JOHN FARRAR AND PAT CARROLL

By Allister Hardwick (14/2/02). [Special thanks to Alan Willis & Geoff Jermy]
John Farrar’s life long work with The Strangers; MW&F; The Shadows; Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard and films Grease/Xanadu is dissected along with wife, Pat Carroll. This multi-instrumentalist and producer extraordinaire is analysed in considerable depth.

John Farrar was born in Melbourne Australia in 1946 on 8^th Nov. No details of his early life have been recorded for posterity but it is a safe bet that virtually all of his school-days' spare time was spent practicing guitar with a music career in mind since he was good enough aged 18 in 1964, with a Fender Telecaster as his main guitar, to join an established local band, The Strangers as their lead guitarist, evicting a founder member, Laurie Arthur.

The Strangers had been formed in 1961. The original line up comprised of Laurie Arthur (L/guitar); Fred Welland (R/guitar); Peter Robinson (bass); Graeme Thompson (drums). By the time John joined them, The Strangers were a well-known group having already secured a recording contract with a local label W&G Records in 1962 and gigged locally in Melbourne on the dance circuit. On one gig their set was 90% Cliff/Shads material: Wild Goose (Org); Man of mystery; Peace pipe; Tough enough; 20 flight rock; she’s gone; Do you wanna dance; Gonzales; The breeze and I; Leavin’ town (Org); We say yeah; and The Stranger.

The Strangers’ main music style at that time was mainly instrumental (with Shadows, Ventures and Duane Eddy influences) but soon after John joined they made a conscious change of direction and from then on recorded vocals. John’s main musical influences at that time were The Beatles, Four Seasons and Beach Boys, the latter having a profound affect on John’s singing range and ability best described as falsetto. By the mid 1960’s The Strangers changed label from W&G to Go then to Philips and finally in 1970 onto Fable.

During the years 1964 to 1970 The Strangers recorded mostly singles, one EP and two LP’s. The vast majority of their later work being a mixture of cover versions of recent chart hits and some originals. In addition, they were used as an in-house backing group by W&G for several artists including Yvonne Barrett, Grantley Dee, Merv Benton, Pat Carroll, Russell Morris, Johnny Young, Little Gulliver, Peter Doyle, Billy Adams, Terry Dean, The Field Twins, Buddy England, Ronnie Burns, Johnny Farnham, Lynne Randell and Colin Cook Throughout this period they were very successful and were always in demand for TV work on ATV’s "Go!!" show and HSV 7’s "Sunnyside Up" for a period of 9 years.

On one of the late 60’s tours of Australia The Strangers were booked to appear as a support act to the main attraction, The Shadows. John Farrar’s guitar playing and vocal abilities caught the eye of Bruce Welch lurking in the corner of the stage while they played their material which included John making use of a 1960’s style coke-cola bottle as a guitar playing appendage with his left hand. So successful were The Strangers in fact that they could afford imported high performance sports cars all round as part of their lifestyle.

In the mid 1960’s Olivia and Pat Carroll won a song contest back home and won a short stay in the UK. They played several west-end clubs including one notorious short spell in the Soho district as a novelty singing duet act to a sexually aroused predominantly male audience. A miss-booking by their agent, I suspect. Pat returned to Australia to resume her music career alone where she would eventually marry John Farrar whereas Olivia stayed on and became an item with Bruce Welch after their paths crossed at a Shads gig.

Pat Carroll herself released a number of singles on W&G, and Interfusion labels during the 1960’s and early 70’s all of which failed to chart. Her best known Pye single is "To the sun" which features Cliff on backing vocals. By the early 70’s Pat’s singles contract ended with Interfusion (Festival) records but John continued to use her for backing singing duties on most of Olivia’s 70/80’s albums.

By 1969 The Shadows’ creative talents as an instrumental band were all but totally washed-up finishing up with the dreary Shades of rock album in 1970. Marvin and Welch had been mentally tinkering with the idea of what to do next and decided that a change of direction was needed to resuscitate their creative juices. Collectively they hit upon the idea of forming a vocal based group with close harmonies eg BeeGees or CSNY but this concept would need new blood. Olivia (then Bruce’s fiancée) hit upon the idea of bringing in John Farrar to form a trio. Bruce discussed this idea with Hank and they contacted John in Australia who was quite smitten with the idea.

So John quit The Strangers and with his wife, Pat Carroll, emigrated to London. The Strangers immediately replaced John but his loss was ultimately to prove a fatal blow to them. They were all but finished within a matter of 3 years by 1973. Shortly before emigrating to England John cut a solo single on the Fable label: With Rainine on my mind (v)// John and Mary (i)

Once in London, John set about throwing his weight behind the new Marvin Welch and Farrar project. Not only were Hank and Bruce very impressed by John’s professional attitude to his guitar playing, singing, song-writing and his newly acquired talent as producer thanks to a recent short spell in the USA but his talents also attracted the eye of Cliff Richard.

The first MW&F album briefly charted, the second failed to chart but is noted for its release as a Quadraphonic album and is highly regarded as one of the best sonically speaking to have come out of EMI Abbey Rd studios ever. The third album re-titled as Marvin & Farrar also failed to chart and was musically was a bit wayward compared to the first two albums.

With John Rostill making himself unavailable for MW&F recording duties other musicians were brought in including ex-Manfred Man bassist Dave Richmond; ex-Checkmate on keyboards Alan Hawkshaw and ex-Tornados on drums Clem Cattini. Other session musicians eg Johnny Van Derek and Duffy Power were brought in on an as-and-when required basis. Tarney and Spencer were used as the rhythm section for the third album which also included Olivia on recorder on one cut.

In Europe the MW&F music was more gratefully received by continental Shads fans so much so that on a low key tour of Europe someone stole all their instruments from their van. Even at home the critics at NME and other music papers gave the MW&F albums good write ups despite the climate of change that was sweeping the singles and albums charts at that time. Back in the UK and on tour the MW&F trio were constantly pestered by die-hard Shadows fans for more Shads material so eventually MW&F made concessions to their demands on later tours. Instead of using Brian Bennett on drums and John Rostill on bass they imported Tarney and Spencer with the addition of Pat Carol on keyboards.

At that time fellow Australian, Peter Gormley, was the manager for Cliff and The Shadows. Gormley’s Antipodean heritage had the additional benefit of acting as a magnet to other ex-pats and Australians returning to the mother country in search of work as musicians where of course Britain still ruled the world musically speaking despite the recent Beatles bust up. Alan Tarney, Trevor Spencer, Kevin Peek, Terry Britten and Peter Doyle to name a few.

With all this fabulous mix of soon to be music geniuses several other spin off benefits occurred. Cliff Richard’s recent downturn of success from failing and low charting singles and albums in the late 60’s started to show constructive signs of being arrested. Norrie Paramor had recently resigned as Cliff’s permanent producer leaving Cliff to pick and choose whichever producers he fancied. This in turn led to Cliff’s music having a more thoughtful and interesting edge. In 1972 Cliff and his extended new family of musicians (incl John, Pat and Olivia) toured the Far East as part of the career rebuilding process. In 1973 Cliff was selected by the BBC for Eurovision duty and John played the final live version of "Power to all our friends" on guitar with Britten, Tarney and Spencer. In 1975 during a non-album break year for Cliff he recorded 2 singles for Cliff with backing by The Shadows with John both playing and producing. Both singles flopped. Cliff demanding a withdrawal by EMI after he learned what a ‘Honky-Tonk Angel’ actually was from a more clued up Cliff fan. If she’d stayed schtum then it might have been another big hit for Cliff as it was just starting to sell well when it got ‘pulled’. By then a mere 1,000 copies had escaped.

Coincidentally, in 1970 the BBC had the bright idea of giving Cliff a series of six 30 minute light entertainment shows to himself. Following in the footsteps of Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. This enabled Cliff to use it as a platform to try out his new singles and include his chums as guests including Olivia and MW&F in order to promote their new material and generally lark about ie comedy as only the Shads and Cliff know how. All in the best possible taste in keeping with Cliff’s (CofE), Hank’s (JW) and Brian’s (JW) newly acquired religious commitments!

In 1971 Olivia was awarded a three album contract with Pye records and she wisely decided to use Bruce as her producer but in addition John was co-opted into this project. Her first 3 albums contained a mixture of covers and originals. The originals were primarily written by the newly expanded family of musicians under the management of Peter Gormley including John Farrar and John Rostill. Many familiar names crop up on those early albums, her backing group for recordings and gigs being virtually a reconstituted version of The Shadows minus Hank.

In 1973 EMI stepped offered The Shadows a renewed contract for some more instrumental albums. John’s miracle working continued unabated with significant contributions in terms of song-writing which began with the magnificent album Rockin’ with Curly leads. For the first time ever The Shadows, to accommodate John, became a 5 piece band with Tarney on bass. On this album John and Hank’s performances are at times mesmerising, both competing for the title of lead guitarist. At times it takes a trained ear to decide who is who.

In 1974 the BBC invited The Shads yet again into their London based studios for a short recording session by that repository of all pop music knowledge, John Peel. The Shads with John recorded 8 Shads cuts including Apache, FBI and Wonderful land. Tarney at that time was unavailable due to increasing sessions workload with other groups with his mate, Spencer, so Mo Foster was brought in on bass. It is anticipated that in 2002 EMI records will finally release a CD album of this and other BBC sessions.

At the end of the Pye contract EMI offered Olivia a contract for more albums all of which were to be produced by John. Bruce’s involvement in all of these was merely as a sporadic songwriter eg "Please Mr Please". In 1974 it was Olivia’s turn to be chosen for Eurovision duties with her 1974 album Long live love acting as a promo item for all 6 songs to be judged by the BBC audience. The cut "Long live love" (a recent hit for Sandy Shaw) was chosen which she hated and had to endure the double indignity of having her dress also selected by Radio Times readers. Poor Olivia. She gallantly lost to Abba’s "Waterloo" song.

By 1974 Olivia’s singles and albums were now selling like hotcakes in America thanks to the song writing skill of the recently deceased John Rostill ("Let me be there" and "If you love me let me know") and the production skills of John Farrar. The idea that Olivia should now move permanently to America was suggested by MCA records and her new boyfriend/manager Lee Kramer. She did so by 1975 and set up her new home in Malibu California. A year later John and Pat followed Olivia to become close neighbours in Malibu.

John was to ultimately record 4 albums with the Shadows including the truly magnificent Live at The Paris Olympia in 1975 which is reckoned to be the definitive live album by The Shadows as it includes all the major hits and a good selection of MW&F cuts on the reissued CD version with virtually the entire concert captured for posterity. Again on this album Tarney was brought in on bass. With The Shadows, John’s preferred guitar was the Fender Telecaster (a rare concession to his genius) even during gigging. For later work with Olivia he would use Gibson guitars and Martins for acoustic work.

The second studio album with the Shadows was the Specs Appeal album which was an interesting mixture of 6 vocals and 6 instrumentals alternating with each other. All 6 vocals were the final selection for the Eurovision Song Contest for 1975 which the Shadows were elected to compete for Britain. Bass guitar duties on this album were shared between Tarney and Dave Richmond. The final choice of "Let me be the one" came second to Holland’s band Teach-in (Abba-clones) with their Abba-resque song "Ding-a-dong". Perhaps if Hank had remembered the lyrics better and Bruce’s microphone hadn’t fallen off it’s stand when the curtain pulled open things might have been different. On the Eurovision final, Bruce played bass and Tarney played piano. John’s third and final studio album with The Shadows, Tasty, has become a huge favourite with the fans with Tarney on bass yet again.

John resigned from the Shadows in late 1975 as he realised at that time that his future success and earning capacity lay more so with Olivia than The Shadows without realising that renewed success for The Shadows lay just around the corner in 1976 thanks to a new album concept backed by a massive TV campaign that was to be the 20 Golden Greats album.

From 1974 onward Olivia was fast becoming the hottest pop-chick in the USA judging by escalating sales of vinyl and gig tickets. All her albums in the 70’s the USA sold in vast quantities but by 1976 she was at a crossroads in terms of image that she was projecting to her fans as a late 20’s spinster on the shelf. The movie Grease was to change that image at a stroke with the assistance of John Farrar’s song-writing skills with "You’re the one that I want" and "Hopelessly devoted to you" being specially written for the movie as add-on songs to the original set as devised for the stage on a recent Broadway run. The movie was an absolute worldwide knockout in 1978 and has the highest ‘bums-on-seats’ coefficient for any musical movie in recent times despite what the critics think of it (totally pooh-poohed it). And for Olivia her change of image occurring right at the end of the movie (what a coincidence!).

In 1978 Olivia’s next album again under John’s production-wing was a real master blaster with much more AOR orientated material with Totally Hot and Three big singles. Then in 1980 Olivia was offered the part in her next movie Xanadu which meant that the album soundtrack became a Farrar versus Jeff Lynne (ELO) political hot potato. Two ONJ songs written and produced by John ("Fool/Country" and "You made me love you") were dropped from the album to make it a ten-track album on the Jet label (ELO’s label). The film was moderately successful but got a right panning by the critics who hated it.  The album soundtrack sold well, however.

In 1980 John realised a long felt ambition to do a solo album with a one album contract with CBS records. This marvellous album "John Farrar" failed to take off and only one single was taken from it to promote it. The album was recorded in LA using the top session musicians. Most of the cuts were written by John including another version of "It’ll be me, babe" co-written with Hank. Two cuts from it were subsequently recycled for Olivia’s Physical album.

By the mid 1980’s John ceased to be Olivia’s permanent producer in the wake of Physical, Soul Kiss and the utterly disastrous Warm and Tender albums. While Physical and Soul Kiss were superb, Warm and Tender was a totally self-indulgent choice of material by Olivia to celebrate the birth of her one and only child, Chloe. Not even John’s production skills could rescue an album that was bound to go up like a lead balloon. MCA Records were not best pleased with the ensuing record sales that occurred and dumped Olivia pronto.

For many years Cliff Richard, prompted by his former English teacher in England, had been harbouring the concept of a musical based on the book Wuthering Heights and in particular the central character Heathcliff. During one of several breaks in the album releasing parts of his career during the mid 1990’s Cliff contacted Sir Tim Rice who agreed to write lyrics for a musical based on the life of Heathcliff. Cliff then decided to offer the lyrics to John Farrar to write the entire music score for the show which he did. The ensuing album was a masterpiece of its time and also gave work to Olivia who plays Cathy on the studio album contributing five songs. JohnAlso produced a live version of the album which included extra pieces or song fillers for classical guitar played by maestro Gordon Giltrap.

Since then John has slipped into semi-retirement. It is understood that he has written another musical Gidget but no further details exist at the time of writing this webpage.

My personal tribute to John
Many fans are guilty of regarding the Shads 60’s lines ups eg Marvin/Welch/Harris/ Meehan and Marvin/Welch/Rostill/Bennett as being The definitive version of The Shadows while overlooking the excellent work of later permutations eg Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Farrar/ [Tarney|Richmond|Foster]. One of John’s lasting influences was to convert the Shads from a 4 piece band to a 5 piece band. In the 1960’s The Shads were more a singles orientated group with the albums being a sideshow bonus item whereas in the 70’s right up to the present day creatively speaking the album was far more important in the industry with singles being ripped off albums so as to promote the album.

All things considered, John Farrar has made an outstanding contribution to The Shadows with seven original albums all of which have more than stood the test of time and are still highly regarded judging by recent opinion polls conducted by the excellent "Shadsfax" magazine. If John were to make a guest appearance at any of the Shadows events, eg Bruce Welch’s Shadowmania, he would be assured of a tumultuous welcome. I believe that his main contribution to The Shadows was that he saved them from certain extinction in 1970 by revitalising Hank and Bruce’s capacity to write and play great (new) music at a time when they were creatively in schtuk. This period enabled the Shadows to reinvent themselves and kept them busy and in the public eye until things picked up in the late 70’s.

It is a crying shame that the MW&F music, although critically acclaimed, never received the sales success it deserved coming as it did in the early 70’s having to compete with the likes of Elton John, Bowie, Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, solo Beatles projects, glam rock, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Mud, Wizard, Osmonds, Fleetwood Mac, etc grabbing all the headlines and 99.9% of the space in the music presses.

For Olivia, she owes John a debt of eternal gratitude for everything she has accomplished musically and materially speaking. Without John in her life she would have returned to Australia years ago to settle for her second choice career working for a vet surgery.

The Strangers too benefited from John’s addition to their band for the six years they were together. Had they remained an instrumental band they would have been kaput by 1963/4 in the wake of Beatles/Rolling Stones invasion worldwide.

For Cliff too, he owes John a huge debt of thanks for all the hard work he has put in to those gigs, TV shows and not to mention realising Cliff’s long lasting dream that was the Heathcliff project.

Lastly the owners of the rights to the musical Grease owe John a massive debt of gratitude with his 2 song contribution turning a fairly successful Broadway stage show into one of the greatest musical films of all time.

Footnote
Canetoad records hope to put out more Strangers material from their early years with greater emphasis on the instrumentals in 2002. A whole album of unreleased material by Pat Carroll with The Strangers is known to exist in addition to other solo singles. It will take a bit of persuading to reissue these recordings. 

Write to David MacLean at Canetoad Records, PO BOX 1039, POTTS POINT, NSW, AUSTRALIA 2011.

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Page last edited 05 September 2004