Tim Wheatley finds his own voice in the music business
When Tim Wheatley’s dream of winning an ARIA Award was finally realised, the man he most wanted to thank wasn’t there.
For two decades, Tim Wheatley had dreamt of winning an ARIA Award and praising his parents for their support and belief that led him to pursue a career in the creative arts.
Last month, at the annual celebration of Australian music in Sydney, that dream was fulfilled, but the man he most wanted to thank wasn’t there. His father Glenn – music entrepreneur and John Farnham’s longtime manager – died last year.
That absence, keenly felt, left a bittersweet feeling for Tim to walk onto the stage and accept the ARIA for best original soundtrack for John Farnham: Finding the Voice, the documentary film about his father’s beloved friend.
Nonetheless, it was a win for Wheatley Records, the family-founded record label. “To get an ARIA for basically telling the story of how we all got there, was sort of a full-circle moment – and in a way, probably even more special,” the 39-year-old singer-songwriter said.
“That soundtrack was John’s and dad’s journey together, and that’s something I’m incredibly proud of – and I’m sure it would have been a pretty proud moment for him, as well.”
The Wheatley surname has a rich history in our popular culture. Glenn was a musician who joined the Jim Keays-fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices in 1968, before later hanging up his bass guitar to focus on business development, which spanned FM radio, record label and management.
One of his final projects was steering the Farnham documentary, directed by Poppy Stockell. In the film, Glenn’s wife Gaynor is interviewed on camera just weeks after his death in 2022, aged 74, from Covid complications.
Even in his absence, Tim and Gaynor’s decision-making was guided by a recurring question: What would Glenn do?
“There’s one thing I know for certain: my father would have had an accompanying soundtrack with this movie,” said Tim with a laugh. “We reinvigorated Wheatley Records, at the start purely for sentimental reasons.”
Initially, he said, “there wasn’t a heck of a lot of interest – not just in the soundtrack, but in the documentary itself. People thought it would come into cinemas and dissipate pretty quickly. But mum and I, when we were watching it, thought, ‘This could be huge’.”
It was. The film earned $2.24m at the box office in its first two weekends, and went on to become the highest-grossing Australian feature-length documentary of all time, according to Screen Australia.
“One thing my father always said was, ‘John can sell tickets to anything’,” said Tim. “It’s a phenomenon, and he’s proved himself right yet again, albeit from beyond the grave.”
The label relaunch includes a Wheatley heirloom: a sign that bluntly states “no advances”, in opposition to the industry custom of label owners offering cash upfront to convince artists to sign on the dotted line.
That sign, said Tim, “encapsulates the spirit of a record label born out of necessity, as opposed to something that was really calculated and planned. We’re not just going to throw money and try to make money.”
“We’re doing it because I’ve built up a community of people over my times travelling, and playing [around] these traps, and floundering around somewhere near the bottom of the Australian music business for nearly 20 years now,” he said. “I believe that there’s a lot more to give, and a lot of people that deserve the chance to be heard.”
The first signing to the revitalised Wheatley Records is a country act, Dan Keyes and the New Rides, whose newly released single coincidentally shares a name with Tim Wheatley’s daughter: London.
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout