Playing to Win

by Jeff Apter

  Wheatley conceded that they’d ‘created confusion in the marketplace,’ as he’d write in his second memoir, Facing the Music. ‘While we’d been very careful not to say that John was retiring, of course that’s exactly what many people thought. [But] retiring was the last thing on our minds.’

  As usual, Farnham and Wheatley turned to the small screen to build anticipation for the tour, which was set to kick off on 6 November at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena and continue until the end of the year. John’s latest TV special, An Audience with John Farnham, was a very polite, seated-and-greeted kind of event, pitched somewhere between a celebrity roast and an episode of This Is Your Life. Farnham and the band played, and John took some questions between songs. The studio audience was stacked with friendly and familiar faces – Wheatley was in the front row and Farnham’s fishing buddy Rex Hunt was prominently positioned, as was his sometimes touring companion Olivia Newton-John, fellow performers Christine Anu, Marcia Hines and Col Joye, and such acquaintances as race car driver Peter Brock and former boxing champ Johnny Famechon (who called Farnham ‘one of my absolute heroes’). Jillian and Robbie were quietly seated a few rows back from the stage.

  ‘Thank you and welcome to my nightmare,’ laughed Farnham, as he walked onto the set and dropped into some RSL-club-friendly patter. After a song or two, his old buddy ‘Livvy’ – who as always absolutely glowed – posed the first question. It was one Farnham was starting to hear with some regularity.

  ‘John, when are you retiring?’

  ‘I’m not retiring,’ smiled Farnham, ‘but I’m feeling huge pressure to fill these big venues.’

  (Wheatley backed this up, writing that he was concerned they could no longer fill arenas year in, year out. ‘It would be impossible to keep doing that sort of business.’)

  And what about The Main Event, the 1998 triple-headed bill he’d shared with Newton-John and Anthony Warlow, which had filled one entertainment centre after another. Did that rate as a career high?

  ‘That was an absolute joy,’ beamed Farnham, smiling at Newton-John, who beamed right back at him.

  After The Main Event, Farnham and Newton-John had teamed up for the 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony, holding hands and smiling broadly while singing ‘Dare to Dream’ to some four billion viewers. Their smiles belied what had just transpired: uncharacteristically John had given a hefty serve to event producer Ric Birch just before the opening. John was upset that more locals weren’t being given the chance to appear. ‘There’s not an artist in the country, or a marching girl or boy or marching band or dancer or entertainer of any kind that wouldn’t love to be there on that day,’ John roared. ‘Whether they be high-profile, or brand-new kids doing stuff, is immaterial. How dare this fool deprive, or even consider depriving, our kids of the opportunity of being at that venue, at that ceremony, at that event.’

  Back at John’s celebrity roast, the subject of musical influences was brought up. Eyebrows were raised when Farnham mentioned Eminem. It seemed as though he had been listening to more of his sons’ music than just Nana-Zhami.

  And his life influences, someone asked – who would they be? Well, that had to be Jillian, of course. The perfect response.

  John talked about life away from the stage and his many passions: skiing, scuba diving, horse riding, angling, and being a father and husband. He had plenty going on. In fact, he wasn’t sure how he fit everything in. He’d just taken up welding, thanks to a recent birthday gift from Jillian and the boys. Not the sexiest of hobbies, but another way to occupy himself during downtime.

  Talk inevitably turned to his relationship with Wheatley, the man who’d rebuilt his career and become his best friend in the process. They’d even started appearing together in a lucrative series of TV ads for Telstra MobileNet, yet another coup for John’s highly proactive manager. They plugged it ever-so-subtly during the show, cheesily posing with their Telstra-provided handsets. (During The Last Time tour, fans were encouraged to send text messages to win prizes, the ultimate being a meet-and-greet with John after the show.)

  ‘I have a brotherly relationship with Wheatley,’ Farnham said. But he admitted they sometimes fought ‘like sisters’.

  ‘So,’ piped up Marcia Hines, once the laughter subsided, ‘are you comfortable being a sex symbol?’

  The blush said it all: no, not really. Instead, Farnham talked about the cabbie in 1973 and the advice he’d given John the day before he married Jillian – to always fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  ‘And I always do what I’m told,’ Farnham grinned.

  Farnham didn’t even consider himself a clotheshorse, let alone a sex symbol. And as for that haircut …

  ‘My band call it a world-class mullet,’ he said, casting a glance over his shoulder at a grinning Garsed, Burchall and co.

  Ross Wilson was another familiar face in the crowd. He spoke about the trilogy of songs – ‘You’re the Voice’, ‘Age of Reason’ and ‘That’s Freedom’ – that positioned Farnham as a ‘spokesman for the common man’. Farnham said that was one tag he was comfortable with; he even delivered a very serious diatribe on the horrors of life post-9/11, describing the Twin Towers disaster as ‘flat out murder’. (Days before the first official Last Time show, John had played a fundraiser for victims of the 2002 Bali bombing. His social conscience was as engaged as ever.)

  But this was a rare moment of seriousness. In the main, like the man himself, An Audience with John Farnham was rock-solid, family-friendly entertainment. The songs were impeccably played and beautifully sung. Everything was polished, polite and well rehearsed, even down to the bespoke closing song, a take on the Rolling Stones’ ‘The Last Time’. Ironically, ‘The Last Time’ had marked the beginning for the Stones; it was the first original Jagger/Richards song to become a worldwide hit, way back in 1965. But for John it was intended to be a farewell, of sorts.

  Checking in at a concise 38 minutes, The Last Time LP carried very little baggage. Production-wise, John didn’t waver too far from his usual team; it was essentially his band – Chong Lim, Burchall, Edwards, Field, bassist Stuart Fraser – plus a few additional players, with the Victorian Philharmonic bringing the strings. This time around, there were no Farnham co-writes; instead, he cherry-picked songs from a broad range of writers. John brought some vocal muscle to the melodic pop of ‘No Ordinary World’, which Joe Cocker had covered in 1999. He also tackled the soulful ballad ‘Lonely Man’, the handiwork of Brit hit-maker Wayne Hector, who’d written for Britney Spears and Wheatley’s other star client, Delta Goodrem.

  John’s spin on the Stones’ ‘The Last Time’ led the album, with some arresting electronic touches and a nagging guitar riff that Keith Richards wouldn’t kick out of the studio. It was a curious mingling of the old and the new, with a lively chanted chorus tossed in for good measure. This typified The Last Time; it was perhaps the most modern-sounding, digital-era recording John had ever made, in much the same way Whispering Jack had clearly been an album of the mid-1980s. John was never going to kid anyone that he was a cutting-edge artist, but he sounded pretty comfortable amid the programming, sequencing and sonic layers of The Last Time.

  The album debuted at number one on its release on 7 October 2002, and went on to sell 200,000 copies. John also picked up another ARIA, this time for Best Adult Contemporary Album.

  The Last Time became a real fan favourite, reflected in glowing online reviews. ‘John is truly one of Australia’s great musical talents,’ wrote a fan on Amazon. ‘The Last Time, the remake by John, is great, vibrant and catchy all the way.’ ‘It is a great CD,’ stated another. ‘John Farnham is Australia’s greatest singer – anything John Farnham puts out will always be worth listening to.’

  What was especially interesting about The Last Time was its lack of real pathos; there were no grand statements contained within if this was to be John’s studio swan song. In hindsight, of course, the song ‘One More Try’ could have been prophetic – John wasn’t quite done with the
studio yet.

  Before heading out on a more substantial tour, John launched The Last Time on 6 October in a highly unlikely venue: Melbourne’s legendary Espy Hotel, the sticky-carpeted site of SBS’s RocKwiz and the home of everything alternative. Hipsters and taste-makers were regulars at the Espy – it was fair to say they weren’t the typical Farnham audience. But John figured that if he was stepping back into the spotlight, he might as well mix things up, make the event different and interesting.

  There’d been some lively byplay in the days leading to up the invite-only gig. The Espy placed an ad in the street press, which read: ‘John, if you are to do the Espy, you’ve got to play “Sadie” – and you’ve got to send us a demo.’ Basically, the same rules that applied to novice acts applied to John Farnham.

  John took it in the right spirit. He thought the ad was ‘fantastic’.

  And was it a career goal to play the Espy?

  ‘I’ve only really wanted to play here since about last Tuesday, actually,’ John laughed. ‘But I’m looking forward to it, it’s a fun place.’

  About 100 Farnham diehards gathered on the Espy steps well before the doors were flung open. Among them were fans travelling from interstate to get a close-up glimpse of their idol, along with winners of an online contest. One of these fans, a woman named Sue Williams, admitted to having been a Farnesy fan ‘since I was 12 – but I’m not going to tell you how old I am now.’ Ms Williams did reveal she’d seen every Farnham tour since 1986. ‘At the moment we have eight tickets – one for every single [Victorian] concert,’ she said before heading inside and making her way down the front. John’s fans were nothing if not dedicated.

  John was insistent that this tour was his last on such a large scale. Seriously. He’d continue touring, but in smaller venues, and on shorter runs.

  ‘I’m not looking forward to the end – or even to the end of each night’s performance,’ he said after the Espy showcase went down a storm. ‘I think it’ll be a pretty emotional thing.’

  The Last Time roadshow began with the now requisite city-by-city run: an astounding nine Tennis Centre shows in Melbourne during November, then another half a dozen in Sydney. While Farnham was in the Harbour City, Premier Bob Carr presented the man of the moment with a plaque honouring the opening of the John Farnham Room at the Entertainment Centre. Six more full houses followed in Brisbane.

  Prior to the city run, there’d been a one-off concert in rural Cohuna, on 12 October, a gig that was especially poignant for John. There were huge signs lining the streets, reading ‘Thanks Jack’ and ‘Jack is Back’, which sent a conflicting message: was he retiring or simply returning? No-one seemed quite sure. John’s albums and posters filled the windows of every shop in the township while his music blared from loudspeakers; it was Farnham-mania. Five thousand fans gathered for the mid-afternoon show: a pretty impressive turnout, considering the town’s population was only 2300.

  Cohuna, of course, was where John had first encountered Darryl Sambell in the local Memorial Hall back in 1967, when Sambell had asked, ‘You’re not the drummer are you?’ This chance meeting had changed John’s life forever; Sambell laid the groundwork for John – Johnny, back then – to become the superstar he was today. The Cohuna gig was even more poignant as Sambell had died from lung cancer on 19 September 2001, at the age of 56.

  After his divorce from John in the mid-1970s, Sambell had left the management biz and spent many years back in New Zealand. In later years, Sambell moved back to Australia, settling on the Gold Coast, where he died. He was buried in Adelaide, his hometown.

  They may have become estranged, but it was fair to say that without Sambell’s wonderful way with hype and his fervent belief in John’s talent, Farnham would probably have become a tradie on a building site, living a very different life. Sambell had told Rose Farnham that he could make her son a star; he’d proved true to his word. He’d cut Johnny’s hair, ironed his clothes, chosen his songs, mapped out his future, interfered in his love life. The impact he had on John’s life, for better or worse, was huge, undeniable.

  ‘Why did I spend nine years and three months with Johnny?’ Sambell said at the end of their relationship. ‘Because he had the voice.’ Now, John was The Voice.

  The Cohuna show may have been a one-off, but for much of 2003 John took his show to places way off the regular tour map. This lengthy, exhaustive and unique country run was called The Last Time: Under the Big Top. It kicked off in Kalgoorlie on 31 January 2003.

  The intention of the tour echoed those of tours by folks like Slim Dusty: get out to the more remote parts of the country, set up a big top, and give the locals a fair old night out. The tour rolled on for five months, with 58 shows in 27 locations, all under the enormous 45 by 60 metre ‘event tent’, which had a capacity of 4000. This was the first time a tour of this scope had ever been undertaken in Australia. Thirty trucks and 50 support staff were required; there were two separate big tops, one always in transit to the next gig.

  But The Big Top tour did not begin promisingly: anything but. Ticket sales in Kalgoorie were slow. A camera crew, filming the obligatory TV special, captured John as he stepped off the bus in the former mining town.

  ‘We’ve got half a house, maybe,’ he said. Mind you, John had a plan to boost the box office. ‘We’re going down to the hospital and [we’ll] beg people to come. Then we’re going to the old people’s homes and [we’ll] tell them they’ve got to come.’

  John was convinced he knew the problem. A little research revealed to him that Kalgoorlie had been the site of Australia’s first brothel, back during its goldrush-era heyday, and out here in the wild west, sex continued to take precedence over other forms of entertainment. ‘Hooker, Farnham, hooker, Farnham,’ John said, weighing up the options, when he uncovered the town’s lively reputation. ‘What are you going to take?’ In downtown Kalgoorlie, a joint named Skimpies was doing lively business. However, interest in John’s concert eventually picked up – so much so that a second show went ahead on 1 February.

  After Kalgoorlie, the roadshow headed to Geraldton and Bunbury, then made its way through Whyalla, Broken Hill, Griffith, Wagga Wagga, Bendigo, Wollongong, Lismore and Caloundra and several other rural spots that rarely, if ever, witnessed events of this size, before returning to Melbourne Park on 15 June, a venue where John had now sold more than one million tickets over the years.

  The offstage mood, as ever, was lighthearted – loud shirts were now all the rage among band and crew. Not for Wheatley, however: as always, he was the definitive businessman, looking smart in crisp, collared numbers, checking tickets, counting receipts, ensuring that Farnham Inc. ran smoothly. During soundcheck, John would mess with his songs, turning ‘Please Don’t Ask Me’ into the most tragic country and western heartbreaker you’d ever heard. When boredom set in, he’d vacuum the stage.

  On stage, John took the ‘Big Top’ idea to its natural conclusion, producing a hoop and directing the more obliging band members to jump through it. Circus Oz – John Farnham Band–style!

  Facilities were not quite the five-star standard Farnham and co. had grown accustomed to over the years: one venue didn’t even have a box office. Sometimes there were no dressing rooms or there was very little in the way of basic necessities. In a few motels the troupe installed their own high-pressure shower roses on the sly – John and his team felt as though they were living out their own version of the Seinfeld episode ‘The Shower Head’.

  Some nights it rained buckets. After a few soggy gigs, John earned himself a new nickname from the band and crew: he was now the Rain God.

  ‘It’s like any camping trip,’ Farnham figured, ‘it’s bound to rain. Want to go for a swim; it’s going to get cold. Shit happens.’

  Typically, John led the lusty, boozy singalongs after most shows, usually while holding up the bar. ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)’ – a novelty song to rival ‘Sadie’ or ‘Underneath the Arches’ – was a particular
favourite.

  ‘That’s it, it’s over, go home,’ John told the ever-present camera as the tour finally drew to a close. ‘I want to go out with my reputation intact, at the top of my profession. I don’t want to end up playing to the crickets and the cleaners.’

  But was it really the end?

  19

  WARM UNDIES AND SHAMELESS NOSTALGIA

  An exhausted John spent much of the remainder of 2003 kicking back and collecting new trophies: he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame on 21 October and was named Victoria’s Number One Living Treasure in a radio poll during early December. He’d been King of Pop, Australian of the Year, received an Order of Australia – and now he was a Living Treasure again (he’d won a similar award in 1998). A bronze statue of John was erected in Melbourne’s Docklands. He claimed two more ARIAs in 2003, making a remarkable 20 in all. He’d already received awards from the Brisbane and Sydney Entertainment Centres for being their highest grossing artist of all time. If Australia ever got around to becoming a republic, John was a shoe-in for president.

  John marked all this pomp and ceremony by doing what came naturally: he played a series of late-year shows at the Twin Towns club on the far north coast of New South Wales and at Penrith Panthers, a huge outer-Sydney pokie palace. Wheatley, meanwhile, was putting together the final pieces of a highly lucrative new recording deal with BMG; John would commit to another five albums over the next 10 years. So much for The Last Time.

  Unlike virtually all his peers, John’s popularity wasn’t fading. If anything, he was becoming even bigger as the years rolled on.

  In the background of all this activity, however, the situation wasn’t so rosy. Glenn Wheatley’s business woes were far from over. In the mid-1990s, he’d set up a new company, Talentworks, wholly owned by John, since as part of his ongoing deed of arrangement Wheatley was not allowed to be a director of a company. Much of 1996 had been spent building the company. John had played at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix at an event staged by Talentworks. The huge Jack of Hearts tour followed. It had seemed that Wheatley was back on his feet: at least debt-free, if not completely flush.