"So ashamed": John Farnham opens up about years of abuse
John Farnham has shared explosive claims that he suffered years of abuse at the hands of his former manager at the beginning of his career.
Revealing all in his new memoir The Voice Inside, which is set to be released on October 30th, the Aussie music legend opened up about the mistreatment he endured from former manager Darryl Sambell when he was a teen pop idol in the 1960s with hits like Sadie the Cleaning Lady.
In an excerpt of the book published by The Australian, Farnham wrote that Sambell “drugged me for years and I had no f**king idea,” until he found a half-dissolved pill at the bottom of a cup of coffee.
Asked what it was, Sambell told Farnham: “That’s just something to keep you awake.”
Farnham also writes that his manager, who was openly gay, was “aggressively sexual” towards him and he was constantly fending off his advances.
He wrote, “I said it often enough that I can see now that this rejection turned his attraction into jealousy, hatred and a desire for control.”
The toxic relationship went on for years, with Sambell controlling “where and when I worked, what I sang, what I wore, what I ate,” as Farnham ended up “isolated from friends and family,” even from wife Jill, who he married in 1973.
Farnham finally sacked Sambell in 1976, later forming one of Australian music’s most successful partnerships with music manager Glenn Wheatley, who helped Farnham become a household name with his major hits of the 1980s and 90s.
After Sambell died in 2001, Farnham wrote that he was forced to reflect on the early years of his career, and was overcome with a mixture of sorrow and shame: “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.”
He admitted he had found it hard to “unpick” what had happened to him, until forced to confront it while writing his memoir.
“But now that I’ve confronted it, I look back on that time with sorrow. I’m annoyed at myself for being so gullible and trusting,” he writes.
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