by Jeff Apter
John, meanwhile, sold out a staggering eight Melbourne Tennis Centre shows, between 14 and 22 December 1990. Again, he’d broken all existing box-office records – records he’d set in the first place. His set list now read like an Oz pop jukebox: ‘You’re the Voice’, ‘Playing to Win’, ‘Age of Reason’, ‘Pressure Down’, ‘Reasons’, ‘Burn for You’ … not a ‘Sadie’, ‘Raindrops’ or show tune in sight. Wheatley could take some solace in the ongoing success of his star client, now deep into the fifth year of an amazing and seemingly unstoppable run.
On that eighth night in Melbourne, John paused for his pre-gig slug of ‘fighting brandy’. As he did, he grabbed Wheatley’s arm. John was reeling – he’d played to some 80,000 people over the past week and a half. He could have moved into the Tennis Centre and kept playing there for the rest of his life, or so it seemed.
‘Wheat,’ Farnham shouted over the crowd, shaking his head, ‘I can’t believe it.’
Nor could Wheatley, but for different reasons. As the new year dawned, John and Wheatley’s careers were polar opposites: John couldn’t fly any higher, whereas his main man had bottomed out. Or so he hoped.
Anyone hungry for a little symbolism could read plenty into John’s next choice: not merely content with reigning supreme over the pop charts, he was now about to return to the stage for the first time since the panto days of the early 1970s. And John wasn’t playing any old role – he was set to step out as Jesus Christ. It was the perfect coda to the second coming of John Farnham.
Some wags called it typecasting. ‘People often report having religious experiences while attending a Farnham concert,’ snickered one reporter. ‘Fans in the very back row, while squinting to see the stage, have been heard to utter to their partners, “God, is that him?” and, after looking through binoculars, they exclaim, “Jesus, there he is!”’
When first staged in Australia in 1972, Jesus Christ Superstar, the handiwork of West End hit-makers Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, had helped build stellar careers for Jon English, Trevor White, Marcia Hines, former Easybeat Stevie Wright, future Air Supply-er Russell Hitchcock and comic Rory O’Donoghue, as well as Reg Livermore and John Paul Young – they’d all appeared in the show during its first run, which ended in early 1974. The production was ripe for a revival.
The show’s producer, Harry M. Miller, had first approached John with the idea while at the 1989 Adelaide Grand Prix.
‘Me play Jesus Christ?’ John laughed. ‘You’re kidding, right? I’m too old to play Jesus, Harry.’
Miller insisted it was an easy gig. ‘I’ll make sure they light you softly,’ he reassured Farnham, ‘and all you have to do is pat Mary Magdalene on the bum.’
John laughed it off, but Miller was persistent. He knew the huge box-office potential of anything with the Farnham name attached to it, let alone a show as iconic as Jesus Christ Superstar. There was an emotional connection, too: Miller had produced the original version and this would mark his return to the theatre after an absence of almost two decades. The offer become more enticing to John when Miller’s business partner, Garry Van Egmond, came up with the idea of staging JC Superstar as a concert – an ‘arena spectacular’ – in venues such as the Sydney Entertainment Centre. This had far more appeal for John: rather than a lengthy theatrical season, he could play selected gigs, much like a short tour. At least that was the plan.
Kate Ceberano had been confirmed to play the highly pinchable Mary; Jon Stevens, who’d worked on Chain Reaction, was tapped for the role of Judas; while Angry Anderson, Russell Morris and Jon Waters (who replaced Anthony Warlow, who was being treated for cancer) were also in the cast. David Hirschfelder would work on the arrangements and play in the house band. Now all Miller needed was his Jesus.
Wheatley required what he described as a financial ‘incentive proportionate to John’s drawing power’ – he knew only too well that Farnham could transform this revival into an even bigger commercial draw. After lengthy negotiations, Wheatley and Miller came to an understanding, what they called a ‘tiered payment structure’. For the first 10 shows, which needed to sell out in order for the production to break even, John’s fee was kept relatively low. He’d receive a pay bump after those 10 shows, another at 20, and yet another after 40. Anything beyond that was renegotiation time. But given that crowds for each night in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide would be around 10,000, it seemed unlikely they’d run for more than 40 nights. That was close to half a million people; surely they couldn’t expect more than that.
But when the Farnham-headed line-up was announced, with the opening show to take place in Sydney on 4 August 1992, sales went crazy. Tickets sold at the rate of 400 per minute on the opening day of sale – and this was still the pre-internet era, when a punter had to hit the phone or line up at a retail outlet to buy seats. John’s Christ-like appeal seemed to know no bounds. Eight Sydney shows were sold within days, a massive response. Forty shows suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Producer Miller, to his credit, was no scrooge: rehearsals, which started in late July, were held at the Sydney Showgrounds, the site of the Royal Easter Show. Miller arranged for a stage to be erected in one of the Showground’s pavilions, which typified his leave-nothing-to-chance production stance. Every day of rehearsal, as their warm-up, John would lead the entire ensemble through a roof-raising ‘Amazing Grace’, a hangover from his recent solo shows.
During the Sydney press conference, Farnham joked about the control-freakishness of ‘Mr Miller’.
‘The only thing you haven’t done,’ he chuckled, looking over at the producer, ‘is sing the songs.’
At the Sydney premiere, PM Bob Hawke – a Farnham regular – showed up, as did the cast of hit soapie E Street and NSW Premier John Fahey. Paparazzi clogged the street outside the Ent Cent, which, by now, just like the Melbourne Tennis Centre, could easily have been renamed the John Farnham Centre, he played there so often. It was every inch the A-list occasion, maybe even the theatrical event of the season.
On stage, John’s flowing mane gave him a certain biblical presence, while his gold-trimmed jacket, by contrast, brought a little rock-and-roll pizzazz. During the show, John sang with the broody, leather-clad Stevens – they sparred like singing gladiators during ‘The Last Supper’ – and gypsy woman Ceberano, while his solo spots included such standouts as ‘Gethsemane’ and ‘Poor Jerusalem’, when John stood alone on stage, lit by a spare, single spot. It was lighting fit for Christ himself.
Superstar was a very different world to a John Farnham show; while far more collaborative, there was none of the natural, earthy humour that made his own concerts so easy to enjoy. JC was a pretty stodgy affair. Sometimes John looked as though he was dying to tell a joke, just to lighten the mood (during the show’s run he make a humorous appearance on ABC’s The Late Show, looking very happy to have a laugh). Still, it was no less fulfilling for John as a singer – and there was the added luxury of the occasional break between songs, a rare indulgence.
The Fairfax papers’ review of that opening night, however, was scathing.
‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ wrote Bruce Elder, ‘still seems to need real actors, real theatrical situations, and some sense of drama to make it work effectively. In this production, all those elements have been drained away and all that is left is a number of pop stars singing songs that don’t really suit their voices – songs with which they have very little empathy.’ And John’s Jesus? ‘When he is finally crucified there is not a hint of concern or pity.’ Jesus – or John – needed the thickest of skins to tolerate such a critical axe-grinding.
Proving how strong the disconnect often is between critics and audience, tickets for the show just kept on selling. By the time the troupe reached Melbourne in mid-August, a further eight gigs had sold out. That meant John’s first salary bump kicked in, with the second, at 20 shows, simply a matter of time. The threshold of 40 shows was passed while they played Brisbane in September – and they stil
l hadn’t yet left the east coast. By the time the tour wound up, with a return to Brisbane in November, John had been crucified no less than 82 times. The show sold more than a million tickets.
Neither John nor Wheatley has ever publicly revealed exactly how much Farnham pocketed for his efforts in JC, but Wheatley did state that Farnham fared ‘better even than Harry M. Miller’. In short, with almost one million tickets sold at $40 a throw, John made a motza. And he somehow found the time on tour to give up smoking; soon after the end of the run he’d kicked a four-pack-a-day addiction. Jillian also kicked the habit. Superstar had proved lucrative: he’d made buckets of money and gotten healthier.
The cast recording was also a runaway success, spending 12 weeks atop the Oz charts and selling 350,000 copies. It was the biggest-selling Australian album of 1992, standard business now for any record featuring the Farnham name, beating out up-and-comers such as the Baby Animals and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and chart perennials Lionel Richie and Neil Diamond.
16
RIDING THE RAILS
After such a high-profile return to the stage – what could be bigger than playing Jesus Christ? – John was content to disappear into country life, as usual keeping his private life very much private. He had little, if anything, left to prove. He’d now had three smash albums in a row – four counting Superstar. There was more money in the bank than he’d ever known, or ever needed. His two boys were growing up – Robbie was now 12, James five – and Jillian remained by his side. Life was good.
John’s new obsession was breeding pure quarter horses at the stables on his property in Goornong in rural Victoria. There was a dressage and full cutting horse arena on the property, along with the main two-storey residence and several smaller dwellings. One day, early in 1993, he startled a group of Tamworth locals when he turned up unannounced to the home of Australian country music. But John wasn’t toting a banjo, ready to change his sound: instead he’d come to compete in a celebrity cutting horse event, as part of the national championships. John was up against some serious competition, including five-time Olympian and Australia’s greatest-living horseman, 78-year-old Bill Roycroft. John showed real form; so much so that he was declared the best guest on horseback.
Roycroft was hugely impressed. ‘John’s a nice rider,’ he said afterwards, ‘no risk.’
‘He can hold his own,’ said local Joe Dwyer. ‘He was a novice rider who has stuck to it.’
No-one, however, was more impressed than Farnham; for him, this unexpected win rated as highly as the ARIAs, platinum records, sold-out tours, playing JC, the lot.
‘I’ve had some success in my life in a lot of ways,’ he said as he picked up his award, ‘but winning here is up with anything. I’ll cherish it.’
Something John also cherished was that among fellow riders and horsemen, he was simply another competitor, some friendly bloke named John. He wasn’t John Farnham, certified superstar, ‘The Voice’. He was just another face in the crowd.
‘Everyone is more interested in their horses than they are in me,’ John laughed.
John may have been content with his life but the same couldn’t be said for Glenn Wheatley, John’s guru. His financial problems hadn’t let up. In late 1992 he and his wife, Gaynor, had a sit-down with their creditors and eventually agreed to what is known as a ‘deed of arrangement’, in order to try to sort out the crippling debts brought on by the disastrous Ivy project. His next financial battle, with the ATO, became the theme of yet another news story: ‘Glenn Wheatley, God and Taxes.’ Yet none of this changed John’s attitude towards his friend; his support and loyalty never wavered.
Buoyed by his successful contributions to Chain Reaction, John continued writing. By mid-1993, when he and Fraser agreed to return to the studio, John had several new songs in the works. Though not quite ready to step out as a solo songwriter – co-writes remained his preferred MO – John’s contributions made his new album, Then Again …, another more personal collection of tunes. In the final wash-up, Farnham co-wrote eight of the album’s 14 tracks, again working with Ross Wilson (for the single ‘Seemed Like a Good Idea [At the Time]’), Peter Buckle and Fraser, as well as Jon Stevens and, in an interesting new twist, American Richard Marx.
John and Marx had bonded in the late 1980s, when the American, whose hair was almost as big as that of his Aussie pal, spent some time at Farnham’s country hideaway. John nicknamed him ‘Skid’ (of course). Marx, by his own admission, was a vocal Farnham fan, ever since he’d heard ‘You’re the Voice’, joining an ever-growing list of admirers that included everyone from Stevie Wonder to Dionne Warwick and Elton John. While on stage in Melbourne in January 1989, Marx paused and told the crowd: ‘If anyone sees a guy called John Farnham around tell him that I think he has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard and I would love to work with him.’
‘It changed my musical life,’ Marx said of ‘The Voice’, ‘I became obsessed with this guy. I think Sam Cooke is the greatest singer who ever lived. I think John Farnham is the greatest singer alive.’
It was a very relaxed John who appeared on the cover of Then Again …, decked out in black jeans and a snappy leather jacket, reclining in a sort of horizontal manspread. He was cool and calm, a man at ease with the world. That look set the tone for much of the record; the intensity of ‘Age of Reason’ and ‘You’re the Voice’ were toned down, making this a more mellow affair.
‘If you are looking for an album that plumbs the dark depths of the human condition,’ John Mangan wrote with no small amount of insight in The Age, ‘then you are in the wrong place. Judging by John Farnham’s record-breaking sales figures over the past 26 years, there are plenty of us out there keen to hear sincere upbeat ditties with positive messages.’
While there were the mandatory big ballads on Then Again …, including an attention-grabbing rework of Alice Cooper’s touchy-feely ‘Only Women Bleed’ and reflective moments like ‘When All Else Fails’, at its core this was a singer’s album, a solid set of grown-up pop songs, just the tonic for John’s baby-boomer audience. The soulful ‘So Long in Love’, one of John’s co-writes with Richard Marx, was a highlight.
While it lacked the chart longevity of its three predecessors, Then Again … hit number one soon after its mid-October 1993 release, becoming John’s fourth straight chart-topper, and went on to claim yet another ARIA – for Highest Selling Album of the Year. Interestingly, its closest rival was The Seekers’ Silver Jubilee Album, a nostalgic comeback for John’s ‘Sadie’-era peers and harmonisers. Then Again … shifted roughly 300,000 copies, which meant John had now sold in the vicinity of four million albums at home since the release of Whispering Jack. Amazing numbers. (Full House, 1991’s live LP, was closing in on 350,000 sales.) But only one of Then Again…’s four singles, the breezy, Motown-ish ‘Seemed Like a Good Idea (At the Time)’, could be called a genuine hit, reaching the Top 20 days before the album dropped.
The track inspired one of John’s funnier videos, thanks to the input of his buddies from the D-Generation, stars of ABC’s The Late Show, who turned the clip into a good-natured, cross-cultural, piss-taking romp. ‘What my grandfather is saying,’ the D-Gen’s Santo Cilauro told John as the ‘Seemed Like a Good Idea’ video began, acting as interpreter, ‘is that if you want to crack the international market, you should play the piano accordion.’ John listened and nodded politely – and the clip got goofier from there on in, with earnest discussion of the potential of smoke machines, porn-star moustaches, monster trucks, the lambada and chainsaws.
John’s commercial clout as a recording artist may have simmered down ever so slightly, but he could still pack venues from one end of Oz to the other. He drew a remarkable 350,000 paying customers to the two-month-long Talk of the Town tour, which ran from February to April 1994, yet again breaking his own records. Tickets to four Melbourne Tennis Centre shows disappeared in one day. John remained astounded by the response; he called Wheatley every hour for a sales update, genuinely sh
ocked by the ever-increasing numbers.
‘Mate, that’s amazing,’ he said – several times. The demand was huge.
John’s great band was full of regulars – Lindsay Field, Brett Garsed, Angus Burchall – with a new face in keyboardist Chong Lim, who’d taken over from the long-serving David Hirschfelder and would become a permanent fixture in Farnhamland.
During the night of the ARIAs, John played the jester with the event’s host Richard ‘Stubbsy’ Stubbs in a TV link-up. Farnham was on stage in Canberra, Stubbs in Sydney.
‘I’m having a great time,’ John told Stubbs, now that he was back out on the road for the first time as a solo act since late 1991. ‘It makes me feel, oh, 40 years old,’ laughed the 44-year-old. John then wheeled out his mate ‘Skid’ Marx, ‘for, oh, about the eighth time tonight.’ Marx just so happened to have Farnham’s pointy ARIA statuette for Then Again …, which he cheerfully handed over.
‘You know what I love most about this,’ said Marx, all smiles, ‘is that I have four songs on the record.’
After much thanking and back-patting, the dynamic duo got back to work, Marx on the piano, John closing his eyes tight and hitting the big notes on ‘The Reason Why’. The crowd, of course, ate it up.
Talk of the Town was the last time John would go out on the road, at any length, until spring 1996. The only gig of note he played in 1994 was a 7 August fundraiser for the victims of the Rwanda genocide, a one-off at Flinders Park in Melbourne, which was televised on Channel 9. The show raised a whopping $3.5 million.
John and producer Ross Fraser entered into a business arrangement of their own in 1995, setting up Gotham Records, whose releases would be distributed by BMG, John’s current label. Over time, Gotham would release music from Merril Bainbridge, who’d have a worldwide hit with the subtly risqué single ‘Mouth’ and sell 250,000 copies of her album The Garden in Australia. They’d also record Richard Pleasance, The Lovers and Olympic golden girl Nikki Webster and score huge success with pop twosome Bachelor Girl. For John, a record label was a much safer bet than Backstage, the restaurant into which he had sunk so much money back in the dark days of the 1970s. He understood music.