Richard Marx: The Voice coach on Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton-John and reality TV

Herald Sun

a day ago

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Grammy-winning rocker Richard Marx has a long history with Australia.
He first visited the country at the age of 12, when his Down Under fascinated dad brought him here for a month-long holiday and he was completely smitten with the place.
'That was it,' he says over Zoom call from Sydney, half way through production of this year's season of The Voice. 'That was the beginning of my love affair.'
Once he hit the big time in his native US courtesy of hits including What About Me?, Crazy, Hazard and Right Here Waiting, he ensured that Australia was part of his schedule and he's been coming back ever since.
Along his journey of selling 30 million albums, winning the Song Of the Year Grammy Award in 2003 and producing artists from Barbra Streisand to NSYNC, he's also made plenty of Aussie musical mates.
He became 'obsessed' with John Farnham in the '80s, is touring this year with Rick Springfield, has written and produced songs with Keith Urban and counts Hugh Jackman as one of his best friends.
But he reserves his deepest love and admiration for the late, great Olivia Newton-John, who took the young Marx under her wing when he was still a struggling musician.
Her act of kindness in taking him to a fancy Los Angeles restaurant to celebrate his 20th birthday has stayed with him decades later and getting to perform a spontaneous version of Right Here Waiting with her when she came to see one of his shows in Florida in 2011 remains one of the highlights of his life.
Singer-songwriter Richard Marx on the set of The Voice.
Richard Marx and his The Voice co-star, Kate Miller-Heidke at the Logies. Picture: Getty Images
'I was so madly in love with her from a distance and then when I got to know her, I genuinely was crushing on her,' says Marx.
'When I would be around her, I would just stare at her and she would walk by me and I would just smell the air. We were friends to the end. I miss her and I think about her all the time.
'We had some really beautiful conversations about life and family and what it's all about and she was just gracious and elegant and generous.'
As for Jackman, who he calls his 'brother', the pair performed the same signature song together at Radio City Music Hall in June and Marx says sometimes 'it's just annoying' how nice the Aussie A-lister can be.
'Really amazing guy!' New The Voice coach Richard Marx has opened up about his friendship with Hugh Jackman. Picture: AP
'We were friends to the end!' The late Olivia Newton-John. Picture: Getty Images
'Sometimes even to his detriment,' says Marx. 'I've seen him put himself in situations that he didn't need to be in because he just didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. He's such a lovely guy and a wicked sense of humour.
'We've been friends for 20 years and we call each other brother. We've gone through a bunch of ups and downs together. We've helped each other through life's circumstances and he's a really, really amazing guy.'
It's little wonder then, that when the opportunity presented itself to be a coach alongside Melanie 'Sporty Spice' Chisolm, ARIA-winning Aussie artist Kate Miller-Heidke and former Boyzone singer Ronan Keating for the 14th season of The Voice, Marx didn't need much convincing to relocate to Sydney for the duration with his wife Daisy Fuentes.
'I particularly wanted to do it in Australia for two reasons,' he says. 'One, I don't know what it is about the level of singing talent in this country. It's out of control. Everybody sings great. The butcher sings better than most people. The baristas sing better than most people.
'So I knew that the level of talent that I'd be dealing with was going to be exceptional.
'But selfishly, the idea of just being here this long and really living here for a couple months, really appealed to me. I've been here in a little clumps of time, but I've never really just had a place, rented a house and lived somewhere in Australia. We were completely sold.'
But Marx wasn't always a fan of the reality TV singing format, once likening it to 'a person on a bicycle with training wheels being handed the keys to a Maserati – they are not ready'. His other beef was that some of the earlier iterations of the format – he declines to name names – revelled in the humiliation that inevitably came with bad auditions.
'That was never funny to me,' he says. 'They know going in that they're going to have these contestants humiliate themselves and that's part of the ratings, and that's part of the concept and it's just mean.'
The Voice, he says, appeals to his desire to do more musical mentoring and connect with young, promising artists. He's less inclined to write and record new music because of the financial state of the music business – 'it's all just an expense at this point, you're never going to make that money back' – so he'd rather put his decades of experience to good use by helping musicians starting out.
The Voice 2025 coaches: Mel C, Richard Marx, Kate Miller-Heidke, and Ronan Keating.
'If I could be someone they can reach out every once in a while and go, 'hey, I just got offered this deal, what do you think of this?'' he says.
'And I can say 'you don't want to go near that because of this, this and this'. I like being a sounding board for people like that.'
Marx has seen first hand how difficult it can be for aspiring musicians to make a good living in 2025 through his three sons, who he describes as 'incredibly talented singer-songwriter-musicians.
He still regards his 1987 savage take-down of superficiality the music industry Don't Mean Nothing as one of his most important songs, and says: 'I could write that song today and it would be the same'.
Early in his career, Marx was rejected by label after label, who told him he had the wrong look, the wrong sound and would never have a hit.
'If I were made of different stock, I would have maybe called it a day and gone and done something else,' he says. 'But it turns out all those people were wrong and they're wrong about a lot of people. Empty promises, the sharks that swim around that want to take your content, they want to take your publishing, they want to take your creative rights away – that's all still a thing.'
He says he sympathises with his middle son Lucas, who is making steady progress in the music world, including co-writing a song for Katy Perry, but is all too aware of the financial realities of the streaming world in 2025 compared with when Marx was selling albums by the truckload.
Richard Marx and Daisy Fuentes at the Logies. Photo: NewsWire / Monique Harmer
'He said recently to a friend of his who is another writer 'In the heyday when my dad wrote a number one song he could buy a house and if we write a number one song now we might be able to get a case of candy bars'. That's about it.'
When he's not touring, Marx says he can be found walking on the beach with his wife of nearly a decade, Cuban-American actress Fuentes and making his labour of love podcast Stories To Tell in his home bar. Marx says Fuentes has introduced him to the joys of a good martini and quality tequila and after years of clean living, he's embraced the ritual and the social aspect of the cocktail.
'My liver has had it so good for so long that I'm totally fine,' he says with a laugh. 'I'm definitely not at risk of anything.'
Despite first experiencing success during the blizzard of cocaine that was the music industry in the 1980s, Marx managed to avoid the abuse and addiction that took hold of so many of his pairs.
'I was always afraid of it,' he says. 'Coke was so rampant and available and popular in the '80s when I was coming up and everyone around me was doing it.
'I was watching what was happening to the people doing it, so that was a turn off.
'And I honestly the other part of me was I was afraid I would like it too much.
'So I thought rather than risk a problem, I'm just going to not do it ever. And I still haven't.'
The Voice, Sunday, 7pm, Channel 7.