gone. I sat down and drew a deep breath just as Billy walked on stage and screamed out the opening line to Be-Bop-A-Lula. At that point, it was the best day of my life.
When he finished we jumped in the car and drove all the way back to Adelaide. It was like a dream. But dreams must end and I had go back home. Back to my life as a garden variety juvenile delinquent. Billy was the ultimate delinquent and I had a lot to do if I was going to be like him.
I tried to see every show that Billy did when he came through Adelaide. As a 16-year-old I even managed to get into a couple of his gigs at the wildest pub in Australia, the Largs Pier Hotel. There was a bouncer on the door they called “The Beast”, who could tell I was a music fan, and he let me in. He was too busy throwing big ugly tattooed blokes through plate glass windows to bother about some kid. I would go right to the front of the stage and watch Billy’s every move. Watching and learning.
I noticed at one of these gigs that there seemed to be too many amplifiers for the room. If they were all working there would have been no back wall left on the pub, so I asked one of Billy’s roadies about it. He told me that there were one or two amps that Billy needed and the rest were just there for show. It was smoke and mirrors to keep the punters guessing.
I’ve seen it a million times since but Billy was the first. He was a trailblazer. He kicked the door down so kids like me could charge on through and make the music we liked.
This was a man who got arrested for swearing at a gig and responded by writing a song called You Can’t Go Around Saying Fuck On Stage Anymore. Of course he then sang it at every gig and got himself arrested in righteous towns all over the country. Kids loved him and parents feared him.
One night my mates and I ended up in a hotel with the Billy and the Aztecs after a show. We sat as Billy held court, telling and told the room full of young musos from the support band about how to make real music, “not pop shit”. At the same time he was rolling the biggest joints I had ever seen. Eventually the guys from Cold Chisel and I floated down the stairs and rethought how we would take on the world.
In the late 70s Billy moved to the States and, I presume, busted a few American eardrums and upset the local law enforcement community. In his absence, bands like Cold Chisel and the Oils and AC/DC came through the ranks, playing the now world famous pub rock scene he had helped to create.
Eventually Billy moved back to Australia, started a studio and wrote a few top-selling books. I remember him sitting in my house around the time I started trying to write my book. He sat and scribbled on my papers, and ripped pieces out and told me how he thought I should be writing. I listened intently. By this time, no one told me what to do. Except Billy.
On Australia Day 1998, Bryan Brown invited us to his place for a barbecue. What could be more Australian than that? I arrived and before I could get in the door Bryan grabbed me and said, “I’d love you to sing a song to celebrate this great day – Australia bloody day”.
“Of course,” I said. What could be more Australian than singing at Bryan’s barbecue on Australia day?
Then he told me he wanted me to sing Waltzing Matilda. I thought “perfect” but I wasn’t sure I knew all the words.
“I’ve written the fuckin’ things out for you,” he said, and he stuffed a couple of bits of paper into my hand. Then he says, “I want you to sing it with fuckin’ Thorpie.”
I walked in the door and there was Billy grinning from ear to ear, sitting ready with Bryan’s acoustic guitar. He said, “Come on Jimmy. We can’t wait all fuckin’ day, we’ve got sausages to burn.”
It was the most Australian day of my life.
In February 2007, I was taken to hospital for heart surgery. Later that week, around the same time that I was being discharged, Billy was admitted to the same hospital. I must have passed him in the hallway. Billy died of a heart attack that night. My heart recovered from the operation but it was torn apart from the loss of my hero, Billy Thorpe. Most people I know think that I’m crazy but I was only trying to be as wild as Billy.
• Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes is out now from HarperCollins. His live show, Working Class Boy: An Evening of Stories & Songs, tours nationally in November and December
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