ONJ and Sacha Distel
by Anne Latreille (in London)
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN has come through five years in the tough British pop world with her public image intact, her pretty, popular, girl-next-door appeal unsullied. She has had ‘her share of drama, the stuff of which first-person splash stories of the “pop star tells all” are made. Nearly four years ago, when she was only l9, she was named as “the ‘other woman” when the wife of the then Shadows guitarist, Bruce Welch, sued him for divorce on the grounds of adultery. In April this year, only days after breaking off her long-standing engagement to Welch, she was at his side in a speeding ambulance as he was rushed to hospital after taking a drug overdose. In the best show-business tradition she then turned up, white-faced and running a gauntlet of eager photographers, for her twice-nightly revue performance in the West End. Olivia has steadfastly refused to discuss any aspect of her private life for publication.
She would not discuss the break-up of her four-year-old engagement. With heightened colour she said, “I don’t want to say anything. Bruce still produces my records and we’re still friends. But I simply won’t talk about it.” Regular television appearances on the “Cliff Richard Show” number one required family viewing in the U.K. and her current West End stage show with Sacha Distel have endeared Olivia to the British public.
Last year, with several best-selling singles, she was voted Britain’s top pop girl singer. This year she came in second. Now that she has made it, her life is far easier than when she first arrived in London in 1967 to try her luck as a singing duo with Pat Carroll. Her manager now looks after all her business and professional affairs. “It’s so important to have a good manager,” she says. Recording sessions are relatively easy. “Peter, my manager, John (John Farrar, once of the Shadows, now of Marvin, Welch, and Farrar, and husband of Olivia’s former partner, Pat Carroll), and Bruce (her ex-fiance and also of Marvin, Weleh, and Farrar), decide the songs I’m going to do. John works out the arrangements, guitar, strings if they’re needed, and so on. Then in the studio Bruce and John tell me what’s right and what’s wrong, all that jazz. All I have to do is sing.”
Olivia is a happy, seemingly uncomplicated person. At 23, her enthusiasm is infectious and she has a great sense of humour. She buzzes round London in her citrus-yellow fastback car and, at present, she’s a familiar sight outside the Prince of Wales Theatre, where the hard-bitten doorman usually saves her one of the much sought-after parking meters before her two evening performances. Even the irascible London taxi-drivers don’t complain when she holds up the traffic while manoeuvring into place. She lives by herself in a flat in St. John’s Wood, just round the comer from her actress sister, Rona.
Although Olivia has spent most of her life in Australia, she says she now feels more English than Australian. (She was born here in Cambridge.) “I have no regrets about leaving Australia. As much as I loved it there, it’s better for my work here, more of a challenge. And my friends are here.’ There is talk of bringing the Sacha Distel revue “Paris to Piccadilly” to Australia at the end of the year. Olivia is delighted. “I’d love to go back again.”
In the revue she does a 15-minute solo spot, appears in the half-time finale, and later does a duet with Sacha Distel. Distel is a great heartthrob in Britain and so the show’s audience have been predominantly female. “At first it was frightening to go out and see so many women looking at you,” she said. “I mean, they could hate me. Women in an audience can get very resentful toward female artists on stage. But so far they’ve accepted me very well.”
At present Olivia is making a new LP, as yet entitled. She wrote one of the songs for it. “I’ve never written any music before, and I don’t play the guitar, but one day was fooling round with three chords I’d been taught and in ten minutes I’d written the thing.
Ask Olivia to comment on the popular idea of the pop scene drugs, wild festivals, hippies, and the like and the response is a blank stare. “I never think of it like that. Well, I’m in the pop scene, but I’m not conscious of it. I don’t mix with all the ‘in’ people or what everyone thinks are the ‘in’ people, Bolan, Rod Stewart, the Beatles. I’m probably the wrong era. I have my own circle of friends and they tend to revolve round the office.” (Olivia’s manager also looks after Cliff Richard, Marvin, Welch, and Farrar, and Labi Siffre.) As for drug-taking.. “I think there’s just as much drug-taking among office-type people as in show business. But in show business you hear about it, it gets more publicity.”
Olivia has had her share of disillusion from the business. The much-promoted pop group Toomorrow, of which she was the only girl member, folded after months of exasperation and inactivity. It was a great experience, says Olivia, but it got beyond fun. Nevertheless, she can’t see a future for herself away from show business.
“I just love singing. I love everything about my career, the people, the travelling, the hard work which isn’t like hard work at all.”
Footnotes - Pictures: Olivia in Regents Park, London. Her appointment with us was the first interview she had given since her broken engagement. She enjoys working with Distel “He’s like Cliff Richard very nice, easy-going and professional. And our voices blend.” Olivia is a busy girl these days with two performances a night and three on Saturdays. The routine doesn’t bother her. “It’s all too new and exciting.”