As the opening scenes of Snowtown rolled across the screen, the Cold Chisel frontman was suddenly jolted back to his Adelaide childhood.

And the memories were horrific: poverty, abuse, neglect and alcoholism – events that the hard man of Aussie rock' n' roll had long suppressed.

"It was stuff that I had known since I was a child, but I had hidden it away, locked it away and tried not to think about it and tried not to feel it," Barnes said.

"But as it happened, when I started writing, I couldn't control what I was writing, I just had to write down the truth, and I had to write to get this out of my system, and get it out on paper."

The memories now form part of Barnes' new memoir, Working Class Boy, that tells of his family's migration from Scotland to Australia, and the hardships he and his siblings endured at the hands of their alcoholic, abusive parents.

It also explains his own spiral into heavy drinking while on the road.

The longtime purveyor of pub rock standards said his public image – and the fact that his true story was so unexpected – had helped others to open up.

In Canberra for book signings on Friday, he said writing the book had been a kind of therapy for him – a way of airing old wounds that had been left to fester – but he hoped it would help others open up.

"I wrote really like therapy for myself, to open up all the stuff to sort of let go of it," he said.

"But when I finished, I sat and I looked at it and I thought, I need to put this out so there can be a bit of a conversation, because I think one of the big issues, particularly with the violent side of things, domestic violence, is that people just don't talk. Victims, perpetrators, people around them – if your father and mother are beating the shit out of each other, you don't want to tell your friends and you don't talk about it."

He said men in particular – both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence – found talking about their experiences shameful, which often made the situation worse.

"Because it's something that's shameful and hurtful, that makes the thing spiral. People are ashamed of how they've behaved, get angry, get drunk and then behave worse," he said.

"A lot of women are afraid to even tell their friends that they're victims of domestic violence, and a lot of people don't want to talk about it. Besides fear it's also shame, they just don't want people to think bad of their families."

He said a number of people had approached him during the book tour to tell him of similar experiences.

"I'm directing people to the Luke Batty Foundation because there's a lot of people out there who need to talk about this because they're in the middle of this," he said.

"It's very confronting. But it's something where I'm not qualified to give the advice, but if I can just tell people that you're not alone, and the more you talk about it ... There's people out there who can help."

Working Class Boy, by Jimmy Barnes, is published by HarperCollins.