Three years after facing death, Jimmy Barnes is serenading birds and fighting bees

Undergoing open-heart surgery for a bacterial infection in 2023, then emergency surgery the next year, Jimmy Barnes managed to pull off a major Cold Chisel tour in early 2025 before heading home for a hip replacement.

In the last year, he's been healing in his rural New South Wales garden with loving care from Jane, his wife of 45 years. The couple have just released a new cookbook Seasons Where The River Bends.

"When you're singing with love, people can feel it. If you cook with love, people can feel it and taste it, you know, and it's better for you," Jimmy tells Paddy Gower on Saturday Morning.

Moving with his family from Glasgow to South Australia at five, Jimmy fronted the beloved rock band Cold Chisel from 1973 till 1984, and the next year found his feet as a solo performer on his second album For the Working Class Man.

In the decades following, Jimmy came to be considered Australia’s premier rock icon and jumped off many a PA, but in 2023 was forced by ill health to confront the fact he wasn't "invincible".

"I nearly died from the heart surgery, and all that was really very intense. I remember feeling so bad in the hospital, I turned to Jane and said, 'I don't know if I'm going to make it this time'. I literally thought I was going to die. The doctors did, too… Of the nine lives of the old cat, I think I've done about seven." 

Jimmy credits his recovery to Jane's homemade juices made with vegetables from their garden and the loving care he received from her and their three kids, Mahalia (43), Eliza Jane aka EJ (41) and Jackie (40).

But while the musician is now back to swimming and pilates and feeling good in himself, Jane says the effects of his close call on family members and loved ones still linger.

People underestimate how hard it is watching someone you love go through this kind of stuff over a lengthy period, she says.

"The long and short of it is I'm really fine now, but they're all messed up from it," Jimmy jokes.

The rock legend first met Jane, who was born in Bangkok, in 1979. After sampling her Apricot Chicken, he says he knew she was the one.

"I remember thinking, 'How did she do this? This is incredible… I thought, 'I've got to marry this girl…' I thought it was very exotic. I didn't realise that she'd learned it from a French onion soup packet."

Jane's favourite recipe in Seasons Where The River Bends - the follow-up to 2021's Where The River Bends - is Beef Cheek Massaman Curry with Potatoes, while one of Jimmy's is a never-fail pavlova created by Kiwi chef Peter Gordon's mum Timmy.

Jimmy found making desserts "daunting" until Kiwi chef Peter Gordon showed him how to make pavlova - which he believes is a "Kiwi dish" for the record - on New Zealand television.

"Lo and behold, now I'm the go-to guy for pavlovas. I'm the pavlova king. So a big tip of the hat to Peter and his mum. 

"It was the start of a beautiful friendship because [Peter] could tell I was so nervous doing this on television. He was such a warm and decent bloke and helped me through it. And we just became close friends ever since."

As well as co-authoring two cookbooks now, Jimmy told his own story in the award-winning autobiographies Working Class Boy (2016) and Working Class Man (2017).

Writing the first book was a way to process his traumatic childhood, he says, which included an alcoholic and abusive father and a mother who left her children when he was eight.

While the process brought him to his knees, Jimmy says it was also therapeutic and even "necessary".

"Once I started addressing the childhood abuse and poverty and violence and alcoholism and all that stuff that I went through as a kid, I started turning a corner."

Playing with words in his studio - with toast, tea and a vinyl record on - is something he's enjoyed doing ever since.

"After spending my life screaming out at people and directing all my energy out to sit and be introspective and look in, I found it was a lot of fun."

While Jimmy and Jane's relationship was marked by long-term struggles with alcohol and drugs, any couple who are in it for the long haul need to be prepared to do the hard yards, he says.

"When you're sharing a life with someone for 45 years, as we have, there's ups and downs, and you've got to be prepared to ride them out and take steps to solve problems."

When it comes to personal growth, all of us are on a different timeline, Jane adds, and for her, the opportunities for developing gratitude and forgiveness that decades-long relationships provide are a "gift".

While Jimmy and Jane have a good thing going, though, and singing to the magpies in his garden is "all part of the healing", the Cold Chisel frontman says things aren't quite so harmonious between him and the bees on their property.

"I'll have a [beekeeper] suit on, and Jane will be up at the hive in her normal clothes. I'm worried about her, and then the bees attack me because they know I'm anxious, they know I'm hyper, and Jane's a very calm person."