Playing to Win

by Jeff Apter

  When his deed ended, on 31 December 1996, the Wheatleys were holidaying with the Farnhams, this time in Whistler, Canada – ski country. John had insisted on being with ‘Wheat’ when his ‘sentence’ ended. On New Year’s morning the pair awoke at dawn, well before their wives or children. They were the first people out on the mountain; it was solitary, beautiful in its isolation. They scaled right to the peak and proceeded to ski downhill, not knowing quite where they were heading.

  At one point, Wheatley stopped and surveyed the slope.

  ‘I’m not sure if I can do this,’ he said to Farnham.

  John knew better.

  ‘Come on, Wheat,’ John insisted, ‘of course you can.’

  He was right: from there, they both virtually sailed to the bottom of the mountain. Of course he could do it.

  Yet despite Farnham’s ongoing support and friendship, a big dark cloud was zeroing in on Wheatley. After 1993’s hugely successful Talk of the Town tour, Wheatley had been introduced to Philip Egglishaw, principal of the bank Strachans, based in the Jersey Isles, a tax haven. Egglishaw outlined an arrangement: in order to avoid being slugged with a full 47% tax in Oz, Wheatley would move his money to a Swiss bank account and bring it back into the country as a loan. All he’d have to pay was 15% withholding tax in Switzerland. Wheatley transferred $256,000, unaware that Egglishaw was taking that 15% as a fee; the withholding tax wasn’t paid. It didn’t really matter anyway, because although Wheatley said he wasn’t aware of it, the entire set-up was illegal.

  In 2004, with Talentworks now in full swing, Wheatley did the same with $400,000 he earned promoting a boxing title fight featuring Aussie hero Kostya Tszyu. He would write of the venture, ‘I justified it at the time by the fact I was paying a lot of tax [in Australia] and I was aware that a lot of companies and individuals were doing the same thing.’

  On 9 June 2005 Wheatley’s home and office were raided by officers from the federal police, the tax office, even Australian Customs. It was part of a sting known as Project Wickenby, set up to pursue prominent Australians who were alleged tax cheats – Paul Hogan and his manager, John Cornell, among them. Wheatley said he had no idea what the raid was about: perhaps, due to his involvement with the music biz, it had something to do with drugs? He could only speculate.

  That wasn’t even close. Philip Egglishaw’s scheme had been exposed and Wheatley was one of several names found on the banker’s laptop, hence the raids, which consumed something like eight hours at his office and home. Throughout investigations, Wheatley maintained that he had been naive, rather than deliberately deceptive, and in mid-December 2005 he was given assurance that if he agreed to help with the investigation he’d be given a non-custodial sentence. He signed an agreement to that effect. Unfortunately, that deal was revoked a month later. His future was very much uncertain.

  As for John, he’d gotten back out on the road, yet again. He had agreed to a double-headed tour with ageless sex-symbol Tom Jones, another high-profile fan of John’s, in February 2005, playing shows in John’s regular happy hunting grounds (and two outdoor shows in Sydney, at the Domain).

  The pair talked up their tour on Channel 9’s Hey Hey It’s Saturday. This time Jones was the man in black – pulling off an unlikely duet on the terribly earnest ‘My Yiddishe Momme’. Their relationship had its roots way back in 1993, when they teamed up at the Logies, growling and swaggering their way through ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’. They looked and sounded great together, two middle-aged troopers oozing sex appeal, with voices that could fit pretty much any repertoire. ‘Long Way’ went over so well that the normally staid Logies audience dragged them back for a reprise.

  Their vocal dexterity proved handy, because when they hit the road in 2005, Tom and John tackled a set list that comprised their hits (Jones’s ‘It’s Not Unusual’ and ‘Delilah’, John’s ‘Playing to Win’ and ‘You’re the Voice’), along with soul greats like ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’, ‘Try a Little Tenderness’, even Randy Newman via Three-Dog Night’s ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come’. The show was designed along the lines of a heavyweight bout, both taking the stage after a warning announcement: ‘Let’s get ready to rumble!’ They also knew when to get out of each other’s way, John giving Jones space to belt out standards like ‘Green Green Grass of Home’; Jones repaying the favour for some Whispering Jack-era numbers. In the end, though, it was a vocal love match. (Farnham would go on to take part in other double-header tours: with Lionel Richie in 2014, and then Olivia Newton-John in 2015. The format worked for him.)

  ‘Fellow fans of live music, take note: this is not what you might call a regular audience, or a regular gig,’ noted Fairfax’s George Palathingal of the 12 February Sydney show. ‘[Farnham and Jones] are, in fact, a lot more fun than many. It’s … an evening of shameless nostalgia, Vegas-cheesy entertainment and sometimes terribly dated music, yes. But it’s also a refreshingly unpretentious, enjoyable one.’

  During their Domain show, a roving camera caught a middle-aged fan down the front, in a summery dress, standing atop her chair. Slowly, she bent forward, wriggled out of her undies and hurled them in the direction of the stage. In Melbourne, during the bump and grind of ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’, several pairs of knickers were hurled at John and Tom. John’s fans could be evangelical, even lusty sometimes, but you didn’t usually find a lot of warm undies on stage at a Farnham gig.

  With Wheatley knee-deep in legal hassles, John had some dramas of his own, but on two vastly different fronts. Just prior to transforming himself into Teen Angel for the 2005 Australian Grease tour, John found himself entangled in an awkward spot of Trans-Tasman politics. John had responded positively to a request to perform at the Gallipoli dawn service for the 90th anniversary of the ANZAC landing, in April 2005, along with New Zealanders the Finn brothers. On paper, it appeared to be a perfectly reasonable prospect: Australia’s favourite entertainer performing at a site of great historical significance to Australia.

  John had the backing of Bill Crews, the national president of the RSL. ‘It’s not a rock concert,’ Crews emphasised. ‘John Farnham was very mindful of that and choosing things that were appropriate to the occasion.’ Farnham also had the support of army chief Peter Cosgrove, who he’d met in Timor back in ’99, and Prime Minister John Howard – in fact, the original request for Farnham to sing had come via government channels.

  In mid-February New Zealand PM Helen Clark and Howard discussed the ‘Farnham situation’ at the Beehive in Wellington, as part of Howard’s goodwill mission to New Zealand. It was their first point of discussion in their meeting. Clark, who opposed the idea, dug in, and the proposal was shut down.

  ‘I think the bottom line,’ Clark told reporters, ‘is what we, as the descendants of the Anzac tradition, do there will be dignified, will be appropriate.’

  Apparently a performance from John Farnham wasn’t deemed appropriate, or dignified. The Voice would be silenced, at least as far as Gallipoli 2005 was concerned.

  Wheatley relayed the bad news to Farnham.

  ‘It is a very important day in our calendar and the emotion of what this was going to be, being a 90th anniversary, I think, was going to be extraordinary,’ Wheatley told the ABC’s World Today program. ‘We would have treated it as an honour, treated the show with respect, in the way that it should be.’

  John’s next challenge was rather different. In the wake of his successful double act with Tom Jones, he had agreed to another bill-sharing tour, this time with American Stevie Nicks, which was set for February 2006. The plan in place with promoter Andrew McManus seemed relatively straightforward: six gigs in Australia and New Zealand. The shows were double bills – that is, Farnham and Nicks split everything down the middle, from onstage time to publicity and billing. It wouldn’t be a shared set, as John had done with Tom Jones; they would each have 75 minutes on stage with their own bands.

  All seemed fair and reasonable, even if it was immediately apparent the vibe was a bit strange. I
n a pre-tour interview, Nicks said she felt that she might have met John before, ‘but I can’t bet on that absolutely. He’s an Aussie, right?’ She’d know his name well enough by the end of the tour.

  On the afternoon of their first gig, John and band arrived to do their sound check, as usual. But Nicks was nowhere to be seen. Her band came in and sound checked without her. That’s a bit odd, John thought, looking on. At the airport, Nicks’s private jet awaited her, while John and his band had tickets to travel commercially. The gulf between the Californian diva and the grounded Aussie belter was quickly becoming obvious.

  John agreed to play first on the opening night at Boondall, just outside of Brisbane. But he didn’t know that Nicks was coming off an eventful day, having changed hotel three times, her hefty entourage in tow. She wasn’t feeling settled. John did his 75 minutes, the crowd loved it – of course – and then Nicks went on. And on. And on. By the time her set finally wrapped up, some of the crowd had left. She’d played for almost two hours. Nicks had a new album to promote and hits to revisit and had no intention of letting an agreement get in the way of that.

  The next morning, the American diva met with the promoter.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me I was coming on after the Frank Sinatra of Australia?’

  She was livid. Nicks wasn’t sure the crowd was there for her; they’d made far more noise for John.

  Then the review came in of the previous night’s show. Oh dear. The headline said it all: ‘Farnesy: A Hard Act for Stevie to Follow’. It went on to question why Nicks had agreed to share a bill with Australia’s favourite son, given that his following was so feverish, his fans so devoted – and vocal. Farnham had ruled the stage in Brisbane.

  John woke Wheatley and showed him the paper. They knew that Nicks wasn’t going to take this well. A hasty sit-down was arranged.

  An agreement was reached: there was just no way Stevie Nicks was going to follow John Farnham on stage, at least not for the remaining Australian shows. They’d swap places in New Zealand, where Nicks believed, with some justification, that she was the bigger name.

  Next stop Perth. Nicks, now opening the show, didn’t follow orders and shorten her 100-minute set. This meant there was no way John could do his 75 minutes without the promoter taking a $100,000 hit on the curfew. John reacted to Nicks’s arrogance in the best way he knew how; he went out and put on a killer show, curfew be damned. As Wheatley put it, ‘The effect on him was just to try that extra bit harder. He was clearly the star of the show.’

  By the time the two parties crossed the ditch, the strain was showing on everyone. When it rained in Auckland, promoter McManus hoped it would lead to cancellation of the show; anything to spare him more turmoil. He wasn’t so lucky – the clouds dispersed, the rain subsided and the gig proceeded.

  To the disappointment of his Kiwi fans, John had now trimmed his set to an hour. ‘Words cannot express how angry and disappointed I am that John was forced to leave out so much and do only a one hour set,’ a follower named Matt wrote online. ‘It was also disappointing that John had very little to say to the crowd on account of the time limitation put on him so he spent most of his time singing.’

  As he played, Wheatley received a backstage request from Camp Nicks: John had to cut his set even more, to 45 minutes – he was running too long. If John went beyond 45 minutes, he was fired. But Wheatley didn’t budge. They’d already made enough compromises. They had to take a stand. Wheatley let John’s set run for an hour, as originally planned. The crowd lapped it up.

  McManus tapped Wheatley on the shoulder during John’s set.

  ‘Stevie just fired me,’ he said. She was threatening to leave the tour.

  At their next stop, New Plymouth, John let his music do the talking by playing a powerhouse set. An hour-long powerhouse set. To hell with the consequences. Thankfully it was the end of the tour.

  John may have stood his ground, admirably, but the entire Nicks experience left a bitter taste.

  Glenn Wheatley’s day of reckoning arrived on 19 July 2007, when judgement was handed down on his charge of tax avoidance. He’d pleaded guilty, and ‘Wheats’ still hoped he might be able to elude a jail sentence; he’d even joked to his wife, Gaynor, that he’d be home for lunch. He had fair reason to feel optimistic: he’d told the truth, paid his ($400,000) tax bill and hadn’t hidden behind a team of lawyers. But the ATO had backed out of their original deal; Wheatley had no guarantee that the judge would rule out jail time. The charge of tax evasion carried a possible sentence of up to 16 years. That was no joke.

  Wheatley came prepared. John had written a glowing character reference for him, as had Bert Newton, Sydney Swans’ chairman Richard Colless and army general Peter Cosgrove. All were used as supporting material.

  ‘I’m ashamed of what I’ve done,’ Wheatley admitted as his sentence was about to be handed down. ‘I’m ashamed of what I’ve brought on my family, who have had to suffer a lot.’

  ‘I sentence you to 30 months’ jail,’ judge Tim Wood told Wheatley, ‘with 15 months minimum. You will spend a minimum of 15 months in jail and shall be released on the 18th of October 2008. Take the prisoner away.’

  Wheatley was led to a cell, where, in his own words, he suffered the ‘anxiety attack from hell’.

  It would be almost two very long and painful years before one of the most successful partnerships in Australian entertainment history, John Farnham and Glenn Wheatley – ‘Farnesy’ and ‘Wheats’ – would be back on course.

  20

  GOOD DEEDS AND CLOSE TIES

  In 2009 a golden opportunity arose for Farnham: the chance to open the Lyric Theatre, in Sydney’s Star Casino, during September. Sinatra and his Rat Pack had made the casino strip in Las Vegas their home back in the day – why shouldn’t John find a home at the Star? It was a different scenario from all his previous tours and ‘comebacks’: no big tops, no outback train odysseys, no one-star motels with dodgy showers. He’d begin a new tour at the Star and this time the people would come to him.

  John hadn’t played a show since Wheatley’s 2007 imprisonment; he hadn’t toured since the Stevie Nicks debacle. He popped his head up occasionally – he sang for (and with) newlyweds Bec and Lleyton Hewitt; he’d also been named a Goodwill Ambassador for Dairy Farmers, helping to raise money for drought-affected Aussie farmers. There’d also been a 20th anniversary edition of Whispering Jack, packaged with a second disc containing a live recording. But John didn’t tour to promote the album, at least not on its release. At the 2009 APRAs John had presented the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music to Sony chief and industry survivor Denis Handlin. Yet he hadn’t cut an album of original material since 2002’s The Last Time. Seven years was an eternity in the world of pop music. Maybe John really had retired.

  It was a very sombre Glenn Wheatley who opened proceedings on the morning of 27 May at the Star, addressing the press to announce John’s upcoming shows. Wheatley wasn’t that long out of Beechworth Detention Centre and his ensuing period of home detention, and was understandably media-wary.

  ‘I can’t tell you what a privilege it is to be in front of you today,’ he said by way of an introduction.

  Wheatley was no doubt thinking of his prison term, when his life had been stripped back to the essentials: a small cell, basic meals, a work routine, monotonous walks around the exercise yard and wary looks over his shoulder all day long. There was the occasional ‘contact’ visit with his wife and kids – but that was pretty much it.

  John, true to form, had visited ‘Wheats’ in Beechworth as often as he could, although from the start he had understood there’d be fallout as soon as Wheatley’s fellow prisoners got wind of his visits. John had to tread, and visit, warily. He needed to stay under the radar, for Wheatley’s sake.

  It didn’t work out that way, of course.

  John’s first visit came soon after Wheatley’s incarceration began in the winter of 2007. They hadn’t seen each other in month
s. One of the prison officers, a Mr Jones, turned out to be a big Farnham fan and tried his best to keep John’s visit low-key. Wheatley had spotted press outside the prison when he was first brought into Beechworth. So what if it was illegal to photograph a prisoner on the inside? This was a hot story.

  ‘It is daunting for anyone to visit a prison,’ Wheatley wrote of Farnham’s visit, ‘and I think John felt very uncomfortable, as he did get the whole prison talking and trying to get a glimpse of him.’

  ‘Hey, Wheats,’ an inmate shouted at Glenn one day, ‘you’re the most famous crim I know.’ Several others would burst into ‘Pressure Down’ when they spotted Wheatley in the yard. It became something of a Beechworth anthem during Wheatley’s 10-month stay inside.

  That was passably funny, but Wheatley also copped the downside: he was leaned on for money, favours and influence. It didn’t matter that his personal finances remained thinly stretched. His fellow inmates firmly believed that Wheatley was a powerful man: after all, John Farnham didn’t rock up to visit just anyone. There was little use in Wheatley trying to explain otherwise.

  John visited more than once, despite his discomfort. And he spoke out about Wheatley’s case, but only when it was safe – for Glenn, that is, his probation over – to do so. Wheatley was no tax fraud, John insisted; he’d simply made a big mistake, which he’d admitted to. He’d paid his hefty tax bill and was still put behind bars, while real tax-avoiders walked free. That sucked.