by Jeff Apter
Yet the band’s live performances received good press. The influential trade magazine Billboard covered a two-night run in mid-June at a San Diego venue named Humphrey’s, and singled John out for praise. ‘Not only is Farnham a much better singer than former frontman Glenn Shorrock,’ stated writer Thomas K. Arnold, ‘he is also far more charismatic on stage, jumping about like a madman and enticing the rest of the group to do the same. Farnham’s delivery brought a new sense of passion to the old hits.’ Arnold had obviously caught the band on a night when John’s microphone cord hadn’t been tampered with.
Regardless, John could see quite clearly that the Good Ship LRB was listing badly. He would return from the road to the rented, nondescript house in suburban Bulleen he shared with Jill and Robbie. The high life was somewhere else.
By mid-July 1985 John and the band were rocking ‘Playing to Win’ at the Oz for Africa appeal, staged in Sydney. One of their fellow acts on the bill was INXS, who were poised to seize the momentum that the Little River Band had established for hard-touring Australian bands. LRB drummer Derek Pellicci had been right when he said that he and the band had ‘created a four-lane highway right across America for other acts to follow’. But for LRB, things were different. After three final Melbourne dates in August 1985, John and the band went to ground. They seemed as good as done.
‘John Farnham was incredibly unhappy,’ Glenn Wheatley wrote of this major crossroads in Farnham’s career. By early 1986 John was quietly talking with his manager about another album under his own name; he felt the time was right. John wanted to get back to the solo life, and the sooner the better. Wheatley, of course, was in the awkward position of answering to both John as a solo act and to LRB as their manager.
Events helped hasten John’s move. After another LRB album, 1986’s nondescript No Reins, came and went, the inevitable happened: Capitol dropped the band from their roster. Wheatley didn’t receive so much as a phone call, despite the amazing run he and the band had experienced with the label. But Capitol had other priorities in the mid-1980s: a rejuvenated Tina Turner, up-and-comers Crowded House, Canadians Heart and Brits Duran Duran. They were all conjuring up hits, unlike LRB.
Inadvertently, this disaster actually proved beneficial for Farnham and Wheatley. While Goble and the remaining remnants of LRB attempted to make one more charge at America – remarkably, they managed to convince Glenn Shorrock to re-join – both John and Glenn opted out, quitting the band, agreeing the time was right to move on.
Farnham had come a long way over the past few years – 385 live shows, three albums, countless TV spots, interviews, close encounters with royalty and entertainment greats – yet his LRB tenure ended with little more than a shrug. As his last hurrah, John played a week’s-worth of low-key shows with the band, ending with a 13 April 1986 gig at the Olympic Hotel in Melbourne’s suburban Preston. And that was it.
Glenn Wheatley, admittedly, had accomplished his dream of turning an Australian band into superstars in America, while still maintaining a base in Oz. But for John, his dream of success with LRB had turned very sour; there was too much bickering, too many restrictions. He’d become little more than a hired hand.
Glenn Wheatley knew what had to be done.
‘Now it was time for me,’ he wrote, ‘to pursue other challenges – the main one being to put John Farnham up where he belonged.’
11
WHISPERING JACK PHANTOM
John’s difficult stretch with LRB had taught him that he needed to be his own man; he had to go his own way. He wasn’t a natural team player; decision by committee wasn’t his style. As he explained in an interview soon after leaving the band, ‘We used to sit down as a seven-man unit, including Glenn Wheatley. Everything was done democratically and diplomatically, majority ruled. I think that was good … but that can be hard, too.’
John admitted to not always relating to their songs’ lyrics; he also questioned the band’s song selection. As a solo performer, he’d be able to control the latter. As for the former, he could also be a bit pickier as a soloist with the lyrics of the songs he chose to record. John needed to feel a song in order to sing it well. And he didn’t always feel the LRB songs.
From Graeham Goble’s perspective, John’s time fronting the band gave him ‘the motivation that focused him on his own career’. David Hirschfelder agreed, saying that LRB ‘strengthened’ John and gave him the drive to find his own voice – quite literally. Wheatley said something very similar, stating that LRB ‘hardened’ Farnham – it had to, especially when it became clear that at least one Capitol exec was lobbying to get Glenn Shorrock back into the group. That kind of pressure could only toughen a guy up. Yet there remained a part of John, as always, that figured he was somehow at fault for the band’s poor returns.
For a long time after his departure, John would hold himself responsible for LRB’s lack of success during his time, but as usual, he was shouldering way more than his fair share of guilt. The band was past their commercial peak, and no number of makeovers, line-up changes and / or backstage brawls could alter that inalienable truth.
‘John blamed himself for the relative failure of Little River Band after he joined,’ Glenn Wheatley told a Fairfax reporter not long after the split. ‘I kept telling him there’s always a downturn after an original combination breaks up or changes around.
‘It was no reflection on John that Capitol Records in America became negative about LRB, but he felt he had something to prove [as a solo artist]. This time he put himself very much on the line.’
Still, Wheatley went as far as to admit that if Farnham’s first post-LRB effort didn’t connect, his career could prove ‘extremely difficult to resurrect.’ That potential downside was unavoidable: what if LRB, despite their chronic problems, was as high as John would ever climb? He still had no Australian record deal. It had been that way since the late 1970s. Uncovered had been rejected by virtually every local label only to be rescued by Wheatley, who released it himself. And now that John was back to working solo, what kind of music should he be recording and performing? He couldn’t retreat to playing the old ‘Sadie’-era hits; nor could he tap into LRB’s hefty back catalogue of songs. His 1985 setlist, such as it was, would comprise Uncovered tracks and covers of hits by ZZ Top and Toto. Hardly what would become the definitive John Farnham songbook.
‘I don’t set out to portray any kind of image; it’s just me,’ John said as he got his solo house back in order. He figured his problem was credibility. ‘People never saw me as a credible singer. Being tagged with soft music like “Sadie” … but that after all was years ago. That’s not in my set anymore.’
The musical mood had shifted considerably since he cut Uncovered in 1980. The mid ’80s were ruled by the polished sounds of such local acts as Real Life – also managed by Wheatley – and Mondo Rock and INXS, while internationals like a-ha, the Eurythmics, Madonna and Foreigner were everywhere. ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’, ‘Take on Me’ and ‘Would I Lie to You?’ were all huge records in 1985, both in sound and sales. The commonality between all these acts was their studio slickness; in order to get played on the radio, and thereby compete on the charts, a record needed to sound huge – even blue-collar rocker Bruce Springsteen had embraced the latest technology. His smash ‘Born in the USA’ typified the type of rolling sonic thunder that John needed to capture in order to compete. He had come close with his solo recordings in LA, when he was moonlighting from LRB; he knew what was required.
The introduction of MTV, which launched in 1981, now meant that a record simply sounding good was no longer enough: if a song was to become a hit, it needed an accompanying flashy, airbrushed, attention-grabbing video. It was an entirely new world. Making music, clearly, had come a long way since John’s one-take-and-you’re-done, hit-and-run beginnings. What he now required were collaborators, people to help him find the right songs and then give them a radio-friendly sheen. He also needed to update his look.
Regardless of
the challenges, John was up for it.
‘Bugger it,’ he told Wheatley in a quiet moment, ‘I’m getting older. What else can I do?’
‘I think he was very hungry,’ said Jill, in a rare interview, ‘financially and for his own self – to prove to himself [that he could succeed on his own terms].’
Wheatley’s immediate task – while John hit the road during winter 1985, with a new John Farnham Band, a tour so successful it was extended by a week – was to recruit the right producer for John. He needed someone with real empathy, who would give his voice the chance to shine. American great Quincy Jones, who’d made magic with Michael Jackson, was on Wheatley’s long-list, as was David Foster, a solid-gold American hitmaker who’d worked with Boz Scaggs, Chicago and Kenny Loggins. Despite being a big Farnham fan, Foster passed; he couldn’t commit to working with someone without a label deal. Jones, too, was a no.
A few years earlier, during a New Year’s Eve bash at Melbourne’s Billboard nightclub, John had met Ross Fraser, who worked for Wheatley. Fraser was blown away by John’s performance and his friendly demeanour.
‘Jeez, I’d like to work with that guy one day,’ he told Wheatley as they headed off into the night.
Fraser tour-managed Real Life, but had aspirations to produce. He struck up a deal with Wheatley: if he could find the right songs for John, perhaps they could then entice a ‘name’ producer to travel to Australia to record with John; until then Fraser could continue working with Farnham. That agreed, Fraser and Farnham sat down and started listening to demo tapes, searching for songs; over time they combed through something like 4000 recordings. ‘Boxes and boxes’ of tapes, as Fraser would recall. They agreed that a song had to ‘smack them in the face’ before it made their shortlist. One song the team rejected, curiously, was ‘We Built This City’, a number one in January 1986 for Starship. Clearly it smacked the Americans harder than it did Farnham and Fraser.
Wheatley also helped with this search for songs, using the clout he had established in the world of music publishing – he repped Arista Music in Australia, as well as the Bob Seger, LRB and John Lennon catalogues.
‘I got on the phone and used whatever leverage I could to get some songs,’ Wheatley wrote of their ongoing search.
In October 1985 work began in earnest on the album, in the humble suburban garage of Farnham’s rented house. Wheatley was covering all their costs; John remained a man without a label deal. (Over the 12-month genesis of Whispering Jack, Wheatley shelled out $150,000 of his own money, extending his home mortgage to cover the costs.) With ace guitarist Brett Garsed – a fellow former plumber, in his early twenties, now a member of John’s band – and LRB alumnus Hirschfelder, a guy with a feel for cutting-edge technology and sounds, John started to record some basic tracks on a four-track recorder, with Fraser producing. They assembled some rudimentary equipment: a drum machine, a Yamaha keyboard, Hirschfelder’s sequencer and his Fairlight, very much instruments of the moment, capable of generating big sounds. Any disagreements – and there were very few – would be negotiated over a game of table tennis. Producer Fraser usually won, although he’d admit to ‘throwing’ a few games for Farnham.
Farnham and Fraser grew close. ‘We understand each other,’ the singer said.
As for the bearded Hirschfelder, ‘He and I have a great working relationship,’ Farnham said. ‘With him I can sit down and he can interpret my ideas, which is fantastic.’
To mark their bond, John and Hirschfelder let their hair grow out into serious-looking mullets; it wasn’t just the sound of the album that was big.
Fraser craved making a modern-sounding record, something truly cutting edge.
‘I was dying to do a high-tech album,’ he admitted, ‘lots of computers, drum machines. I wanted to take all these tacky machines and put it together in some sort of whiz-bang sound – so did John.’
At the heart of all this technology was one very human ingredient: John’s voice. The voice.
Among the early songs demo-ed were ‘Pressure Down’, ‘Reasons’ (written by Sam See, who’d toured with John) and ‘A Touch of Paradise’, a Ross Wilson co-write previously cut by Mondo Rock. John had written a rare song, entitled ‘Let Me Out’, but, as usual, found it hard to come up with quality compositions of his own. Still, it wasn’t a bad start to what was essentially a garage recording. After a month in the Farnham sleepout, the team moved into Melbourne’s AAV Studios.
There was no great anticipation within Oz music circles about the album in progress. When Fraser told anyone he was working with John Farnham, there’d be an unmistakable pause, a nervous silence.
‘Oh. Really? So what else are you doing?’
‘The radio stations weren’t exactly waiting for the next John Farnham album … to add to their playlists,’ admitted Glenn Wheatley. He knew it was going to be a tough sell.
Yet recording continued in the knowledge that those on the inside – Fraser, Farnham and the players – were fully aware they had something special in the works.
Wheatley, meanwhile, continued to try and get a record label on board. First port of call was Capitol in America, who, under a clause in LRB’s existing deal, could pick up John’s solo work if so inclined. But they passed, as did the various local labels Wheatley approached. All the while, as the months passed – suddenly it was early 1986 – Wheatley kept covering the recording costs, keeping John, Fraser and the others on a retainer. Wheatley was worried, not just about his mounting bills, but the fact no label was willing to commit: didn’t they hear the record’s potential in these early recordings? Did they have tin ears?
In order to stay strong and maintain his resolve, Wheatley would flash back to his early days with LRB, who’d been knocked back by virtually every US label – most famously by United Artists’ head Artie Mogull, who compared LRB’s music to the sound ‘your nails make when you scrape them down a blackboard’. And look what happened next: Capitol got on board, swiftly followed by a bounty of Top 10 singles and album sales of 25 million. Lightning might just strike twice.
‘I did it then,’ Wheatley said of the time, ‘so I knew I could do it again.’
Still, the bills were starting to hurt. And when Farnham agreed that Fraser was the right guy to produce the entire album, Wheatley’s worries intensified: what label would touch a record by a novice producer? He hadn’t given up on the idea of having the record produced by a ‘name’, someone that would make it easier to sell. That wasn’t Ross Fraser.
‘Now,’ Glenn noted, with more than a little concern, ‘not only did I have a singer that no company wanted, I had a first-time producer as well.’
Work on the record continued well into the new year. While the album was taking great shape, it still lacked that one key song that could become the focal point for the entire LP. That was soon to be resolved in a very random fashion, the happiest accident of John Farnham’s career.
Doris Tyler worked as Wheatley’s label manager, and she’d been helping John and Fraser sort through the seemingly never-ending tapes of potential songs. Buried deep on a cassette gathering dust in a bottom drawer was a song called ‘You’re the Voice’, which caught Tyler’s ear. When she got it to Ross Fraser, he was hit by a thunderbolt: this was it! He’d found the killer song they needed to round out the album.
Fraser jumped in his car and drove straight to Farnham’s house in suburban Bulleen, the demo tape blasting on his car stereo for the entire 30-minute ride.
He and John sat down in the garage and played the anthem-in-waiting on a boombox.
‘What do you think?’ Fraser asked.
‘I love it,’ John replied. He connected deeply with ‘You’re the Voice’; it was one of those songs that he felt had been written specifically for him.
‘And you know what it needs?’ John said, clearly enthused. ‘A bagpipe solo!’
‘That’s not very rock-and-roll,’ Fraser said, shaking his head.
‘Oh yes it is,’ insisted John. As a long-time
fan of AC/DC, he had their epic ‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’ in mind. At the heart of that ode to the tough times of ‘playin’ in a rock roll band’ was a blazing pipe solo, courtesy of the late, great Bon Scott. As bizarre as the idea sounded, John proved to be totally on the money.
‘You’re the Voice’, unlike many of the songs John recorded with LRB, had an empowering lyric that he totally related to and wanted to be identified with. It was a vaguely political song of the people – nothing too overt, but punchy enough when necessary, especially just before the chorus kicked in.
‘When you hear a singer interpret a piece,’ John explained, ‘whether he wrote the song or not, you automatically attribute that meaning to that voice, that face’ – and from 1986 on, John and ‘You’re the Voice’ would be inseparable.
‘You’re the Voice’ almost didn’t make it to John. The song was a four-way co-write: its creators were New Zealander Chris Thompson, who’d sung the hit ‘Blinded by the Light’ for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and worked on Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds; keyboardist Andy Qunta, who’d done time in Oz band Icehouse; Keith Reid, a lyricist par excellence, who’d written for Brit band Procol Harum, including their epic ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’; and Maggie Ryder, an English session muso who’d worked with the Eurythmics and Queen. As creative CVs went, theirs were hard to top.
Chris Thompson told his label he wanted to record ‘You’re the Voice’ for a solo album, but they rejected the idea. Only then did it go onto a tape for music publishers to shop around. His record company’s loss proved to be Farnham’s very big gain. (In a told-you-so footnote, American David Foster, who rejected the idea of recording with Farnham, included the song on a 1990 album he produced entitled River of Love. As for Thompson, he cut his own version in 2014. Farnham had proved its worth.)
