This week Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes' Soul Deep 30 topped the Aria album charts, above artists like US pop star Drake.
Charlotte Ryan talked to Jimmy about his love of Aotearoa, the upcoming tour for the re-release of Soul Deep, for its 30th anniversary, and his love of soul music.
Jimmy Barnes Photo: supplied
He's pleased - but not surprised - at the strong reaction to the re-release.
"This is a big record in Australia - this record when it came out 30 years ago sold more than a million copies. So it's dear to people's hearts, and I think [this appeals] as it's remastered with some new tracks."
Talking from the study in his Southern Highlands home, south of Sydney, Jimmy said this was the album that most obviously reflected the influence soul music had on him.
"[I listened to] Ray Charles and ...lots of black singers, Nat King Cole... I remember hearing Little Richard on the radio and thinking: 'man, listen to the sound of that voice!' Black R&B singers were the ones I really liked as a young singer, and I wanted to sing like that.
"As I was growing older I'd hear Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett. I grew up listening to those sort of singers and wanting to emulate them and sing like them, because the alternative - the Pat Boones, and all the white AM radio pop hits at the time were very sterile, and I liked the wildness of the R&B singers, who screamed and were passionate, and it was powerful - so that's what I tried to copy."
The R&B and soul influence melded with influences from his early childhood in Scotland and then growing up in Australia.
"When I turned 13, like most young boys, I wanted to become a head-banger. So I started playing rock and roll, and the bands I was listening to were bands like Free and the Small Faces, and it didn't take me long to work out that those singers were listening to the same black singers I was listening to ... Paul Rodgers was listening to Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf and all that sort of stuff.
"So it all made sense to me - and so I grew up in a band practising like a soul singer, but being in a rock and roll band."
"If you want to deliver a song, every fibre of your being has to be involved in the delivery, I don't want to leave anything in the tank, I want it to come from my soul."
Photo: Supplied
His New Zealand leg of the Soul Deep 30 tour starts 20 July in Dunedin. He's playing big venues, with a big ensemble - a 12-piece band, "horns and singers".
The billing also promises "three of Australia's preeminent Soul and Blues voices": Mahalia Barnes - whose band is opening; Jade MacRae, who has Māori heritage; and Tongan-Scottish singer Karen Lee Andrews, who Jimmy describes as: "The biggest voice you've ever heard in your life."
"So if you're going to come the shows, come early," he says.
Coming back to New Zealand always strikes a familiar cord, he says.
"I love the Kiwis, I love Māori - they're strong soulful people, they speak from their soul, they fight with their hearts, lead with their chins, they're passionate and strong."
He remembers touring in New Zealand in the mid-70s, early in Cold Chisel's career.
"We started breaking out in New Zealand, they got us very early. New Zealanders seem to get the band, they knew what we were trying to do.
"I think we were playing Ngāruawāhia, the Sweetwaters Festival, that was one of the first big festivals where we broke wide open, and it was New Zealand! And we've connected with that audience ever since.
"For me, it looks like a cross between Scotland and Hawaii, so when I first went there I felt this connection immediately, because I was missing Scotland - particularly down south, Dunedin, Invercargill, reminded me of Scotland, so I feel connected."
