John Farnham opens up about his ‘abusive’ and ‘sexually aggressive’ first manager

John Farnham has opened up for the first time about his “abusive” relationship with his first manager, Darryl Sambell, accusing him of being “sexually aggressive” towards him and controlling what he sang, wore and ate.

In his new memoir, The Voice Inside, published in Australia on Wednesday, the 75-year-old singer reveals the extent of Sambell’s abuse for the first time, writing that he “used me like a piece of meat”.

“At times, in the early years, he was aggressively sexual with me,” he writes. “He would try it on and I would say, ‘Darryl, no. Just leave me alone,’ or, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ I said it often enough that I can see now that this rejection turned his attraction into jealousy, hatred and a desire for control.”

Farnham was 17 when Sambell, then 21, spotted him performing in a bar in Cohuna, Victoria, in 1967. But after Farnham became famous with his hit Sadie the Cleaning Lady, Sambell controlled “where and when I worked, what I sang, what I wore, what I ate. He isolated me from my friends and family, he tried to keep me away from [Farnham’s now wife] Jill, he drugged me, and he made me believe that all my success, everything I had, was because of him.”

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Sambell would work him long hours in an effort to isolate him, Farnham writes, and tried to break up his relationship with Jill by “bullying” her.

Sambell would also drug Farnham with amphetamines to keep him working all night, then sleeping tablets to knock him out in the morning.

“He drugged me for years, and I had no fucking idea,” Farnham writes, adding that he had only discovered what Sambell was doing when he found a half-dissolved pill in his coffee.

He still feels “so ashamed of myself for not realising what Darryl was up to or speaking up more often”, he writes: “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.”

In Poppy Stockell’s 2023 documentary John Farnham: Finding the Voice, Jill Farnham called Sambell “evil” and spoke about his drugging the singer. But his memoir is the first time Farnham himself has spoken about Sambell’s abuse on record.

Stockell, who co-wrote the memoir, told Guardian Australia that she believed Sambell was a factor in why the singer has long been reluctant to speak to media. In the book, Farnham writes of how Sambell would leak details of his private life for publicity.

“I think the shame and guilt of not leaving that abusive relationship earlier is probably something really hard for John, that he feels ashamed and guilty for being naive,” she said. “But we see it play out over and over again in this industry, where the power imbalance is so great … and people turn a blind eye or are complicit in silence.”

“Pushing him to speak about Darryl was really tricky … that was hard going.”

In 1969 Farnham, then 20, sued Sambell for unpaid profits; because he was still a minor, Farnham had to sue his manager through his father. In 1975 Farnham dropped the lawsuit and told media: “There’s no ill feeling at all. It is unfortunate that this happened, and I stress that there are absolutely no plans for changing my management.”

Farnham sacked Sambell the following year, which he writes was a “huge relief”.

“I was finally free from what I can see now was an abusive relationship that lasted almost a decade,” Farnham writes.

“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 it, I look back on that time with sorrow … I gave away control of my career, my direction and my life.”

The rock band Masters Apprentices sacked Sambell too after Glenn Wheatley, then a member of the band, realised he was pocketing their profits; Wheatley would later become Farnham’s manager and close friend. Sambell died of cancer in 2001 aged 55.