The short answer
For the Working Class Man is a 1985 album; Working Class Man is also a song, a later memoir title and part of a film title. Separating those works explains how an internationally assembled record became closely associated with Australian working life. It also prevents a remastered edition, a new performance and an original recording from being treated as interchangeable.
Chronology
A timeline of the turning points
Bodyswerve
The first solo album supplies recordings later remixed for the next project.
For the Working Class Man
New material and earlier recordings form the Australian album.
American campaign
The US album uses the title Jimmy Barnes rather than the Australian title.
Commemorative edition
A remastered album and historical concert material accompany a later book campaign.
The second album was not a completely fresh set of recordings
Barnes’s official Bodyswerve entry identifies five tracks remixed for the next album: Vision, Daylight, No Second Prize, Promise Me You’ll Call and Thick Skinned. New songs were combined with existing performances rather than replacing the entire first solo chapter.
That makes the project more complicated than either a wholly new recording session or a straight reissue. When comparing editions, check the track list and mix information as well as the sleeve title. A different mix can reuse a performance without being the identical released audio.
The singer and the signature-song writer were different people
American songwriter Jonathan Cain of Journey wrote Working Class Man for Barnes. The South Australian Music Museum places the song within the second album’s effort to reach a broader international audience. A recognisably local public identity did not require exclusively Australian authorship.
Barnes’s 2025 ABC interview describes meeting Cain after the label encouraged another song, American Heartbeat. The resulting connection helps explain the repertoire choice, but the interview is a retrospective account, not a contemporaneous session log. Performance, composition and subsequent public attachment remain separate questions.
Australian identification is visible in the video’s specific location
ABC Far North’s 2022 reporting revisited the video shoot with Barnes and farmers Arnold Carne and Johnny Jashar. Their recollections place the 1985 filming on Carne’s Edmonton farm in Far North Queensland, amid cane burning and harvesting work.
The workers were not anonymous symbols invented for a studio set: the report identifies their practical involvement. It also notes that cane-burning practices later changed. The clip is therefore an image of a particular place and agricultural moment, not evidence that all current Australian farm work looks the same.
Sources for this section: [5]
Different chart outcomes answer different questions
ARIA’s historical number-one table lists For the Working Class Man from 15 December 1985 with seven weeks at the top. The music museum separately gives the song’s Australian peak as number five. An album ranking cannot be substituted for the performance of one single.
The ABC retrospective records the American album under the title Jimmy Barnes, with a Billboard peak of 109. A strong Australian result did not translate into the same US outcome. Neither result by itself explains the song’s later cultural familiarity, and cultural familiarity is not a numerical sales certification.
A later edition is not a new 1985 release
The official commemorative-edition page dates its release to 27 October 2017. It describes Don Bartley’s remastering of the original recordings, expanded notes and a DVD containing a 1984 Playroom performance. The audio album, historical concert and new packaging have different production histories.
The page promoted the edition alongside a book of the same name. Screen Australia also catalogues a separate completed 2025 documentary. These connections explain repeated titles without collapsing the album, song, memoir and film into one object. This guide uses written catalogues and interviews; it does not reproduce lyrics or claim to have consumed every edition.
Biography context
Explore Australia through connected lives
Jimmy Barnes
The wider band, solo and memoir career.
Explore the biographiesRelated projectBroad’s shared stage
Another way Australian performers negotiated authorship and collaboration.
Explore the biographiesCountry archiveAustralia
Explore related lives and cultural history.
Explore the biographiesConnected biographies
The performer and the separate writing credit
1956–
Jimmy Barnes
Rock and soul singer, songwriter and memoiristJimmy Barnes moved from a Scottish childhood and Adelaide pub stages to a lasting Australian recording career. His work spans Cold Chisel, solo rock, soul interpretation and memoirs that reconsider the personal costs behind a public working-class identity.Read biographyQuick answers
Common questions
- Who wrote Working Class Man?
- Jonathan Cain wrote the song; Jimmy Barnes is its best-known performer.
- Was For the Working Class Man his debut album?
- No. Bodyswerve came first in 1984; the second album combined new songs with remixed earlier recordings.
- Why does Jimmy Barnes also appear as an album title?
- That was the title used for the American version, not the name of an entirely unrelated artist.
- Does 2017 on a copy mean the album was first made then?
- No. The official page dates a commemorative remastered edition to 2017; the underlying album is from 1985.
Primary and institutional sources
How this history was checked
Written artist discography, museum interpretation, chart records, reported interviews and film catalogue metadata. Recollection, original release, remaster and later adaptation are distinguished; recordings, films and full memoirs were not reviewed in full. This article was reviewed on 24 October 2026.
- Jimmy BarnesBodyswerve — reused recordings
- Jimmy Barnes2017 commemorative edition — contents and release date
- South Australian Music MuseumWorking Class Man — authorship and reception
- ABC News / Dan CondonBarnes’s American ambitions — written 2025 interview
- ABC Far North / Amanda CranstonCane farmers revisit the 1985 film-clip shoot — 2022
- ARIAAll the ARIA Albums Chart number ones — 1985 entry
- Screen AustraliaWorking Class Man — separate completed 2025 documentary