John Farnham’s ‘Whispering Jack’, the second biggest selling album in Australia of all time, has just turned 30 years old.
‘Whispering Jack’ was released on 20 October 1986. The first single, ‘You’re The Voice’ was released one month earlier and became the number one song in Australia for seven weeks from 3 November to 21 December 1986.
The career of John Farnham had become motionless before ‘Whispering Jack’. Farnham had spent 1983 to 1986 as lead singer for Little River Band after the departure of Glenn Shorrock. As LRB frontman John recorded three albums ‘The Net’, ‘Playing To Win’ and ‘No Reins’, each having diminishing popularity from its predecessor.
‘We Two’, with Farnham on vocals, reached no 22 on the Billboard chart.
Farnham started to gather songs for what would become ‘Whispering Jack’ while he was still with Little River Band. One of the songs offered that he knocked back was Bernie Taupin and Peter Wolf’s ‘We Built This City’. It was later picked up by Starship and became a no 1 hit in the US and Australia.
Two songs Farnham did grab were Eric McCusker’s ‘No One Comes Close’ and Ross Wilson’s ‘A Touch Of Paradise’.
‘Whispering Jack’ reached no 1 in Australia and Sweden, no 2 in New Zealand, no 3 in Switzerland and no 12 in Norway.
Meat Loaf ‘Bat Out of Hell’ is still the biggest selling album of all-time in Australia with 1.75m sales. ‘Whispering Jack’ is no 2 with 1.68m sales. Delta Goodrem ‘Innocent Eyes’ is at no 3 with 1,200,000.
