Farnham’s struggle to become one of Australia’s best voices

Melbourne filmmaker Poppy Stockwell thought she knew John Farnham before she began research for the new feature length documentary about the beloved Aussie singer, Finding the Voice, two years ago.

What she discovered was a story of epic proportions, a hero’s journey full of allies and enemies, trials and tribulations, triumphs and failures worthy of Salinger, Tolkien or George Lucas.

“I was blown away,” says Stockwell, who worked as a producer on Triple J before moving to ABC TV’s Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent, as well as making the highly personal, award-winning 2007 documentary, Searching 4 Sandeep.

“The highs are really high and the lows are really low. And that’s what you’re looking for in great stories, is night and day and everything in between.”

Finding the Voice celebrates Farnham’s struggles as much as his achievements. After all, the English-born singer was 38 years old when he finally unveiled his magnum opus, 1986 album Whispering Jack, which has sold more than 1.7 million copies in this country to cement its status as our highest-selling album by an Australian artist.

The 92-minute film rightly dissects the making of that album, which claimed six awards at the inaugural ARIAs in 1987 and features mega-hit power ballad You’re the Voice.

That’s quite a tale in itself. Our then washed-up hero, too poor to take his children to McDonald’s for dinner, embarked on what Bruce Springsteen fans might call a last-chance power drive funded with $150,000 from Glenn Wheatley remortgaging his home.

Farnham, producer Ross Fraser and young musical wizard David Hirschfelder (and his various state-of-the-art keyboards and Australian-made sampler prototype, the Fairlight CMI) retreated to the singer’s garage in suburban Bulleen to record what felt like the last roll of the dice.

Before Whispering Jack, Farnham was playing small bars and clubs, backed by a band that barely knew his material.

Even the lead single, You’re the Voice, was a last-gasp addition to the record, notably preferred to another song on offer, We Built this City, which was later recorded by US pop outfit Starship.

While Wheatley, Fraser and Hirschfelder are among the mentors and allies of this quest — Samwise, Pippin and Merry to Farnham’s Frodo — there are also a few villains.

And if anyone were to be cast as Gollum, it would be Farnham’s first manager Darryl Sambell, who exercised what Stockwell describes as “asphyxiating control” over the young singer.

After discovering the aspiring pop star performing a support slot in country Victoria with his band, Strings Unlimited, Sambell billed him as Johnny Farnham and pushed him into cheesy stunts to promote novelty debut single Sadie (The Cleaning Lady).

Finding the Voice reveals the Svengali fed his charge a diet of uppers and downers to maintain the pace of recording, performing and publicity. According to the doco, Sambell’s own addictions, mainly to booze, led him to scupper Farnham’s first foray into the UK market. The dispirited singer returned home with his tail between his legs.

Sadie became an albatross around Farnham’s neck and was pushed into the broom closet for decades until the success of Whispering Jack and a fun Hirschfelder arrangement made the superstar comfortable enough to revisit the 1967 single in concert.

Stockwell reckons the success of Sadie says more about Aussie music fans than it does about the young Farnham.

“We made that No. 1, the highest-selling single of the 60s,” she laughs. “He just got cajoled into singing that song.”

Stockwell says those difficult early years under Sambell were “tricky and painful” to explore, as was Farnham’s short tenure with world-conquering Aussie supergroup Little River Band, also managed by Wheatley.

Farnesy assumed lead vocals with the band after guitarist and songwriter Graeham Goble, who produced his 1980 solo album Uncovered (home to hit Beatles cover Help!), successfully agitated for singer Glenn Shorrock to be dumped.

While LRB were an incredible training ground for Farnham, who hadn’t played stadiums before, intraband tensions soon soured the situation.

Goble is portrayed in Finding the Voice as a control freak. When Farnham’s natural showmanship threatens to relegate the rest of LRB to a mere backing band, Goble gets roadies to nail his microphone stand to the stage and gaffer tape the lead to the stage floor.

“The rigor and the professionalism of LRB bordered on obsessive-compulsive, and Graeham himself would say that now,” Stockwell says.

“I was very keen to include Graeham in the film, and that took some convincing.”

While she has no idea whether Goble has seen the doco, Stockwell is not worried about any repercussions for his blunt portrayal.

“There’s an unspoken trust to do the right thing by their story and the story at large,” she says. “I don’t think there’s anything for Graeham to worry about — the film tells it how it was.”

Goble recently said at the Sydney premiere of Finding the Voice that he “called the shots” in LRB, but he refuted Wheatley’s claims that managing the group was “like managing World War II”.

“You always have your creative differences,” he added, “but I honestly don’t remember fighting.”

Finding the Voice has almost wall-to-wall music, and the sections with Little River Band performing massive venues with either Shorrock or Farnham are exhilarating.

“You’re seeing a band at their absolute peak, it’s like watching a horse gallop,” the filmmaker says. “It’s watching a group of people really going for it, then imploding.”

Stockwell is a bigger fan of Farnham after completing a “crash course” in his back catalogue and watching hours of footage of live performances.

You’re seeing a band at their absolute peak, it’s like watching a horse gallop.

“We all love his music but when you study it like I have studied it … his vulnerability and ability to interpret the songs just blows me away,” she says.

Stockwell describes herself as a storyteller and admits to having little background in music. She says Wheatley was among the producers who approached her about directing Finding the Voice, which stuck after she suggested the working title very early in production.

Wheatley’s sudden death because of complications from COVID-19 on February 1, 2022 was a crushing blow. The former guitarist for blues rockers The Masters Apprentices turned superstar manager, he not only revived Farnesy’s career but also discovered Delta Goodrem, and was a driving force behind the documentary.

“Glenn’s death was such a shock and just horrible,” Stockwell says. “We’d shoot him (for the documentary) and he was just a ball of energy.

“(He just had) this energy and passion for Australian music and culture, and was so behind making this film. It’s hard getting films up, you know. It’s hard.”

Wheatley’s widow Gaynor stepped into the breach. As a long-time close friend of Farnham and his wife Jill, she was able to offer insightful comments that help tie Finding the Voice together.

“Gaynor’s sort of the narrator of the film,” says Stockwell, who says Wheatley’s death sharpened her focus to finish the doco.

“We always wanted to do a good job but (Glenn’s death) really gave us resolve to get this film made and do the best we could for Glenn.”

Olivia Newton-John’s death in August 2022 after a long battle with cancer, was another blow. Stockwell managed to interview the Aussie music icon shortly before her death.

“We’d been waiting for Olivia for almost a year,” she says. “She wasn’t well enough.”

After a call out of the blue, Stockwell jumped on Zoom to chat to Farnham’s great friend and occasional collaborator. She was shocked to hear Newton-John’s frail voice down the line from California.

“My heart just broke,” she says. “She was so committed — she just loved John. That she would make that time despite her health was just incredible.”

Newton-John is among a musical who’s who paying tribute to Farnham’s remarkable career, alongside Jimmy Barnes, Celine Dion, Robbie Williams, Richard Marx and Tommy Emmanuel.

Co-writer Chris Thompson reveals he initially refused permission for Farnham to record You’re the Voice, but relented when he heard the final version complete with bagpipes, a sample of a car door slamming, and Farnham’s impassioned vocals.

Daryl Braithwaite, who has spawned his own Aussie anthem The Horses, thanks Farnham for helping revive his career by lending his vocals to several tracks on his comeback album, Rise.

While Finding the Voice was started well before Farnham’s diagnosis with mouth cancer and subsequent surgery, the doco would serve as an adequate epitaph.

When asked whether she had a contingency plan in case the music legend died before the doco hit cinemas on May 18, Stockwell refuses to answer.

“I’m a mere mortal,” she states. “He’s a titan and it’s not for me to comment on that.

“We need to celebrate our artists. We’re great at celebrating our sports stars, and they should be celebrated.

“I hope this film makes people feel so proud of being Australian. This is one of the best musicians the world has ever produced.”

The heroic arc is complete with footage of Farnham commanding the stage in leather pants and flowing mullet at Munich’s massive Rockpop in Concert festival in 1987. If you were going to build a statue in honour of Farnesy, this is the template.

“He’s a total god and just so beautiful, so in control and so centre,” Stockwell says, adding “after all he’s been through”.

While many Australian music biopics are screened over a few nights on commercial TV, and more “content” goes straight to streaming services, it seems almost perverse that Finding the Voice is in cinemas.

“Because it is absolutely a cinema experience,” Stockwell asserts. “Like seeing Top Gun: Maverick on TV versus seeing it at the cinema.

“This is as close to one of those epic stadium shows that won’t happen again. We won’t see LRB in a stadium again. We won’t see Whispering Jack performed at a stadium again.

“Go and live it. Have that collective audience experience.”

John Farnham: Finding the Voice is in cinemas now.