The exact words uttered are open for conjecture but those there on side-of-stage at the Sydney Cricket Ground not long after midday on March 14 concur. “God, I’ve missed this!” was the essence of John Farnham’s reaction to the soaring, roaring and overwhelming response to his performance of ‘You’re The Voice’, with admirers Coldplay, at the Sound Relief benefit concert. It could have been “How good was that?!” or even an astonished expletive or three, but one thing’s for sure, it was the moment that confirmed what had been occurring to him for some time: that his sabbatical had reached a natural end. That day, with that catalyst, the tentative plans of some months were effectively cemented into place. Plans for a series of intimate performances, with his full band, in ‘lyric-type’ theatres and wineries in September and October of this year commenced.
John Farnham Live By Demand is just that. It meets a ceaseless national enquiry over the past three years as to when the man, who has sold more tickets and more albums and notched up more achievements than any other Australian musician, would return to perform.
While there will never be a John Farnham tour on the scale of his epic 2002 sweep across Australia – taking in almost a hundred shows in vast arenas and a 4,000 seat tent in cities and towns over the better part of a year before almost half a million people – there will always be John Farnham performances... and as the years go on, they will reflect his evolving musicality and life.
There was no retirement and there is no ‘comeback’. There has been, as has long been the case with perennial artists, from the Rolling Stones to Barbra Streisand, a respite from rigours, a time to refocus and replenish. Some time for himself.
Since John joined Strings Unlimited as a 16 year old singer in late 1965, and was a national chart star two years later, music has defined and consumed him, often to the exclusion of other pursuits. There has always been a new single, album, tour, show or collaboration commanding his attention. Admitting freely that he felt he “had to get out of people’s way for a while”, John laid recording and touring aside for a time to connect with family, friends... and livestock. Always passionate about horses, John and Jillian Farnham became involved in the 90s with cutting horses – designed to show a quarter horse’s ability in the show ring to work with cattle – and began taking out awards with their mounts, here and in the U.S. Every bit as competitive as rock’n’roll, this intense and demanding sport, where as Glenn Wheatley says with a manager’s shudder: “They gallop at frantic speed and then stop on a coin” has, along with scuba diving and fishing with his sons, been what has occupied the singer while he has been out of public sight.
But as the 60s folk song declared, there’s a time and season for everything under heaven, and John Farnham’s quarter horses will have to do without him for a time. He is back in music mode and the call has gone out. Gone out for songs for a new album – with premier tunesmiths around the world responding swiftly – and gone out to the Farnham band and singers to get back into their own saddles. “It’s a bit like the scene in the Blues Brothers film”, laughs Wheatley, “where everyone starts buzzing ‘we’re putting the band back together, we’re putting the band back together’ and they hang up their aprons, don their stage suits and come from all over to get back to work”.
Now Chong Lim, Angus Burchell, Stuart Fraser, Brett Garsed, Steve Williams, Bob Coasin, Craig Newman, Lindsay Field, Lisa Edwards and Dannielle Gaha haven’t exactly been idling or disposing of their time unproductively, but there’s no doubt that the planets do align when they assemble. It is where they should be, where alchemy occurs. This is one of the most adept, inventive, expansive and road-hardened outfits Australian music has known and its return to performance is cause for as much celebration as its leader’s. “I want to be with them again on stage” John enthuses, “because there aren’t any musicians like them. There’s something that happens when we’re together and it is something that I’ve really missed.”
It is what also happened when Coldplay’s Chris Martin introduced ‘Whispering Jack’ to sing, what has been described (by him amongst others) as, one of our unofficial national anthems that day in March. As Kathy McCabe reported in The Daily Telegraph: “It was everything you wanted a moment to be. There was no doubt Farnham was having a ball up there, singing with the world’s biggest rock act as his backing band. But it was the crowd who made the moment. Their voices swelled as one for chorus, Farnham revving them to sing louder and louder with an emphatic, “Come on!”. “Those front rows weren’t the usual mums and grandmothers he would be used to hanging on his every note. They were the kids and grandkids who had grown up hearing their elders flog Farnham’s signature song. It is ingrained on their DNA, and, cool or not cool, they love it. They love it so much that 120,000 people sang it even louder when it was replayed later in each of the concerts. It has some powerful magic”. So much so that the international Billboard magazine insisted: “If there was a single recording which must be released from this concert, this was it”. It would be fair to say that the title of the tour was born out of that moment.
It would also be fair to say that while John Farnham was away from stage and studio for a time, he was most certainly not away from those who have long admired and embraced his music. Many found their own way to maintain contact. Some recent research into his online presence emerged with some startling figures. Farnham videos were found on 124 different sites around the world – from Japan to Romania, Hungary to Sweden – with possibly hundreds of other sites not yet located. YouTube alone has 7,235 listed, with the original ‘You’re The Voice’ clip having notched up 1.65 million views. In total on YouTube there have been 7.8 million Farnham views. It would be safe to estimate that John Farnham viral videos have been seen more than 25 million times.
The performances at Sydney and Brisbane’s Lyric Theatre’s, Melbourne’s Palais Theatre, Perth’s Burswood Theatre, the Derwent Entertainment Centre in Tasmania, and wineries in the Hope Estate and Barossa in NSW and South Australia – very much big productions in small theatres – will see John and his crack ten-piece band look back over career highlights, rendering the songs he has to, and wants to. This intimate venue tour will be an opportunity to witness at close quarters a consummate singer and entertainer of more than forty years experience and unparalleled achievement, looking at the body of his work through the eyes, attitude and perspective he possesses now.
When the twentieth anniversary of Whispering Jack – still the highest domestic selling album by an Australia artist – was marked in 2006, there was some tallying done. Since 1986, the Farnham blitzkrieg had seen a total of 164 concerts at the Rod Laver Tennis Arena and the Sydney Entertainment Centre, with more than a million tickets sold in Melbourne alone. He was the most-seen act at every Entertainment Centre in Australia. Over that span, every album and single was carefully crafted, each career-turn undertaken with admirable enthusiasm. His remarkable body of work – be it polished pop, smokin’ soul, robust rock or ballads that take the top of your head off – made him an integral component of Australian popular music; in fact, Australian life.
In that Australian life there are phrases like ‘a breather’, ‘a smoko’, ‘gone walkabout’. Maybe John Farnham availed himself of all of those, but as the Beatles once sang, he’s back where he once belonged, with a full head of steam. “I want to do this, I want to be on those stages because I really have missed it”, he reveals. “Everything about it feels right just now.”
Sony Music will release The Essential John Farnham – a 3cd greatest hits collection – on 21st August.
