The Voice Inside: The life and career of John Farnham, a raw, intimate look at the music legend

Shortly after undergoing 12 hours of surgery to remove an oral cancer in August 2022, Australian music icon John Farnham started to have what he describes as “dark thoughts”. “I’ve never felt so low in all my life,” the 75-year-old national treasure confesses in his much-anticipated memoir, The Voice Inside. “The thoughts . . . were very bleak and I wasn’t sure how to get beyond them.” Recovering in intensive care, Farnham was “gutted”. The surgery was successful but left the You’re The Voice singer with facial disfigurement and in considerable pain. “The thoughts nearly got the better of me,” he writes. Farnham had been moved to a general ward to await his transfer to a rehabilitation hospital when he watched as a young girl arrived in an ambulance. She was slumped over in a wheelchair, accompanied by two “defeated-looking” people Farnham assumed were her parents. “She looked so sick and frail,” he recalls. “She had a whole life to live and there I was, a man who had lived a good life, feeling sorry for myself.” The Voice Inside is an unflinchingly honest retelling of that life and a career packed with the highest highs — Farnham responsible for Australia’s bestselling homegrown album of all time, Whispering Jack — and the lowest lows. The trauma is raw on the page, whether discussing his cancer battle and continuing recovery, or his early days as a pop idol treated as a cash cow or, worse, a “piece of meat”. Farnham has never wanted to share his story, despite being asked many times to write his memoir. His best mate and long-time manager, the late Glenn Wheatley, was among those prodding the affable English-born megastar to publish his insights. “I’ve actually dreaded it,” Farnham states in the book, which is out next week. “I didn’t expect people to be interested in me or my life . . . I didn’t want my story to be boring or show I’m not the brightest penny in the till.” His change of heart, and the writing of The Voice Inside, came about due to last year’s John Farnham: Finding The Voice, a fascinating look at the life and career of the ARIA Hall of Famer, which became the highest-grossing Australian documentary ever made. Finding The Voice was the debut feature film for writer and director Poppy Stockell, a London-born, Sydney-raised filmmaker who studied zoology at university. “I thought I was going to be the next David Attenborough and then I found people so interesting,” the 47-year-old Walkley award-winner says of her shift into making docos for Triple J and the ABC. For many Australians, Whispering Jack and follow-up album Age Of Reason were the national soundtrack. Farnham was part of the furniture for Stockell growing up. “He was on Home And Away and Hey Hey It’s Saturday,” she laughs. “He was everywhere and was so affable, so likeable and so guy-next-door, and very handsome with the hair and the trench coat. “He was kinda goofy, not stuck-up. I was also into INXS and other bands at the time, but they were completely different to John.” Having moved to Melbourne right before the pandemic, Stockell was recruited to helm Finding The Voice in early 2021. She immersed herself in the Aussie legend’s career — a kind of Farnesy PhD — and discovered there was more to the story than the mullet, the trench coat and the massive sales of Whispering Jack. Remarkably, Stockell reveals that she did not meet Farnham once while making the smash-hit documentary. “He wasn’t OK about the documentary being made,” she admits. Wheatley had convinced his mate that Finding The Voice should happen, though a reluctant Farnham insisted his wife Jill and sons Robert and James were off limits. The doco stalled when Wheatley died on February 1, 2022. “We all just went quiet,” Stockell explains. “We didn’t know what to do.” The filmmaker sent a card expressing her sympathies to Wheatley’s widow, Gaynor, who got back in touch. “She became the best ally in getting the film made and we became such great mates,” Stockell says. While Farnham continued to keep his distance, Robert and James decided to participate and, at the 11th hour, Jill also agreed to be interviewed. Still recovering from cancer and wary of attention, Farnham didn’t attend the premiere of Finding The Voice in May last year, nor did he watch it until well after the fuss had died down. Around the same time as the documentary hit cinemas, publisher Hachette contacted Stockell about writing a book on Farnham. “I paid no attention to the email for six months,” she admits. “I haven’t written a book before . . . I didn’t even study English literature at uni, I did bloody zoology.” The publisher was insistent. Gaynor Wheatley thought Stockell was a good fit and, crucially, Farnham — who emerged from watching the documentary feeling “trusted and heard” — was finally amenable to the idea. Stockell signed on and finally met Farnham for the first time earlier this year. “He walked in, I walked in, and we had a massive hug, got moist-eyed and went from there,” she recalls. At some point, Stockell summoned the courage to ask Farnham what he thought of the documentary. “He loved it,” she says. “He looked at me deep, like, deep into my soul and said, ‘You really did a good job, I really thank you’.” The pair sat down around a dozen times over several months, starting mid-morning and going until Farnham needed to stop. “He’s got quite a bit of scarring on his face from the cancer and he can’t move his mouth that well,” Stockell explains. “But we found that we’d start and, honestly, five hours would go in a flash. “He just talked and I listened. Asked questions here and there. “He found it really confronting at first because he has really thought about a lot of the things that came up in the film.” Finding The Voice delved into Farnham’s early success with 1967 ditty Sadie (The Cleaning Lady). During this era, the Beatles-obsessed singer was managed by Darryl Sambell, a nefarious alcoholic who controlled his young star’s every moment. Sambell surreptitiously fed Farnham a diet of amphetamines to keep him working and sleeping pills so he could rest before the next gruelling day of performances and promotion. The memoir explores the svengali’s “malicious” influence in harrowing detail in a chapter called A Piece Of Meat. “Darryl had worked his way into the Melbourne glitterati and he became entrenched in both the music and theatre scenes,” Farnham told Stockell of a time when he was 19 years old and effectively forced to share a small apartment with his manager, who was homosexual. “People, mostly gay men, would come to the flat at all hours to drink, smoke, play cards and party. I was regularly surrounded by aggressive gay men who, thanks to Darryl, thought I was gay . . . I was seen as young, naive and probably fair game.” Sambell, who died in 2001, also syphoned Farnham’s earnings, which he splurged on booze, cars and designer suits. “Every time I needed money, I had to ask him for what felt like a handout,” Farnham writes in The Voice Inside. “It was demoralising and degrading.” His respite was fishing in Port Phillip Bay in his little motorboat. One of the Melbourne glitterati, future Countdown host Ian “Molly” Meldrum joined Sambell and Farnham on an ill-fated trip to London, where the manager’s out-of-control drinking scuppered any chance of expanding the Aussie singer’s career in the UK. From Elvis Presley to One Direction, the music industry is full of tales of young stars being exploited by parasitic managers. “It’s a predatory industry that preys on young, vulnerable people with huge hopes and dreams,” Stockell says. “It really knocked Johnny around.” On the flipside is Jillian Billman, the dancer Farnham met when he performed in stage musical Charlie Girl in 1971. They married in 1973. Far from Farnham’s favourite person, Meldrum famously published the wedding invitation in Go-Set magazine, resulting in thousands of fans flocking to St Matthew’s Anglican church in Glenroy. Jill realised what Sambell was up to and confronted him, which led to Farnham finally firing the manager. Stockell has no doubt Jill saved her husband’s career, maybe his life. “She’s tough, she told (Sambell) where to go,” she says. “Whispering Jack would not have happened without Jill’s support and love and absolute rock-solid commitment.” While Farnham took a break during interview sessions, Jill would chat to Stockell which led to her contributing two chapters and a different perspective to The Voice Inside. Farnham confesses to feeling “sorrow” about those early years, but not anger. “I think it’s more shame, to be honest,” Stockell muses. “Shame to not be wiser and not be more worldly. Guilt and shame are weird emotions that seem to trump everything else.” The filmmaker says there were “lots of laughs, heaps of tears” while writing this unvarnished and intimate autobiography, which is accompanied by an audiobook Farnham insisted he record himself. “He’s a classic,” Stockell says. “He’s so resilient and so tender all in one. He’s really fine with sitting in emotion and being vulnerable, and he’s also really, really funny. He’s the perfect storyteller.” After studying the man, his work and his life for three solid years to make the documentary, Stockell says it was a “profound honour” to co-author The Voice Inside. “I really, really enjoyed working with him to do this book,” she says. “It was a gift, a dream job — not a job, it was just wonderful.” Hachette has wasted little time getting the memoir onto shelves. Stockell and Farnham only completed the final two chapters in early October. In the book, both John and Jill suggest he’s unlikely to get on stage and belt out fan favourites such as Pressure Down, A Touch Of Paradise or You’re The Voice ever again. “I honestly don’t know,” Stockell says. “When he gets something in his head and thinks he’s going to do it, he’ll do it. “Celine (Dion) did it, so fingers crossed for all of us.” Whether Farnham sings in public again or not, there’s little chance Whispering Jack will allow himself to wallow in self-pity. “I’ve been very, very lucky with all these hit songs, accolades, album sales, fabulous collaborators and, most importantly, fantastic audiences,” he says in The Voice Inside. “What I hope you’ll take away from my story, if you can, is to stay positive. “No matter what comes at you, just stay positive.” The Voice Inside by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell (Hachette, $50) is on sale October 30.