It's all a whisper for John Farnham
WHILE The Voice is still as strong as ever, singer John Farnham's hearing has suffered from all those years on stage and now he has to wear hearing aids.
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IT has been 25 years since John Farnham made his historic comeback with Whispering Jack - and while The Voice is still as strong as ever, his hearing has suffered from all those years on the stage.
After a lifetime spent at rock 'n' roll volume, the revered entertainer sports hearing aids and has already started polishing a few "dad jokes" to add to his repertoire when he embarks on a national theatre tour in October.
"The repertoire is getting wider as am I; the hair is the only thing that got thinner. And now I can do hard-of-hearing jokes," the affable entertainer said.
Whispering Jack remains the biggest-selling record in Australia, with almost 1.7 million copies bought since it was released in October 1986.
Even now, the 61-year-old can't believe the record - and its inescapable anthem You're The Voice - afforded him another quarter century of success.
When his long-time manager and mate Glenn Wheatley mortgaged his home to pay for the album's recording, Farnham said he and wife Jillian were "on the bones of our arse".
"We were broke and had to sell our house," he said.
"I had made some bad decisions, got into a restaurant which was something I didn't know anything about and it cost me my savings.
"I didn't have a car and we were renting this house where Ross Fraser and I were working on the record.
"No one knew and no one cared we were doing Whispering Jack. This originally came out on Wheatley Records and then we were picked up. When we finished the album, I was on the couch in the foetal position for the next two weeks. What have I done? What if Wheatley loses his house, what if I can't make a living?"
That is all history now and Farnham has repaid his financial and moral debt to Wheatley several times over, standing loyally by his manager's side through his own travails - including that 15-month stint in jail.
He has also discovered, much to his relief, that the audience has stuck by him, and got a little younger. Farnham revealed a few tears were shed with his sons Rob and James after tens of thousands of teens and twentysomethings sang along to You're The Voice when he performed it with Coldplay at the Sound Relief concert in 2009.
Farnham heads back into the studio soon to record an acoustic album of his hits for a special anniversary edition of Whispering Jack. The tour hits the State Theatre on October 11 and 12.