Forty years ago, an Australian showbiz vet dropped an album that not many people believed in. But the few that did really believed in it. The album was Whispering Jack, and the artist was John Farnham. A small team of people believed in him, like his manager Glenn Wheatley. Wheatley mortgaged his house to get the budget to record the album, and it was issued on his own label. With a relatively meager AUS$150.000 budget, Farnham couldn't go for a fancy producer, not that one proposed himself, so live sound engineer Ross Fraser became the album's producer, and stayed Farnham's producer throughout his career. Whispering Jack wasn't a sure thing, hell, for a while it looked like it wasn't even a thing.
The artist formerly known as Johnny Farnham was mainly remembered for the 1967 novelty hit "Sadie, The Cleaning Lady" that somehow became the most popular Australian song by an Australian artist of the 60s, and years as a teen idol singing lightweight pop fare. By the late 70s he was touring the oldies and cabaret circus and was doing musical theater. He had dropped a comeback solo album in 1981, Uncovered, that showed him now operating as a smooth AOR singer, leaving the oldies circuit middle of the road stuff behind. It was produced and mostly written by Litte River band's Graeham Goble, with many of the band members playing on it, so when Glen Shorrock left the Little River Band, Farnham was drafted in as his replacement.
The union was more of a marriage of convenience than true love: Farnham wasn't sure he was the right fit for the band, and some of his Little River Band band members felt the same way. While Farnham's debut with the band, The Net, had been a decent sized hit, the follow-ups Playing To Win and No Reins had dropped off considerably, charting in the lower 70s and 80s in their native Australia, where every other album had made the top twenty. So when Farnham left after No Reins in spring of 1986, he wasn't much further advanced as a solo star than five years earlier with Uncovered. No record labels were lining up to propose him a solo album deal. Thus the home-spun deal with borrowed money that could have ruined his manager. Given the song material they had gathered, Farnham and his team felt that Whispering Jack would do pretty well.
You could say that Whispering Jack did pretty well. You could also say that World War II was a minor disagreement. When the album dropped, no one expected it to essentially become the second-best selling album down under, outselling every album in Australian history but Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell (huh!?), though his second place was later usurped by * checks notes* Shania Twain (gulp!). One of the crazy things about Whispering Jack is how freakin' ordinary it is. It's an album of its time for sure, combining the prevailing AOR sound with some very light synth, soul and funk touches. Other than that it is as 80s as an album gets: boomy drum machines, keyboards everywhere, the works. The closest comparison would maybe be something like Steve Winwood's almost contemporary Back In The High Life Again, also a very slick and polished album by a veteran. Then again, sign of the times, in 1986 no one wanted something edgy or new, instead something unassuming and comforting would do just fine. Just ask the almost twenty million people worldwide who bought Brothers In Arms a year earlier.
So Whispering Jack doesn't stick out in the way a sales sensation like Thriller or Born In The USA did. Those albums essentially had no album tracks, and for good reason. Whispering Jack, like most albums, does. It's fine, but uneven and not too memorable outside of its singles, and certainly nothing that would make one think it'll create a frenzy. And yet a frenzy it did create, and incredibly many fellow Aussies could agree on it, sending it to the top of the charts for a combined 25 weeks and 24x platinum sales down under. To say this was unexpected is an understatement. Farnham had planned a tour of pubs and small concert halls to support the album, and I gotta say, it must have been a trip to see Farnham sing in a pub in late 1986 while "You're The Voice" and Whispering Jack were starting to tear up the singles and album charts, respectively. Seeing how those dates didn't nearly satisfy demand, Farnham and band booked a tour of much bigger venues for 1987, the Jack's Back tour, which was another huge success.
So why am I telling you all this? First of all, if you are an American One Buck Head - and you guys are statistically the biggest visitor group - John Farnham and his huge success oceans away might have passed you by completely. In the U.S. he isn't even a one-hit wonder, with the worldwide smash "You're The Voice" creeping to a measly 82 for his only chart position. How is this posssible I ask of you? "You're The Voice", the inofficial anthem of Australia, was everywhere on the radio in late '86 and early '87 - certainly in my neck of the woods - and a staple of mainstream radio for years to come. Well, everywhere except in the U.S., obviously. The other reason to have a post on John Farnham, despite his music possibly not all that interesting for a number of the One Buck Heads, is that for once I want to get ahead of the curve. You know, dead man's curve.
It annoyed me mightily when back in September musicians kept dying and I kept obiting. Not this time! Not with Johnny! I will post John Farnham music while he is still with us, dammit! I have reasons to worry, and hurry, though. In September there was a huge tribute concert to him in Sydney, but he couldn't attend, with his family releasing a health update to explain his absence. Having survived throat cancer an accompanying reconstructive jaw and face surgery in 2022, Farnham is now wheelchair-bound and needs constant oxygen. A photo from not too long ago has him looking dangerously fragile. So, The Voice will never sing again, except in things like this little retrospective I have put together. And by 'little' I mean 'certainly oversized for a lot of people', because three discs worth of stuff from someone who in most (non-Australians') books is a one or one-and-a-half hit wonder seems excessive. But hey, you know the One Buck Guy likes to get excessive sometimes.
And I'm not gonna lie, Farnham isn't the kind of guy where you find dozens of fascinating deep cuts to go along with his popular mainstream songs. The farthest we go into deep cut territory is unearthing a couple of unusual covers from the man. You would expect Farnham - back in his Johnny MOR days - to cover Elton John, and he does so, reasonably well, but it's more interesting to see him tackle songs by AC/DC, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin, as well as The Band. Now, "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll)" is at least half tongue in cheek, but he really throws himself full-throated into harder rock numbers like "Black Dog" or "Legs", just to wash the "Sadie" stink off.
The other thing I realized when putting this together was how many soul and soul-influenced songs Farnham sang and issued. I had never really put him in the dreaded blue-eyed soul category, but he acquits himself just fine on covers of chestnuts like "Tryin' To Live My Life Without You" or "You Don't Know Like I Know". And make no mistake about it. People calling him The Voice was of course a play on his biggest hit, but Farnham really can sing the hell out of almost anything. It's not subtle, but who needs subtlety all the time? Crank up the speakers, and let The Voice belt out something anthemic. You'll definitely have a bunch of those in these fifty tracks collected from his work spanning 1971 to 2011.
So, if you don't, or barely, know John Farnham, check this out. If you do, you'll probably still find a bunch of worthwhile stuff on here anyway. So, yeah, everyone hear should check The Voice - A John Farnham Anthology to hear The Voice.
The Voice
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Which commercially big record did you miss out on and just discovered years later?
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