‘I feel so ashamed’: John Farnham drops career boombshell, describes life after oral cancer in new memoir

Australian music legend John Farnham has shared disturbing details about the extreme manipulation he endured in his early career, revealing in his new book that his ex-manager used to ply him with drugs “for years”.

Excerpts of from Farnham’s hugely-anticipated memoir The Voice Inside were published by The Australian overnight, in which the 75-year-old describes the troubling antics of his former manager Darryl Sambell, who died in 2001.

Sambell managed the first decade of then-teen pop sensation Johnny Farnham’s career — when he was best known for his 1967 hit Sadie, the Cleaning Lady. And, Farnham writes, he kept a vice-like grip of control over his life.

“For years Darryl controlled where and when I worked, what I sang, what I wore, what I ate,” he writes.

“He isolated me from friends and family, he tried to keep me away from Jill (his wife of 51 years), he drugged me, and he made me believe that all my success, everything I had, was because of him.”

Farnham recalls discovering a half-dissolved pill in the bottom of his cup of coffee. When asked what it was, Sambell purportedly told the young Farnham: “That’s just something to keep you awake.”

“He drugged me for years and I had no f...ing idea,” Farnham wrote.

“I feel so ashamed of myself for not realising what Darryl was up to or speaking up more often to put him back in his place. I didn’t question any of it, I just went along as if nothing was off key. I still don’t know why I didn’t react more. I put it down to being young, under stress, tired and feeling unsure and insecure about my own instincts.”

Farnham also revealed Sambell was “aggressively sexual” toward him in those early days, too, despite the singer turning down his repeat advances. Sambell was an openly gay man in an era when homosexuality was still illegal.

In his book, Farnham says he can see that his rejections “turned (Sambell’s) attraction into jealousy, hatred and a desire for control”.

Farnham eventually sacked Sambell in 1976 and began a successful manager-singer partnership with friend and fellow musician Glenn Wheatley in 1980.

“Many years have passed since then and, up until now, I’ve found it very hard to unpick what happened to me. But now that I’ve confronted on it, I look back on that time with sorrow. I’m annoyed at myself for being so gullible and trusting.

“I gave away control of my career, my direction and my life. I was a young bloke and I needed a manager.”

The Voice Inside is the first memoir Farnham has approved in his storeyed career. He wrote the book with first-time author Poppy Stockwell, the director and co-writer of the award-winning and record-breaking documentary John Farnham: Finding the Voice.

The book delves into Whispering Jack’s decades-long career, which Farnham concedes is “probably” over after undergoing emergency surgery and radiation to remove oral cancer in August 2022.

Jill Farnham, who married the singer in 1973, writes about the discovery of a big white mass on the inside of her husband’s cheek which the lifelong smoker delayed seeking medical opinions about for several months.

In her chapters, Jill dispels rumours about her husband’s facial structure after treatment— “Because of the treatment, he lost his bottom teeth, (the doctors) had to take them out. And, just for the record, they didn’t take his jaw,” she writes — but is equally as cagey about his singing future.

“I don’t know if John will sing again,” she writes, saying the “whole side of his face (where the cancer was removed) is rock hard”.

“The flesh, the muscle, the tendons, none of it is supple. The surgeons need to work out how to loosen it all, so we have to be patient. He’s disappointed, naturally, because he may not be up on a stage again and he loved that.”

But the You’re the Voice belter does, however, “still sing at home”.

John writes: “I can barely open my mouth but I still wail in the shower.

“I love to make noises with my throat. Since I was a kid I’ve loved to whistle, I’ve loved to sing.

“I was given a gift and to be able to get out there and affect people in some way was a special thing. I would like to continue doing that. So, though I am not putting all my hopes into it, we’ll see.”

The Voice Inside by John Farnham and Poppy Stockell will be released on Wednesday, October 30 by Hachette Australia.