#johnnyfarnham

On Monday night, the new music documentary ‘John Farnham: Finding the Voice’ aired on Australian free-to-air television.

Now, I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid, so not much was new to me. I knew he started young and fresh faced (gorgeous, in fact. Still is really) and that there was an awful lull in his career when radio stations and record companies wouldn’t give him a chance. Nuts. Anyway.

He came back, bigger and better than ever, and the rest (as they say) is history. He’s been legend / GOAT status for decades here, but revisiting all of his music again, in more detail, has been such a joy. He’s not played on the radio as frequently as you’d think these days.

Since Monday, I’ve been re-downloading and playing all of his greatest hits again. As you can imagine, the playlist is long. ‘You’re The Voice’, ‘Age of Reason’, ‘Pressure Down’, ‘That’s Freedom’, ‘Burn for You’, ‘Playing to Win’, ‘A Touch of Paradise’, ‘Every Time You Cry’, ‘Reasons’ etc etc.

However, it’s his incredible live cover of The Beatles’ ‘Help’ with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra that I’ve had mostly on repeat (the video of it on YouTube is simply joyful). I truly think it’s one of the best covers / arrangements of a popular song that I’ve ever heard, and one of the greatest examples of John’s INSANE vocal abilities.

(It’s also worth bearing in mind to that this was his encore after a 2+ HOUR SHOW. The fact he could still sing well at that point, and like this, still blows my mind).

I’ve seen a bunch of vocal coaches watching it recently too and losing their minds over how effortlessly and enthusiastically he tears this song up. The amount of soul and grit and power he puts into these words gets me every time.

He also exhibits that typical Farnham energy, fun, passion and charisma that he has in spades. Whether you’re watching him perform live or interviewed on the TV, the man honestly feels like a friend.

Every part of the rendition is epic, but at the 4 min 35 sec spot in particular, he does a playful run which makes me grin like an idiot!

I still feel so lucky that my dad & I were invited to his The Age Music Victoria Hall Of Fame induction in 2015. He was meant to do a song or two but ended up playing for about an hour and a half, and he was so pitch perfect and so funny!

When we all heard that he had to have emergency mouth surgery late last year, we all held our breath and prayed (no, I’m not religious, but it Farnsy!). There’s such cruel irony in a singer getting throat cancer. It’s been a long recovery, but the recent news from his sons that he is cancer-free and up and about (literally singing and dancing around the house) is the best news.

Being an Aussie, we obviously know John Farnham inside and out and we’re beyond proud of him, but it always saddens me a bit that he never got the international recognition he deserved in his heyday. It seems like a lot of Brits and Americans are only just discovering him now and honestly, he runs rings around most of their “legends”.