Jimmy Barnes has unveiled the latest member of his family – a grown-up daughter who, for most of her life, he didn’t know he had.
“Christmas is all about family,” he wrote in a social media post on Monday. “And we would like to introduce my daughter Katy Lee, who has been in our lives for the past five years.
Jimmy Barnes with his daughter Katy Lee Carroll.Credit: @jimmybarnesofficial/Instagram
“Katy is a wonderful woman and since discovering that I was her biological father, our family and extended family have loved getting to know her. It’s been heartwarming to see good relationships growing with her sisters and brothers.
“We have always respected her very strong desire to keep her family life private and will continue to support her. I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas. I look forward to bringing you all more music in the New Year.”
Katy Lee Carroll, a real estate agent in Coffs Harbour, is the eighth known child born to the Cold Chisel frontman.
He shares four children (Mahalia, Eliza-Jane, Jackie and Elly-May Barnes) with his wife, Jane Mahoney, to whom he has been married since 1981. He has a son, the singer and TV presenter David Campbell, who was born when Barnes was just 16 years old, with Kim Campbell. And he has three other children (Amanda Bennett, Megan Torzyn and Katy Lee Carroll) from other relationships.
Barnes, 68, is one of the hardest-working men in showbiz. He joined Cold Chisel in 1973, when he was just 16 years old, and recently completed a 50th-anniversary tour of Australia with the band (albeit a year late). He has had a significant solo career as well, has authored six books, and toured a spoken-word version of his autobiography Working Class Boy.
He has lived the very definition of the rock’n’roll life, struggling with alcohol, drugs, health – including heart, hip and back surgery, the last a result, he said, of “50 years of stomping around stages” – and, of course, extramarital sexual liaisons.