He is a proud working class man, who has no plans to decelerate, regardless of nearing 70 and overcoming a spate of significant well being issues lately.
Whereas it was lengthy identified that Jimmy Barnes will rejoice a serious profession milestone this 12 months – the fortieth anniversary of his hit album Working Class Man – with a tour, on Friday he introduced three extra reveals resulting from overwhelming demand from followers.
When Barnes, 69, hits the stage this month, there isn’t any doubt that by his aspect will likely be his loving household, which incorporates his spouse Jane and the eight organic kids he fathered with 4 ladies.
Let’s take a better have a look at the rocker’s life and household tree.
Formative years
Barnes was born James Dixon Swan on April 28, 1956, in Glasgow, Scotland, to James and Dorothy Swan.
The household, which then included 4 older siblings, emigrated to Australia in 1962. His youthful sister was born in Adelaide earlier than they settled in Elizabeth.
In his 2018 movie Working Class Boy, Barnes described a harrowing childhood by the hands of his alcoholic, abusive father and generally neglectful mom.
His mother and father finally divorced and his mom married Reg Barnes, with Jimmy adopting his surname earlier than she abandoned the household.
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Regardless of his begin in life, Barnes paid tribute to his mom on Mom’s Day this 12 months, sharing a throwback photograph and writing, “Again in lately, the one time I felt protected was whenever you held me”.
It was his oldest brother John Swan – the Aussie musician Swanee – who taught him methods to sing. After briefly working for South Australian Railways, he joined the band that may later turn into Chilly Chisel.
David Campbell
David Campbell was born in Adelaide in 1973. For the primary 10 years of his life, he thought his mom Kim was his sister and believed her mother and father – his grandparents – had been his mother and father.
Kim was reportedly simply 15 when she fell pregnant to Barnes, who was 16.
Quickly after Campbell was born, Barnes left for a gig together with his band Chilly Chisel and did not return, main Kim’s mother and father to legally undertake David and lift him.
As Barnes matured, he began visiting his son, and was at first launched as a ‘household good friend’.
Barnes instructed ABC Radio’s Conversations, “I at all times knew I had a son, and I might go and go to. I wasn’t allowed to say I used to be his dad as a result of the grandmother simply wished to guard him, I assume, but it surely was actually tough.”
Campbell was instructed Barnes was his father when he was 10 and was rocked by the information. The 2 started to construct a rapport however their relationship was stored out of the general public eye till years later.
Campbell began forging his personal profession as an entertainer, beginning in youth theatre, then progressing to musical theatre.
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He starred in a 1995 manufacturing of Solely Heaven Is aware of, and two years later he carried out within the Tony Award-winning New York manufacturing of Love! Valor! Compassion!
Extra roles adopted earlier than he returned to Australia to star in musicals, together with Shout! The Legend of The Wild One and Sundown Boulevard, which gained him a Helpmann award for greatest actor.
He gained a second Helpmann for starring in Dream Lover – The Bobby Darin Musical.
Campbell can be a recording artist greatest identified for his 2006 album The Swing Classes.
In 2011, Campbell started co-hosting the 9 present Mornings, now Immediately Additional.
Campbell has been married to Lisa Hewitt since 2008 and so they have three kids: Leo, Billy and Betty.
In 2024, Barnes and Campbell had been named joint Australian Father of the 12 months by The Australian Fathering Awards.
Throughout an emotional acceptance speech, Campbell known as Barnes his “North Star” and praised his father for overcoming his childhood trauma and horrible parental function fashions.
“He had lots of trauma, lots of abuse, which he is written about and he is needed to overcome all of that and naturally, he had lots of issues in his life,” he stated.
“However the truth that he then grew to become a father or mother with Jane, to my brothers and sisters and to me, has been the factor that he is been in a position to enhance his previous and alter the longer term by elevating us and giving us the instruments that we would have liked to be higher.
”And for me, it doesn’t matter what, he is been my North Star, even together with his errors, as a result of I watch him enhance on that on a regular basis and he is an unbelievable grandfather.”
Assembly Jane
Chilly Chisel was beginning to make waves within the music world when Barnes walked right into a pupil celebration at Australian Nationwide College in Canberra in 1979 and noticed Jane Mahoney sitting on the ground taking part in guitar.
“I used to be utterly smitten,” Jimmy instructed ABC Information in 2021.
“I used to be attempting to catch her consideration, attempting to get her to have a look at me.”
Mahoney dropped out of college to go on the street with Barnes. They married in Could 1981 and a 12 months later welcomed their first youngster, daughter Mahalia.
She was adopted by two extra daughters, Eliza-Jane and Elly-Could, and son Jackie.
After Chilly Chisel disbanded on the finish of 1983, Barnes launched a profitable solo profession, together with his household becoming a member of him on the street.
Barnes instructed Individuals in 2008, “I made a acutely aware resolution early on that if you wish to hold the household collectively, there is not any level me going away on tour and leaving them at residence.
“So all the best way, up till in all probability highschool, we might take ’em out with a trainer and a nanny and that.”
The Tin Lids
In 1991, Barnes’ 4 kids with Jane had been a part of a kids’s choir that sang back-up on the tune, When Your Love is Gone. They later joined the musician on tour.
Quickly after, their 4 kids shaped their very own band, The Tin Lids. The title got here from rhyming slang for ‘children’.
Their first album, a compilation of Christmas songs known as Hey Rudolph! was launched the identical 12 months and made it to quantity six on the ARIA album charts.
The band launched two extra albums and a profitable cowl of the tune Stroll the Dinosaur, which featured The Yunupingu Youngsters, earlier than disbanding.
Mahalia Barnes
The eldest of the couple’s 4 kids was simply eight when she first joined her father in a recording studio to document backing vocals for the album Two Fires.
She shaped Mahalia Barnes and the Soul Mates in her late teenagers, which launched three albums.
In 2012, she auditioned for the primary season of the The Voice Australia, together with her model of Proud Mary blowing away the judges, who all pressed their buttons.
She joined Joel Madden’s staff however was eradicated throughout a battle.
She has since collaborated with many artists, together with US blues rock musician Joe Bonamassa on Ooh Yeah! – The Betty Davis Songbook, and recorded a 2005 duet together with her father.
She starred as Mary Magdalene within the Australian manufacturing of Jesus Christ Celebrity, which completed its run in August 2025.
She is married to musician Ben Rodgers and so they share two kids, Ruby and Rosie.
Eliza-Jane Barnes
Eliza-Jane Barnes, also referred to as EJ, was simply six when The Tin Lids shaped.
She can be a singer, with quite a few songs and albums to her credit score, together with a solo album, There and Again.
She has additionally labored intently with artists together with Liam Finn, son of Crowded Home star Neil Finn, with whom she recorded an album, Champagne in Seashells, and different collaborations, together with Evil J & Saint Cecilia and the band BARB.
In February 2024, EJ married her associate of 10 years, musician Jimmy Metherell.
Their toddler, Teddy, was among the many company, whereas her father walked her down the aisle simply months after surviving surgical procedure for a coronary heart an infection.
Jackie Barnes
Jackie Barnes was born within the US when his father was on tour there and was reportedly named after soul singer Jackie Wilson.
He was 5 when The Tin Lids shaped.
After college, he performed keyboards together with his father’s band and later switched to drumming and back-up vocals.
He recorded a duet, Identical Girl, together with his father for the 2005 album Double Happiness, and later earned a Bachelor of Music within the US.
He has labored with quite a few artists, together with Diesel, Keith City, Joe Bonamassa, The Ten Tenors, Heaven and Earth, The Useless Daisies and Rose Tattoo, and as a drummer on numerous his father’s albums together with the Wiggles/Jimmy Barnes album Och Aye the G’nu, which included vocals by sisters Mahalia and Elly-Could and gained the 2017 ARIA Award for Greatest Kids’s Album.
He’s presently the drummer/vocalist for each The Lachy Doley Group and Jimmy Barnes.
Earlier this 12 months, Jimmy wrote a tribute to his son on Instagram.
“It means the world to me to have my son @iamjackiebarnes because the engine room for the band. He retains all of it powering forward on stage and is aware of my each transfer. I am so grateful for him in my life and on the street. Love you son.”
Jackie has been married since 2011 to photographer Steffy Barnes, with whom he shares three kids, Bella, Zoey and Kai.
Elly-Could Barnes
Elly-Could was simply two when The Tin Lids shaped.
Born 14 weeks early, she suffered a mind bleed, and was identified with cerebral palsy at three.
As a baby, she needed to put on casts on her legs and underwent her first of many surgical procedures to deal with the situation, which at instances landed her in wheelchairs.
Whereas her mother and father initially stored her situation out of the highlight, in later years she grew to become a incapacity advocate and is usually pictured utilizing a strolling stick.
After first working as a back-up singer for her father, she branched in and out 2018, performing her first solo cabaret-style present in Sydney’s Darlinghurst after one other performer cancelled.
Extra cabaret-style reveals adopted and she or he additionally joined the band The Preatures for a tour with Harry Kinds, and collaborated with Liam Finn.
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In 2023, she launched her first solo single, a canopy of the Radiohead tune Creep. Her debut album, No Good, was launched in 2024. It incorporates principally unique songs, a few of that are co-written by her uncle, Mark Lizotte (Diesel) and others together with Neil Finn.
She is the only mom of 1 son, Dylan, 10.
Amanda Bennet, Megan Torzyn and Katy Lee Carroll
Barnes discovered in 2010 he had fathered two extra kids with two different ladies.
Amanda Bennett and Megan Torzyn every contacted Barnes about their paternity, main him to take a take a look at, which confirmed he was their father.
It was later revealed Bennett was born the identical 12 months as her half-brother Campbell, and the 2 had been even classmates at highschool.
In the meantime, Bennet and Torzyn shared mutual associates however solely met after studying they shared a dad.
On the time, Barnes instructed New Thought, “My children are all so nice that after I came upon there have been a pair extra, I felt they’d be good folks, and so they’re beautiful women.”
Then in December 2024, Barnes revealed he was the daddy of one other daughter, Katy Lee Carroll, who contacted him 5 years beforehand.
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“Christmas is all about household and we wish to introduce my daughter Katy Lee, who has been in our lives for the previous 5 years,” he stated in a prolonged publish on his Instagram account.
“Katy is an excellent lady and since discovering that I used to be her organic father, our household and prolonged household have liked attending to know her.”
The Coffs Harbour-based actual property agent additionally launched a press release saying she had been “embraced by the Barnes household with love, heat and unbelievable understanding” since studying he was her father.
“Over these years we have slowly, rigorously gotten to know each other and this journey has been one in every of endurance, respect and tenderness. It has been a deeply significant course of and I’m really grateful for the bonds we’re constructing collectively.”
Whereas Bennet and Torzyn had been conceived earlier than he married Jane, Carroll was conceived through the marriage and grew up pondering her father was another person.
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