Playing to Win

by Jeff Apter

  In March 1987 John ruled the inaugural ARIAs, taking home the awards for Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Best Male Artist, Highest Selling Single and Album and Best Adult Contemporary Album. A clean sweep. He thanked one and all, from top to bottom, while execs from the labels that had rejected the Whispering Jack demos (essentially everyone outside of RCA) wept quietly into their drinks. In one of his acceptance speeches, John even took the chance to dig up the old chestnut about saving Wheatley from drowning in the toilet bowl on his 21st. He was having a blast.

  Fans expressed their love for Whispering Jack in the strangest ways. David Thai, a contestant on Network Ten’s Pot Luck talent show, intended to give everything he had to his own version of John’s ‘Pressure Down’. Unfortunately, he gave a little too much; the faux Michael Jackson dances moves and unique interpretation of the lyrics reminded viewers why the show was called Pot Luck. The song was best left in John’s hands. The show’s hanging judge, the oh-so-arch Bernard King, had a field day.

  ‘It’s very difficult to decide if there’s a future for this kind of work,’ he sniffed. ‘You almost gave yourself whiplash. Perhaps if you were to join a chorus, a huge chorus – say, 20 or 30,000.’

  Most fans, however, expressed their love with their hard-earned cash. Wheatley’s $150K outlay wasn’t merely safe as houses; it now looked like a pretty fabulous investment.

  Television was John’s natural domain, and he and Wheatley had used it (perhaps even exploited it) very effectively since joining forces back in 1980. TV was the perfect vehicle for pushing John’s golden locks shone brighter than ever before, if that was possible, when he stepped onto the set of Ray Martin’s Midday show in July 1987. Success had done wonders for Farnham: he positively glowed.

  Like Don Lane before him, Martin embraced Farnham like a long-lost son – as did his blue-rinsed audience. When introducing John, Martin mentioned that it had taken John 20 years ‘to shake the tag of being the boy who sang about the cleaning lady’, but as the Midday orchestra struck up ‘The Voice’ – and Martin introduced him as ‘The Voice, John Farnham’ – it was clear that Sadie was well and truly a thing of the past.

  John was in a bubbly mood, talking about his family, both his son, Robbie – ‘I love him,’ John gushed, ‘he’s great’ – and his yet unborn child (Jillian was pregnant with their second child, James, due in January).

  Then Martin asked the far-reaching question: ‘What happened between the King of Pop and Whispering Jack?’

  ‘I did all sorts of different things,’ John replied. ‘[But] I got to the stage, just before I joined The Wheatley Organisation … where I wasn’t being stimulated by what I was doing. I was still trading on “Sadie” and “Raindrops”, things I’d done 10 years before. It wasn’t particularly stimulating for the audience I had at the time – all nine of them.’

  The crowd broke into nervous laughter, but John put them straight. It was the truth. ‘Seriously. I remember going back to do a show in Dandenong, where I lived as a kid, and my whole family came along. That was it. No-one from school. I was mortified.’

  So what about overseas? Martin asked. John had just returned from one of many European trips promoting Whispering Jack and ‘You’re the Voice’, and the single was fast becoming as big a hit on the continent as it was in Australia. The album would achieve similar success in Sweden (number one), Switzerland (number three), Austria (number three), Germany (Top 10) and Norway (Top 20). Surely this type of success tempted him to chase global domination a bit more enthusiastically, no?

  John made it very clear, despite the constant chirping of people like Molly Meldrum, that Australia was his home, had always been his home and would remain his home. Offshore success was great, but the notion of pursuing pop’s pot of gold with the same single-mindedness as Olivia Newton-John, Helen Reddy, Peter Allen and Rick Springfield was not for him.

  ‘This is not to make light of what’s happened to me in the rest of the world of late,’ John said, turning serious after a quick flurry of mother-in-law jokes, ‘but this success hasn’t been the most important thing in my life. What’s happened here, the fact I’ve been able to work, is absolutely fantastic. Ian Meldrum used to give me hell, saying “You’ve got to crack overseas, why haven’t you done it?” It seemed more important to other people than to me. I was happy with what happened here. I live here.’

  This would become something of a Farnham mantra over the next few years.

  Still, there were international highlights for John, such as an outdoors show in Munich in July 1987, where he shared the bill with Tina Turner, the Eurythmics, bluesman Robert Cray – who Farnham particularly liked – and Joe Cocker. They drew a crowd of 110,000 people, a sea of people. John was stunned when virtually the entire crowd shouted the words of ‘The Voice’ back at him. ‘It was just fantastic.’

  But the demands of building a new audience could be overbearing, especially with a young family. Farnham recalled one occasion around that time when he returned from a holiday and even before he’d unpacked, Wheatley called.

  ‘You better leave some clothes in your suitcase, John,’ he said. He’d booked him on a midnight flight to London, for an appearance on Top of the Pops. His performance would go out to 90 million people. Now that was an audience!

  ‘I was still shaking the sand out of my shoes,’ said John, who went on to say that he instantly forgot all the words to the song when he learnt the exact size of the show’s audience. It wasn’t the first time for the sometimes forgetful Farnham.

  Regardless, ‘The Voice’ eventually reached number 6 in the UK and the Farnham resurgence rolled on.

  Events the night prior to his Ray Martin appearance meant more to Farnham than all his European success combined. Countdown, the ABC show that John had helped launch, had finally run its course, broadcasting its 563rd and final episode on 19 July 1987. John, after his period in the wilderness, had again become the show’s artist du jour. He had a curious history with the show: he’d appeared on the first episode in late ’74, then the first colour episode a few months later – and now its swan song. Three big episodes, despite long gaps in between.

  The last Countdown awards, staged at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, took place immediately after that final episode aired. John swept the pool, collecting gongs for Best Album, Best Single and Best Performance in a Rock Video. No wonder the oilskin-clad Farnham looked so chuffed when he strode onto the stage for the fourth time, having just been announced winner of the Most Outstanding Achievement award, and squeezed host Molly Meldrum in a bear hug. He struggled to be heard above the screams of the crowd; John Farnham had become a sex symbol all over again.

  ‘I have had 20 of the most enjoyable, terrifying, annoying, fun years anyone could wish to have,’ he shouted over the din. ‘All through my time I’ve been supported by people, very strongly. I’d like to say thank you to the industry for letting me stay around, but most importantly to those who supported me and bought the records and listened to them and [have] been there when I needed you. Thank you very much indeed.’

  With that, Meldrum took over the mic and gave a shout-out to Jillian Farnham, ‘the strongest support of my mate here’. The overwhelmingly good vibes spilled onto the stage, and Wheatley picked up the bass and stood in on ‘The Voice’, the song that had firmly re-established his number-one client and dear friend as the man of the moment, the hour, the year – perhaps even the latter half of the decade. As John whipped the Ent Cent crowd into a frenzy, he walked over and put his arm around Wheatley; both were sporting million-dollar smiles. All the drama and hardship of the past eight years was swept aside.

  Then the bagpipers, positioned on the first level of the big concrete bunker, exploded into sound, and the place erupted.

  John, backed by guitarist Brett Garsed, now a permanent fixture in Farnhamland, bassist Greg Macainsh, keyboarder David Hirschfelder and drummer Angus Burchall, along with backing vocalists Lindsay Field and Venetta Fields, also Farnham regul
ars, hit the road for the Jack’s Back tour, beginning in Adelaide on 2 December 1987. John was a bit disappointed: he had hatched a grand plan for veteran actor Frank Thring to open the shows, addressing the audience in his trademark arch tones while seated on a throne. John may have been the king of pop, but Thring was the king, period. But on the same day Farnham met Thring to discuss the idea, the actor suffered a heart attack; he survived but was out of action, unable to tour. Still, the show went on, now featuring a video message from the recovering thespian.

  Initially planned as an 11-date run – Wheatley’s expectations modest due to competing tours from Michael Jackson and Billy Joel – public response was so feverish that eight more Farnham shows were added, at significantly larger venues. Eventually spanning two months, Jack’s Back became the highest-grossing national tour to feature an Australian act, a huge achievement. Over the course of the tour, John played to 120,000 people and it seemed as though every one of them had nothing but love for the man on stage. It was the type of fervent fan response rarely seen – or heard – this side of the Beatles’ legendary campaign of 1964. John was breaking hearts, and records, all over again.

  John was clearly loving his time on stage. He’d drop into long, funny monologues between songs, covering such pressing issues as the ‘spit catchment’ in front of the stage – ‘my mouth gets very moist’ – and the perils of where to put his hands while performing (‘Never in your pockets,’ Jillian had instructed him; he duly obliged), all the while responding to the ongoing shrieks of ‘We love you, John!’ with his usual humble charm: ‘Thank you very much indeed. I love you, too, and I can’t even see you.’

  ‘If you know the words to the following song,’ John would announce before ‘Comic Conversation’, which he performed as a two-hander with Hirschfelder, ‘don’t join in, ’cause you’re going to ruin the bloody thing. Several thousand people singing out of tune …’ He’d then grin, close his eyes and shake his flowing mane, as if the very thought was too much to comprehend. It was great theatre, good fun, a mix of music and stand-up.

  John and band played three nights at the 12,000-capacity Sydney Entertainment Centre, a venue that from then onwards would prove to be a very happy hunting ground. Mind you, John almost missed the first of those Sydney shows. Wheatley always insisted on collecting his star and driving him to the gig; it was something of a ritual for the two of them. But in the car on the way to the Entertainment Centre, with Wheatley at the wheel, John was a little confused by the sights that swiftly flashed by his window: why could he see Luna Park? Wasn’t that North Sydney in the distance? Weren’t they on the wrong side of the Harbour Bridge? Farnham pointed this out to Wheatley, whose navigational skills seemed as sketchy as John’s ability to remember his song lyrics. Shoot, Farnham was right.

  ‘Erm, John,’ Wheatley said sheepishly, easing the car off the bridge, trying to throw a U-turn. ‘I don’t have any coins for the toll.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ John realised. He joked about not carrying money because ‘the band picks my pockets’; tonight it was a big problem.

  They rolled up to the tollbooth, debating their next move, when a female fan pulled up next to them. She immediately recognised John. Who wouldn’t?

  ‘Hey, love, can you do us a favour?’ Farnham asked.

  Toll paid, fan duly thrilled, star and manager reached the venue just before showtime.

  During this Sydney run, in the twilight zone between sound check and the start of the concert – when he did make a gig on time – John delighted in cold-calling his fans from the Ent Cent’s backstage area. He’d received a hefty amount of fan mail, sent directly to the venue, some with phone numbers. So to kill the time, and shock his fans, he’d start dialling. ‘Hi, this is John Farnham …’

  ‘Some people didn’t believe it was me,’ he laughed, ‘so I would sing a song to them and I got passed around the room to talk to the whole family a bit. And there were screams and tears. I loved it.’

  In the moment just before the house lights went down and the show began, John and the band, along with the crew and Wheatley, who rarely missed a Farnham gig, would gather. A bottle of ‘fighting brandy’ – cheap, bottom-shelf plonk – would be produced and a toast proposed. Drinks downed, bond reinforced, they would hit the stage, ready for anything. (This proved to be an effective warm-up technique; when John was about to face a global audience of four billion at the 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony, his preparation amounted to getting ‘absolutely drunk’.)

  Every night John and the band worked through a hits-heavy set, which included Whispering Jack in entirety, as well as songs from his Little River Band days – ‘When the War Is Over’, ‘Playing to Win’ and ‘Down on the Border’ – along with ‘Help!’. He and Fields joined voices on a mighty, gospel-ly ‘Amazing Grace’. In Sydney, the 60-piece Sydney University Choir helped out on ‘The Voice’, as did the now obligatory piper – several pipers, in fact. It was a powerhouse set of quality pop. And there wasn’t a ‘Sadie’ to be heard.

  ‘Well, I guess you could say it’s keeping me busy,’ John laughed wryly when asked about this new wave of Farnham mania. ‘But I’m always as busy as a blue-arsed fly anyway.’ As usual, he was using his deeply ingrained sense of humour, his regular-bloke-iness, to avoid getting too serious about all the madness. If he’d stopped to consider how fast he’d risen – again – it might have been too much to contemplate.

  ‘A lot of people at the shows don’t seem to be regular concertgoers,’ noted silver-haired bassist Macainsh, who’d tasted a little of this craziness during Skyhooks’ mid-1970s peak, ‘but they do love the idea of John Farnham coming out of the wilderness to be a star again. It’s a bit like being on a campaign trail for the silent majority.’

  John’s upward mobility wasn’t lost on the media.

  ‘It’s not unheard of for a local artist to move from 300-400 crowd’em-in-a-pub lounge to a 2000 seater theatre and thence to an audience of 12,000 at the cavernous Entertainment Centre,’ noted the Sydney Morning Herald’s Anthony O’Grady. ‘But no one has been so upwardly mobile so quickly. John Farnham’s second rise to the top has been faster that his first.’

  Nothing said success mid-1980s-style more than a TV/radio simulcast. The Jack’s Back special, a ratings winner when it was screened on Channel 7 soon after the completion of the tour, was essentially a concert doco, with snippets of backstage and downtime footage thrown in to add that personal touch. And it was revealing in an inoffensive, tailor-made-for-middle-Australia kind of way. John met fans, threw himself into lively water-pistol fights with the band, blazed on stage – and in quieter moments reflected on his all-conquering second coming. Much of the doco’s key interview was conducted while John was seated in a tinnie, his second home, on the water at Lake Eildon, Victoria, a favourite spot of his since he was a teenager.

  ‘I’ve had a good piece of news about this project every day since the day I gave it to Wheatley,’ he said from his boat. ‘All that positivity has been unbelievable. I’m enjoying success now more than I ever have in the past because I’m able to understand it more – I feel a bit more credible within myself.’

  John’s success was reflected by his appearance: he even looked good in fishing gear, a flannel shirt and red fluoro life jacket, the wind tousling his mane. As ever, he played everything down, even joking about his bald spot.

  Jack’s Back began with John ready to hit the stage, in red stormtrooper jacket – a look Jillian had suggested to him – cuffs rolled, tearing into ‘Reasons’. Stage lights flashed in all directions, the excitement level was massive. The rich voices of Field and Fields chimed in beautifully with Farnham, who owned the stage – and the super-responsive crowd loved him. He was theirs.

  Elsewhere, Molly Meldrum spoke on camera, as did Wheatley, producer Ross Fraser, much of John’s band, and the man himself. Vocalist Venetta Fields casually, coolly, rattled off her highly impressive CV: she’d sung with Ike and Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Steely Dan, Pink
Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond … and now John Farnham, whom she rated as highly as the others. John revealed how Sam See told him he’d never write a good song, ‘because I was too bloody happy’. John shrugged; See was right. But being happy was hardly a crime.

  A Coke spot, featuring John, ‘You’re the Voice’ and his band prominently, appeared during every ad break, the first time a major sponsorship deal had been inked between the soft-drink giant and an Australian star like John. It was another Wheatley coup. John Farnham was officially everywhere.

  There was a price to pay for all his success, John admitted during Jack’s Back: he was losing his private life. He told the story of the first time he walked the corridors of Channel 9 as a wide-eyed kid in the 1960s. John spotted Eric Pearce (later Sir Eric), the esteemed newsreader, heading towards him. Farnham, without thinking, said, ‘G’day, Eric,’ despite not knowing the man. It was a bit cheeky. (Farnham later apologised.) Flash forward 20-odd years and Farnham was now in the same position as Pearce, a public figure recognised by every man, woman and child pretty much wherever he went, and they all wanted to say ‘G’day’. It wasn’t in John’s nature to reject people, even if they got a bit pushy and demanding. He aimed to please.

  American Wayne Nelson, on an LRB sabbatical to tour with John, was impressed by Farnham’s calm demeanour, the way he coped with his fans’ endless requests. John truly was a man of the people.

  ‘You can’t go anywhere in this country without people wanting his autograph or to talk with him,’ noted Nelson.

  John stressed that he had two key priorities: his family and his performance. If something got in the way of either, well, it ‘had to suffer’. The problem, of course, was that as John’s public profile exploded, more and more demands were placed on him: to meet kids in hospital, speak at charity events, do the right thing, raise money for good causes, and all the rest of it. He was happy to help in any way he could, unless it messed with his family time.