by Jeff Apter
Finding the song addressed the first part of the puzzle. But Farnham and his team needed to get ‘You’re the Voice’ down on tape and prove that their instincts were correct. The demo recording of ‘You’re the Voice’ was great – passionate and powerful. Farnham and Fraser then cut the song in AAV. They spent three days mixing the results, a significant amount of studio time for one song. They knew it was the key track and they worked incredibly hard to get it right.
Finally, it came time for John and Fraser to play ‘You’re the Voice’ to Wheatley. Wheatley’s wife, Gaynor Martin, was also there that night in the South Melbourne studio, a bottle of champagne at the ready to toast their imminent success.
Everyone went deadly quiet as ‘You’re the Voice’ blared from the speakers. The song was a hit, that was evident to all in the room, but this version was missing … something. Wheatley felt it in his gut; his well-developed musical instincts told him that the song wasn’t quite there. Close, but not quite.
Farnham sat pensively on the other side of the room, his eyes burning a hole in his manager and friend. He knew Wheatley well enough to know something was up.
‘You don’t like it, do you?’ John asked – no, demanded – to know.
Wheatley explained that there was something about the demo that was better than this more polished version. The song was a hit, for sure, but it lacked the same magic.
‘It’s the vocal, isn’t it?’ Farnham said.
He didn’t wait for Wheatley’s response; he already knew the answer.
John walked away, back into the studio, instructing Fraser to turn out the lights and turn up the volume in his headphones. Then, as Wheatley later wrote, ‘He put in a vocal performance as only John knows how’ – the vocal performance that many million listeners around the world now know intimately. In some ways, it was a replay of the scene backstage with LRB at the Universal Amphitheater, when John unleashed on the band and then went on stage and sang his heart out. The new John Farnham thrived in heated situations such as this. ‘You’re the Voice’ was now ready to roll.
John, by his own admission, wasn’t an easy man to live with during the making of the album. He understood its significance to him, his career and his family. And to Wheatley, who’d literally staked his house on the album. If it failed, Wheatley could potentially end up as broke as John currently was.
John’s father suffered a stroke during the time of recording, which didn’t help Farnham’s fragile state of mind.
John lived Whispering Jack 24/7 throughout its lengthy creation; his commitment was unlike that for any record he’d made before. By the time he and Fraser handed the finished version to Wheatley in mid-1986, John felt he’d become a ‘basket case’. He attached a simple handwritten note to a cassette of the final album mix: ‘Dear Boss, This is the best that I can do. Thanks for the chance. Love, John.’
Album done, John went home and crawled into bed, rarely eating, let alone surfacing, for the six weeks that passed between the completion of the record and its release. He was so neurotic about how the public would respond to the album that he didn’t want to leave the house. For such a naturally gregarious man, this was entirely out of character.
Jillian understood what John was going through, but her tolerance could be stretched only so far. While John was off making his masterpiece, Jillian had been learning tae kwon-do. When they clashed one day at home, during this difficult post-recording/pre-release period, she shaped up to John, threatening to kick his neurotic backside. John backed down immediately; he knew she’d flatten him if he pushed things any further. When their anger subsided, Jillian got John to see a naturopath – anything to help him get through the turmoil. It helped. ‘I cried for an hour and a half,’ recalled John, ‘and he gave me some herbs and spices.’
‘I’m in every beat and every bar of this record,’ John said of the album. ‘I think it’s the best record I’ve ever made. I don’t wince when I hear the tracks on this album, and I’m proud of it.’
Wheatley, meanwhile, had finally broken through and secured John a label deal. He’d sat down with Brian Smith, MD of RCA Records, and played his ace – the final version of ‘You’re the Voice’. Smith was no fool; he could recognise a hit record when a single like this was served to him. And RCA needed ‘You’re the Voice’, as they had little in the way of local acts, preferring to rake in the royalties generated by having ABBA, Elvis Presley and, more recently, the Eurythmics, on their books. Wheatley sweetened the deal by adding his own label, WBE, to the mix, which meant that RCA could soon claim John Farnham, Moving Pictures and Real Life as their own. Financially it was a good deal, but still not quite enough to recoup Wheatley’s $150,000 stake in Whispering Jack.
A release date was set for 20 October 1986. This was still a record without a title. But John recalled an incident during one of his trips to America, when he checked out a nightclub with some friends. One of those friends, a woman named Loretta Crawford, became, in John’s words, a ‘megamouth’ after a few glasses of wine. She tracked down the club’s MC and told him that ‘famous Australian singer John Farnham’ was in the house. John’s name meant nothing to the host, and his friend’s red wine–induced slurring didn’t help, but he agreed to share the news with the patrons.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the MC announced during a break in proceedings, ‘we have an Australian great in the club tonight. Maybe he’ll step up and give us a song. Here he is, folks: Jack Phantom!’
As soon as John related the story to the guys in his touring band, ‘Jack Phantom’ was given an additional twist. John did a brilliant impression of ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe, the voice of TV snooker show Pot Black. Jack Phantom was now Whispering Jack and the nickname had stuck like glue. Voila, an album title.
John still wasn’t in the best of psychological shape when the time came to give Whispering Jack its first public airing. Jillian had to drag him out to the car, and then John spent much of the drive to AAV in Melbourne in the passenger seat, sobbing. He was an emotional wreck, hopeless.
‘What if no-one likes it?’ he asked between sobs. ‘What then? We’re done for.’
Jillian shot him a hard look. ‘Come on, pull yourself together. You’ve come too far with this record. You’ve got to go through with this.’
John’s main concern wasn’t whether it’d be a hit, but that it would at least be judged on its merits. He hoped ‘that it would get a fair look at, a fair listen to, by the people who had preconceptions about me.’ He wanted to shake off the stigma of ‘Sadie’ forever and start anew.
John brightened up at the party, thanks to a hefty slug of his favourite tipple, brandy – he had several slugs as the night went on – and the gift of a CD player. Times were so tough for the Farnhams that they didn’t even own one. RCA and Wheatley had decided that Whispering Jack would be the first Australian-made album to be released on CD; at least now he could play it at home.
John’s mood had improved noticeably by the time of filming the ‘You’re the Voice’ video. With the rise of MTV, video budgets were already running into the six figures – in 1987, Sony forked out a staggering $2.2 million for Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’, directed by Martin Scorsese. ‘You’re the Voice’ didn’t compare; its budget was a measly $10,000. But it was money well spent.
Based on an idea from Ross Fraser, who’d envisioned the clip in black and white with splashes of colour, Farnham opened ‘You’re the Voice’ with a spot-on impression of newsreader Brian Henderson, horn-rimmed specs and all. He announced austerely, ‘Good evening, here is the news’ as images of war and tragedy and bloodshed exploded behind him. As the video continued, outspoken journo Derryn Hinch and his then wife, actress Jacki Weaver, convincingly played a warring couple from the ’burbs, while Farnham’s agent Frank Stivala turned up, as did Vince Leigh, the drummer from Melbourne pop band Pseudo Echo. Even John’s make-up artist got a gig.
Skyhooks’ bassist Greg Macainsh, who’d just signed on for Farnham’s touring band,
also appeared in the clip. A few years back, the idea of John working with Macainsh, the most politically motivated songwriter to ever infiltrate the Oz mainstream, was highly unlikely, but ‘You’re the Voice’ changed everything. It wasn’t quite Skyhooks’ ‘Whatever Happened to the Revolution’, but when ‘You’re the Voice’ did hit, it hit hard and wide. People connected with the lyric and the raw, real emotion of the song.
John, dressed in a full-length grey Driza-Bone – again on the suggestion of Fraser – looked like a man primed for action, his windswept hair seemingly taking on a life of its own. In five minutes flat he’d established his signature look for the next couple of decades: rock-and-roll stormtrooper.
As for the bagpipe solo, Farnham was right, it was just what the song needed. ‘You’re the Voice’ was a no-holds-barred call to arms, every bit as emphatic and rocking as AC/DC’s ‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’, if a bit more polished.
A great clip and single now in the can, getting it heard was the next hurdle for Wheatley and his team. Some early media was set in place, first with Derryn Hinch, who was working at 3AW (perhaps the scoop was payback for his video cameo) and then with Richard Zachariah on his daytime TV chat show, Wheatley once again recognising the power and influence of the small screen. Soon enough, the Daily Telegraph had syndicated a story revealing John’s ‘tough times’ with LRB and his new challenges as a solo artist and a father. John was concerned; he hoped the record would be judged on the quality of its music, not coloured by his recent roller-coaster ride.
‘The last thing I wanted,’ he said, ‘was a sympathy vote.’
But working in John’s favour was a recent change in the state of play in Australian radio. The old dominance of AM stations like Sydney’s 2SM and 2UW and Melbourne’s 3XY was fading. A new wave of FM stations, including Melbourne’s 3FOX and 3EON (part-owned by Wheatley and just sold to Triple M Sydney for $37.5 million) and Sydney’s big two, Triple M and 2DayFM, were fast taking control. ‘Character’ DJs such as Triple M’s Jonathon ‘Jonno’ Coleman and Ian ‘Danno’ Rogerson, and ‘Uncle’ Doug Mulray, who ruled the airwaves in Sydney, and Countdown’s Molly Meldrum and Gavin Wood, who teamed up on EON’s breakfast show, were more responsive to the slick sounds of Whispering Jack than their AM predecessors, who had trouble shaking off their perception of John – Johnny – as the lovely bloke who sang ‘Sadie’. ‘You’re the Voice’ was a totally different Farnham, in look and sound and approach.
Still, anything new from John Farnham was not going to be embraced by the FM networks with the same fervour as the latest release from Jimmy Barnes or INXS, no matter how good it was. Wheatley had to fight to get his client heard. He resorted to presenting the new record in a paper bag, sans the artist’s name.
George Moore was among the more high-profile DJs on 2DayFM. One morning in October 1986 he came into the Sydney studio for a programming discussion about new releases. He was told a new Farnham record was on the pile; he couldn’t miss it, it was the record in the brown paper bag.
‘What’s it like?’ he asked with vague disinterest.
‘It’s not bad. It’s called “The Voice”, or something like that.’
Moore gave the record a spin and was converted straight away.
‘As soon as we heard it,’ he said in 1988, ‘we knew it was going to be big. But now “big” seems such an inadequate word to describe it.’
Over at Triple M, program manager Charlie Fox had a blunt message for Wheatley.
‘Glenn,’ he said, ‘this station does not play “Johnny” Farnham.’
But once 2Day put the song into rotation, and requests came pouring in, Triple M had to fall in line, in order to compete and stay relevant. The groundswell was beginning. And ‘Johnny’ prejudices aside, ‘You’re the Voice’ was a natural fit for FM radio, resting comfortably on playlists alongside ‘Listen like Thieves’, the latest from INXS, Boom Crash Opera’s ‘Hands up in the Air’ and Jimmy Barnes’s ‘Good Times’ (which he cut with INXS), all big local songs of late 1986. Perhaps for the first time in his recording career, John was on the cutting edge. Triple M wised up to the extent that within a year they’d be ‘simulcasting’ a 90-minute Whispering Jack in-concert special, backed by a hefty $350,000 budget, as ‘Jack’s Back’ mania hit its peak.
Chart-wise, early August 1986 had been the time of Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, as it began its six-week-long stint at the top of the Australian singles list. Bananarama’s cover of ‘Venus’ did one better, ruling for seven weeks from mid-September. But as of late September, the ladies of Bananarama had a windswept rival, as the ‘You’re the Voice’ juggernaut began its chart ascent.
John celebrated with a few late-October dates in Melbourne, playing the Palace, the Flight Deck, Cramer’s and the Village Green Hotel. He was billed by The Age as a ‘pop star of old who has managed to keep his popularity afloat without having to resort to nostalgia’. It would be the last time for a long time that he could play such intimate venues.
By 3 November ‘You’re the Voice’ was the national number one and it wouldn’t budge from the top for seven weeks. Despite its late-year release, it outstripped Wa Wa Nee’s ‘Stimulation’ and Martin Plaza’s cover of ‘Concrete and Clay’ to become the biggest Australian single of the year. It also became the top-selling single of the year in Australia overall, besting Billy Ocean’s ubiquitous ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going’, among others. It was a monster.
‘You’re the Voice’ was John’s first Top 10 hit since ‘Help!’ back in 1980, and his first number one since 1969’s ‘Raindrops’. It had been a long and often challenging 17 years, but now, finally, he was back on top. At the same time, John was surprised to learn that an LRB single, ‘Face in the Crowd’, had just been lifted from No Reins, his final album with the band. Suddenly he was competing with himself – and ‘You’re the Voice’ won by a landslide. Leaving the Little River Band had been the first of many right moves Farnham had made.
One afternoon in early November, John, who hadn’t yet heard the news about ‘You’re the Voice’, was in Wheatley’s South Melbourne office.
‘I’ll drive you home, John,’ Wheatley said as his day drew to a close. On the way out to Bulleen, Wheatley called the RCA office on his car phone. He spoke briefly and signed off.
‘Do you know,’ he said excitedly to John, who was in the passenger seat, ‘that we have the number one record? Number one. All across Australia. Can you believe it?’
Farnham didn’t say much; he mumbled something about not being able to believe this was happening, as Wheatley continued driving. At the next red light, Wheatley looked over. John was crying – tears of joy.
12
BACK ON TOP
The ‘You’re the Voice’ phenomenon proved to be just the start of John Farnham’s remarkable second act. Its parent album was as successful as the single it spawned. Admittedly, in 21st century terms, Whispering Jack, with its wheezing synths and wind tunnel drums, now sounds a little dated, but in Australia in late 1986 it was exactly the type of record that Farnham and Fraser envisaged: contemporary, cutting-edge, sleek and slick, all the way from the opening whoosh of ‘Pressure Down’ to the closing strains of ‘Let Me Out’. It was a record tailor-made for FM radio.
They’d chosen their songwriters well: Mondo Rock’s Eric McCusker contributed ‘No One Comes Close’; Harry Bogdanovs, an English songwriter who’d worked with Dire Straits’ David Knopfler, brought ‘Pressure Down’ and ‘Love to Shine’ to the party; John himself took a rare sole credit for ‘Let Me Out’ and shared credit with Fraser and David Hirshfelder on ‘Going, Going, Gone’. And of course there was the beautifully haunting ‘A Touch of Paradise’ – Ross Wilson was one of its three co-writers – which John made his very own, as he’d done with so many ballads during his recording career.
John’s voice was the star of the show, wisely placed front and centre in the mix. He was strident when required, during ‘You’re the Voice’ and ‘L
et Me Out’; soft and sensual on ‘A Touch of Paradise’. Even lesser tracks such as ‘One Step Away’, a piece of lightweight fluff that could have been lifted straight from the Huey Lewis and the News songbook, were elevated by John’s energetic, insistent vocal chops. There couldn’t have been a better showcase for Australia’s premier vocalist: Whispering Jack was a 40-minute reminder to the public that Jack was back.
The critical response to the album was swift and emphatic. Writing in The Age on 8 October, Paul Speeman heaped on the praise. ‘Whispering Jack is a brilliant album. It’s not only a triumph for Farnham and his musical associates but a credit to the Australian record industry. The single, the political “You’re the Voice”, has been picked up by Melbourne radio remarkably quickly and deservedly so – it’s destined to be a No. 1 hit if quality means anything these days.’
‘Ever since Uncovered,’ Speeman concluded, ‘I have suspected that John Farnham is the best singer in Australia. Whispering Jack confirms it.’
It was the type of early release review that artists dream about. Finally, after 12 albums and almost 20 years, John Farnham had gained the credit – and the credibility – he’d long deserved.
Lazarus had nothing on John Farnham – and his comeback had only just begun. By February 1987, as ‘Pressure Down’ was readied as his next single – it’d hit number 4 – sales of Whispering Jack ticked way past platinum; it was fast-tracking its way to becoming the highest-selling Oz album of all time. Despite lively competition from recent releases like the Eurythmics’ Revenge and Billy Joel’s The Bridge, Whispering Jack ruled the charts and the airwaves for much of late 1986 and deep into ’87. It became a staple of ‘classic rock’ radio pretty much from then onwards and stuck like glue to the Australian charts for an incredible 127 weeks, 25 of those spent at number 1. Its rival in the all-time bestseller stakes, Skyhooks’ Living in the 70’s, spent a mere 52 weeks on the chart, 16 of those at number 1. Living in the 70’s sold some 200,000-plus copies, not a notch on the sales of Whispering Jack.