Source : Perth Now news
Forty years ago an unassuming Aussie artist released a song that would go on to become one of that country’s most recognisable hits, an unofficial national anthem that would redefine careers for decades to come.
It was 1986, Kylie Minogue made her debut on Neighbours, Crocodile Dundee was released and so was a 10-track album titled Whispering Jack that would go on to find global success.
An era of big, bold prints, big hair and mighty big power ballads.
John Farnham’s You’re the Voice was one such song that’s remained an Australian classic that still gets belted out by new generations of Aussies in backyards, cars and pubs around the nation.
But like many tales of glory, it was a song that almost wasn’t.
One of its co-writers, Chris Thompson, a singer and guitarist with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, didn’t want Farnham singing the tune after the pop star’s success with doozies like Sadie (The Cleaning Lady). He thought Farnham “was a joke” in Australia.
But Farnham was driven and so was his manger Glenn Wheatley, who risked everything to establish the singer as a reputable solo artist in Australia.
The famous Aussie duo were working on Whispering Jack, they had put a band together and needed a final song to complete the album.
Musician and film composer David Hirschfelder was 26 years old at the time and had been recruited to join Farnham after they worked in the Little River Band together.
He recalls You’re The Voice stuck out when it landed on Wheatley’s desk among hundreds of cassettes 40 years ago.
“I loved working with John, and I loved the man and the singer, I thought he was incredible,” Hirschfelder said.
“We already had nine songs, we were one song short, and we were considering writing one and then this one turned up.
“We had no idea how (huge it would be). I mean, we all liked the song. It really leapt out at us as something very powerful, but you just never know with these things.
“You can’t predict a hit.”
Hirschfelder said a tight-knit team worked on the song in a studio, including himself an engineer, a producer and Farnham, but Farnham never discussed with them Taylor’s disapproval.
Hirschfelder said it was Farnham’s idea to add bagpipes to the song after panpipes, whistles and ocarinas didn’t sound quite right.
“John said, ‘Well, we’ve tried all those pipes. What about bagpipes?’ Ross (producer Ross Fraser) and I looked at each other, ‘Bagpipes, that’s crazy’,” he said.
“But then part of me said, ‘You know, that could be fantastic’.”
Hirschfelder met with bagpipe expert Ross Campbell and they worked out how they could change the song a little to suit the bagpipes.
“We had to shift the song when they came in, and the fact that we had to shift it up to another chord that was not in the original version suddenly made the whole song lift,” he said.
“It’s almost like the bagpipes, just by being so demanding and specific, we had to go with them and it just lifted the song.
“Then Glenn Wheatley sent a demo of what we’d done and a rough mix of how it was going to sound with bagpipes and everything, and (the songwriters) said, ‘Oh that sounds fantastic, yeah, please go ahead and release it’.”
Hirschfelder said the team tried to stay chill about You’re The Voice becoming a hit.
“John had high hopes for it and really wanted it to work, as did I, but for me as a 26-year-old guy at the time, I was just going with the flow, seeing how it happened,” he said of the song that was inspired by a 1985 anti-nuclear disarmament protest in London’s Hyde Park.
“It was the obvious choice for a lead single … back in the day, you would always lead with one track, and that seemed the obvious one.
“A lot of people really liked it in the broadcast world radio, but there was a few diehard, cool school rock people who didn’t think John Farnham was, perhaps even dare I say, worthy of their all too groovy radio station.
“Soon everyone, even the ones who were initially sceptical, were playing it, and so that’s what surprised us, how it crossed over from being a popular song to something that actually garnered industry credibility.
“It’s become a classic now, and of course, we never ever dreamt of that.”
Hirschfelder, who was the keyboardist in Farnham’s backing band, said when they had the No.1 hit they were playing in suburban pubs with queues of people trying to get in to see it going around the block.
“The promoters were all stunned, as were we, that we were doing these tours in tiny divey little pubs and that huge amounts of people were coming, people that wouldn’t normally go to those venues were coming,” he said.
“The reaction was genuine. I mean, there was genuine excitement, and then when it took off overseas, we ended up touring the following year.
“We arrived in Sweden, there were screaming girls and things that I would never have believed possible.”
Music journalist Ian McFarlane was a huge music fanatic in his 20s, writing about music and other things at the time and listening to lots of heavy guitar bands from Melbourne and Sydney during the ’80s.
“It was all happening in the ’80s, oh yeah, good times,” he said.
“Everyone knew about John Farnham, he’d kind of been in the nether regions at the time because he’d been a former teen pop idol who no one really cared about anymore.
“He’d just come out of the Little River Band, and it was like where does he go from there?
“But when he appeared with Whispering Jack and the single, everyone was just stunned at how good it was and how good he sounded because he always had that huge voice.
“His voice matched with that song definitely captured the imagination of record buyers.”
McFarlane said You’re The Voice had the big modern ’80s production with drum machines, drum programming, the Fairlight synthesiser and the big, snappy beats.
“There was something about that song that certainly captured the times,” he said.
“It’s got that big adult-oriented rock sound and it’s got the kind of Celtic rock edge with that crazy bagpipe solo in the bridge.
“I just love their bagpipe solos, a bit of AC/DC.
“It’s such an ear-catching chorus, and that’s the thing, everyone loves singing it at the top of their voice because John Farnham sings the hell out of it.
“It’s that rallying cry, it’s that you know we are all together; we’re standing as one sort of consciousness.
“I’ve heard little kids absolutely singing that at the top of their voice as well, not teenagers or people in their 20s, little kids.
“It’s got something that grabs you by the throat, and it says you’ve got to join in.”
Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) chief executive Annabelle Herd was a teenager living in Canberra at the time You’re the Voice was released.
Farnham’s Whispering Jack tour was the first live show the music boss attended.
“The reason the song hits home so much, and did at the time and continues to this day, I mean, John Farnham himself, it was a big comeback story,” she said.
“As a teenager at that time, I didn’t know about his previous career, so for me, he was like a new artist, but he was it.
“It was so huge. I mean, in the late ’80s, obviously we had far fewer content and media platforms, so when something dominated in our culture, it really dominated.
“But this particular song seemed to even transcend that and its impact is long lasting.”
Ms Herd said You’re The Voice was absolutely an Australia anthem performed by an incredible and iconic Australian artist.
“It’s obviously a great piece of music and a great recording, and his incredible voice, but it really just touches people because it just embodies that idea of standing up for what you believe in no matter how small your voice is, it can still change things,” she said.
“It does it in a way that brings people together. A single voice coming together can change the world, it’s inspiring and I was inspired when I first heard it.
“It makes you feel emotion every time you hear it, and you hear it a lot because it’s performed a lot. It’s very special.”
Ms Herd said You’re The Voice was No.1 for seven weeks in Australia. It also went to No.1 in Germany and made the top five in Ireland, Switzerland and top six in the UK, Austria and Canada.
“It even got into the US charts, which was pretty incredible,” she said.
“Whispering Jack had a pretty strong, clean sweep at the first ever ARIA Awards.
“John Farnham pretty much won every ARIA that was going in that very first ARIA awards.
“It had the success then, but since then it’s obviously had incredible commercial success.
“It demonstrates that the power of an incredible song across our culture because there aren’t many things that can cause people to feel the way that a really good piece of music or a really good recording of a song does.
“You’re The Voice is the perfect example of that connection and how music can influence people, thinking and consumer behaviours.”
