The Voice Inside by John Farnham, one of Australia’s best-known and most popular performers, tells the story of family, friendship and finding your voice. Throughout a lifetime filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, Farnham has never lost his unique musical talent, creative strength and powerful ability to make human connections through his music. Photo: Supplied.
Australian music icon John Farnham finds The Voice Inside to tell his own story, an unwavering and indelible memoir of music and life.
The candid biography delves into Farnham’s rise to fame in the 1960s, his career struggles and comeback, his personal life and family, and particularly, the recent health challenges that saw him undergo a marathon 12-hour surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in late 2022.
The Voice Inside is co-authored by Poppy Stockell, the award-winning writer, director and producer with a penchant for stories exploring human identity, humour and the inherent contradictions of existence. Her debut feature John Farnham: Finding the Voice is the highest box-office-grossing Australian documentary of all time.
Last year, the Farnham family announced he was cancer-free and singing again. He continues to recover and get his strength back. Farnham writes about regaining his voice.
“My facial disfigurement from the surgery means I can’t open my mouth wide enough for a strip of spaghetti, let alone to sing a top C,” he writes. “At this stage I can’t get the movement to make the sounds I want to make, and that’s where the vibrations and my voice come from.
“It’s still a very disconcerting thing. And trying hurts […] I can barely open my mouth but I still wail in the shower.”
Growing up in London and Melbourne, music was always a part of Farnham’s world, but he never dreamed of what was to come. The list of accolades and achievements is long. Pop stardom in the ’60s. The 1986 release Whispering Jack is the most critically acclaimed and highest-selling Australian album. A decades-long touring career. Australian of the Year and 21 ARIA awards.
The John Farnham story is more than one that’s filled with remarkable highs. It is the story of the resilience he found as his stellar career stalled, record companies turned their backs and he faced financial ruin. Farnham, 75, has never shown how hard he fell and how difficult it was to stay true to himself in an industry that can be ruthless. It is the story of family, friendship and finding your voice.
We learn that throughout a lifetime filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, Farnham remained steadfast, never losing his unique musical talent, creative strength and powerful ability to make human connections through his music.
Complete with colour and black-and-white photographs, the memoir lists the many celebrities he has worked with, and he makes some surprising claims. Farnham also touches on his and his wife Jill’s personal struggles to start a family.
Jill Farnham, John’s famously private wife, has written two chapters in his tell-all memoir, offering a candid insight into a 51-year marriage filled with adventure, “mostly a whole lot of fun” and, as she puts it, “an interesting life”.
John doesn’t enjoy talking about himself.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m an egomaniac, but dredging up the past and picking through what has and hasn’t been, it’s just not something I’ve ever really enjoyed,” he admits in the prologue.
There are reasons he’s reluctant and has never really been that open.
“I was just a kid when Sadie, the Cleaning Lady came out in November 1967. A kid dreaming of making a career as a singer, but working as a plumber’s apprentice. I’d never spoken to a journalist before and there I was with people suddenly interested in me and asking me lots of questions …”
He doesn’t name and shame, but mentions a couple of people who were relentless.
“It was their trickery more than what they wrote that affected me at the time. Still hurts me to think about it now. Back then I didn’t know people were like that, had no idea they could be so cruel or manipulative. I was ‘Chirpy Johnny’, a naïve, pretty, young boy and I was ripe for the picking. So there are things I don’t want to remember. But now I’m sitting down to tell my story, it’s all rushing back.”
Farnham doesn’t know whether remembering his life and putting it down on paper will be cathartic or not, though it might be helpful, somehow.
The Voice Inside, by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell, Hachette Australia, $49.99
