The Story Behind The Album: 'Whispering Jack', John Farnham, 1986.

Today on Story Behind The Album , we take a deep dive into the making, release and stories you might not know behind John Farnham's 1986 album 'Whispering Jack'.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Releases the story behind the album.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
So it's hard to believe that was nineteen eighty six
that Whispering Jack came out. The twelfth studio album by
John Farnham, released on the twenty ninth of September nineteen
eighty six, peaking at number one on the Australian Kent
Music Reports Report Albums chart. It became the second biggest
selling album in Australia, behind only Meatloafs album Bat Out
of Hell, and the highest selling album in Australia by

(00:37):
an Australian artist. It remains the third best selling album
of all time in Australia because Shana Twain came along
with her.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh really had tight pants on? Brad Pitt b well
that carry on, it wasn't it. But anyway, that's another
album for another day. What a phenomenon it was. It's
just incredible, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, as we said prior to this, because Glenn Wheatley
mortgaged the home to raise the funds for recording of
the album, such was his belief because.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Fans he was broke, so broke. Yeah, it is incredible.
I made you think about it. After he was the
king of pop and Sadie, the Cleaning eighty all that stuff.
By the mid eighties, John was playing pub gigs, doing
Bob c Could covers and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
What happened there was so bad. There was some bad
sort of decisions financially.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, yeah, not the best advice, not the best advice.
He wasn't playing big gigs, he was playing small gigs.
And have a listen to this. This is how broke
John Farne was.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
I had to sell everything. I had to sell my
house and the car, and we didn't have durribly much
to begin with.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, hard to believe, isn't it? Really believe? Indeed? And
you talk about that relationship with Glenn Wakley. Those two
were so tight and how many times have you saved
one another's But.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I mean he got me when when I knew Whispering
Jack he needs you moved to that album in pretty
solid actually gone, there was a big one.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Why did you keep backing him?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
I mean probably, well, mainly because I believed him, and
mostly because.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
He's my friend. And Glenn, when John couldn't get a
record deal, what made you believe that he had the
talent when a lot of other people didn't think he
had it. I just think that John threw that not
a good advice, just lost a little bit of direction.
He never lost his talents. So true.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
It all happened fairly quickly really, because it was nineteen
eighty five. Farnham was still in the Little Riverband. When
he started collecting a song list for a future album.
He just had this germ of an idea of I'm
going to, you know, make this album that's going to
go on to be just a huge piece of Australian
album history. It was an early nineteen eighty six that

(02:47):
sound engineer Ross Fraser suggested to Glenn Wheatley it was
time to start working on said solo album, and that's
when they searched in Vain for a producer and record
label willing to work with Farnham. They couldn't, so Fraser
took on the produce a role, and that's why weakly
provided that financial support.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Isn't it hard to believe too? We look at the
success of it now, the sales and the history and
all the rest of it, and how it's such an
iconic album. But even John wasn't sure whether he could
believe in himself at that stage. Well, he didn't a
nervous wreck going to.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
A life as we saw in that amazing documentary probably
is good shown up and you mentioned LB there.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
One of his bandmates was David Hirschfelder, that musical genius
who was for many years part of his band and
the musical director. Really he is David talking about putting
together you the voice.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
We decided to go for the machine gun sort of
handclap effect as a sort of militaristic it's also celebratory tribalism.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
I don't know what we were doing, but it.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
Just all that sort of stuff seemed to feel right
for the lyric of the song. But in the solo section,
my idea was pan pipes, all these pan pipes of
the Andes, and I simulated them all on synthesizers and
samples of actual pan pipes as well. But John said,
it's something this thing is just not quite lifting enough.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
I know, bag pipes. Wow, what a moment. Absolutely bag pipes.
It's just increating. Yeah, they did.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
And also because at that time John was still trying
to shed that Sadie the cleaning lady Johnny Johnny Farnham's
sort of persona, and initially the public interest in the
rebranded former teen Ardle was difficult to cultivate and radio
stations refused to play him. So there was that great
story about them taking your voice into the Sydney radio

(04:34):
station two DAYFM. And this is back in the days
where you could actually just.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Run into the studio with the song.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
They play this now, and they did and the rest
is history.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
And that's that weird story. It happens a few times
where they go, we may not even put the name
of the artist on here, so there's no bias. But
the Wheatleys, even though they're back, John, they didn't really
like the recording of your the voice at the start.
This is such an amazing story.

Speaker 4 (04:59):
And we had a bottleshep we think we're going to
the studio and get ready to hear it.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Okay, hit me. I played it to me and I
left me flap. Glen and I looked at each other
and it was like, that's not It wasn't quite And
John looked at us, said you don't like it, do you?
I said, well, it wasn't like the demo. He said no,
but we recorded it properly.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
My problem is I thought that your vocal on the
demo was better than the vocal they've done on this,
and he was angry.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So he got very angry with me. Rossphrase that I'm
going out there and I'll sing it again. Turn the
lights out, turn the cans up well, and then people
in the studio when I'm trying to sing because I
get paranoid. If you won't be laughing at me, be
talking about me, you oughta.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Boice, lay understand, making eyes of making tea.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
And he sang the living hell out of that.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Song, and the hiss on our arms in the back
of our necks came up and it was like, that's
the song.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Look got him. Now I got the pot count as well. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Isn't it worst story when when your album becomes your
alter ego Whispering Jack, that that says it all.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Really doesn't get much better, does it,