Eager to share a new song, the phone call from Glenn Wheatley always came | BernardZuel
A manager who put everything into the careers of his artists – in the case of his biggest, and his favourite, John Farnham, literally everything: mortgaging his home to financeThe phone call would come, inviting you to come down to the gig, or encouraging you to take a listen to the single, his soft voice and a slight stutter, not pushy but eager. If he ran into you at an event, he would check if you’d heard or seen the most recent release, his eyes lighting up.
It wasn’t just that no one wanted to release or play John Farnham by the 1980s, no one wanted to manage him. Or at least manage him the way the singer wanted: taking him seriously, taking him past the novelty songs history. Indeed, taking him past the fill-in, the big-voiced bloke who was a surprise choice to replace Glenn Shorrock in the internationally successful Little River Band.That had been Wheatley’s idea too, a manager killing two musical birds with one stone.
By 1980, AM radio had dominated pop music in Australia for two decades, its demands and quirks, its prejudices and exclusions, shaping the local industry. Having watched the way more adult-oriented, album-focused, rock-friendly FM radio had transformed the landscape in the USA in the 1970s, Wheatley was part of a consortium that established the first music-based commercial FM radio station in Australia, EON FM.
Mention should be made of Wheatley’s wife, Gaynor, who was the powerhouse, the repository of memories, and the smoother public presence of the Wheatley enterprises, even as she stayed far in the background. They were a rock-solid partnership with complementary skills and parallel drives, and in the latter third of his career, she was invaluable.