You’re the Voice is the song that resurrected John Farnham’s career – but it was a last-minute inclusion.
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This is just one of the stories Keiraville author Jeff Apter uncovered for Playing to Win, his new biography on Farnham.
Despite having been the frontman for Little River Band for five years in the 1980s, in 1986 he couldn’t interest a single record company in helping him record a solo album.
In the end, Farnham’s manager Glenn Wheatley mortgaged his own house to pay for the recording of the album.
With the album all but finished, everyone realised they still needed one killer song to be the focal point of the record.
That was You’re the Voice – and it had been sitting on a demo cassette in the studio for months.
“It was on a cassette that John’s music publishing company had sent him and it was sitting in a bottom drawer,” Apter says.
“The producer’s assistant says ‘what about that song we heard on that tape six months ago?’.
“So they dragged it out and it turned out to be the last song they recorded. Once they’d done that they knew it was done and they had a hit in waiting.”
But they had to convince FM radio – who still the memory of Farnham being that uncool guy who sang Sadie the Cleaning Lady – to play it.
Wheatley pulled a swifty – he sent them the single for You’re the Voice without Farnham’s name on it so they’d judge it purely for the song itself.
It was a tactic that worked – FM radio started giving You’re the Voice some airplay.
“It became a huge hit pretty much overnight – it took about two or three weeks” Apter says.
“And [the album] Whispering Jack became the highest-selling Australian album of all time.”
Apter didn’t talk to Farnham about the book and suspects he is not that interested in being the subject of a biography.
“He portrays himself as a regular guy in an irregular job and I think that’s absolutely the truth, that really is who he is,” Apter says.
“He’s a natural-born entertainer but take him away from the stage and he’s just not interested in the spotlight at all.”
Apter himself doesn’t mind it – it's partially why he appears at events like October’s Kiama Readers Festival.
“I’m always fascinated why some authors don’t like promoting their work,” he says.
“I didn’t spend 12 months of really quite solitary engagement with a subject not to discuss it and not to hope people will read it.”
Playing to Win is published on October 3. Jeff Apter will appear at Kiama Readers Festival from October 14-16.