The artist John Farnham, who had a worldwide hit in the mid-1980s with "You're the Voice", was drugged for years by his former manager Darryl Sambell. This is claimed by the artist in his biography "The Voice Inside", writes Billboard.
I caught him one day, says Farnham, who discovered a half-dissolved pill in his coffee cup.
When he asked the manager what the pill was, he got the answer "it's just something that helps you stay awake".
John Farnham also claims in the book that Sambell was "sexually aggressive" and made advances, and when Farnham said no, he was punished. He describes how the manager controlled every aspect of his life for several years, and how he isolated him from friends and family. In the end, the artist broke with Sambell in 1976.
John Farnham has had a hard time coming to terms with what happened to him, and doesn't understand why he never reacted stronger.
I blame it on being young, stressed, tired, and uncertain about my own instincts, he says.
