John Clifford Farrar (/ˈfɑːrər/ FAR-ər; born 8 November 1946) is an Australian music producer, songwriter, arranger, singer, and guitarist.
He also produced the majority of her recorded material during that time, including her number-one albums, If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974), Have You Never Been Mellow (1975), and Olivia's Greatest Hits Vol.
[4][5] In 1963, he joined The Mustangs, alongside Johnny Cooper on vocals, Peter Ramis on bass guitar and Billy on drums.
In late January 1964, he joined The Strangers, replacing the founding guitarist Laurie Arthur, adding another lead vocalist to the group.
[6] In June 1964, the band issued its first vocal single, "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Someone", which reached the top 30 on the Melbourne charts in July.
Carroll and Newton-John formed a vocal duo, "Pat and Olivia", and in 1967, they first toured the United Kingdom, including a gig at the infamous Raymond Revuebar club in Soho.
[11] Welch and Farrar co-produced and performed on Newton-John's cover of Bob Dylan's track, "If Not for You", and the album of the same title, released in November 1971.
[12] From 1971 to 1976, various members of The Shadows were employed as session musicians for Newton-John's early albums, recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios.
[5] In 1974, Farrar used the talk box "SFX unit" on an instrumental track, "No, No, Nina", well before Peter Frampton's 1975 single, "Show Me the Way", which featured the same device.
However, Farrar's track was held back from release by EMI until 1997, when it appeared on the CD album, The Shadows at Abbey Road, containing mostly unreleased material.
A vocal version of "No, No, Nina" appeared on the Specs Appeal album as a Eurovision contender track, but it was voted sixth out of six initial entries.
[citation needed] Aside from instrumentation and vocals, Farrar worked as an arranger on The Shadows' albums: Rockin' with Curly Leads, Specs Appeal, Tasty and Live at the Paris Olympia.
Both were accepted, despite strong reservations from director Randal Kleiser, who believed that the songs didn't fit the style,[14] and became two of the soundtrack's most successful singles, being international number-one hits during 1978.
[15] Other number-one hits for Newton-John that were written and produced by Farrar are "Have You Never Been Mellow" (1975), "Don't Stop Believin'" (an easy-listening chart-topper from 1976, not the Journey song of the same name), and "Magic" (1980).
[17] In 1995, Farrar collaborated with Newton-John and lyricist Tim Rice on the score of Cliff Richard's musical, Heathcliff based on the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights.