This documentary goes right to my adolescence – watching Happening 70, reading Go-Set, screaming at the Masters Apprentices- so of course I was going to love it. It’s a pretty straight documentary, with talking heads and voice-overs, but it’s also the story of Australia’s pop music scene of the 1960s and 70s, fame and its loss and recovery, and loyalty. Its focus is John Farnham, but it is also a tribute to his manager, Glenn Wheatley (ex- Masters Apprentices) who died from complications of COVID just weeks before filming had finished – a timely reminder of those early months of the pandemic when no-one knew much about the virus except that it was completely new. As a result, Gaynor Wheatley receives more screen time than she would have otherwise, but that’s a strength because being narrated largely at third-hand gives the documentary a level of abstraction that lifts it above hagiography. John’s current health problems give it an added level of poignancy. I loved it.
Four and a half stars.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 