Tuesday, 11 October, 2022
On the 15th October 2022 the BBC is airing a tribute to Olivia Newton-John shortly after 10pm, followed by Xanadu and the super-rare TV programme Only Olivia. This has never been shown to my knowledge since the first airing in September 1977 and as you can see from the screengrabs, the recordings passed between fans are rough as guts, multigeneration analogue VHS copies staged fan to fan. Olivia’s delicate music is marred by wow and flutter and a general lack of high frequencies, which is a shame as there ar some lovely live renditions of some of the songs.
Hopefully this is from the C-format mastertape and for the first time we will hear it properly. Some of you may have seen it when it first went out, but I was not one of the lucky ones, and I have waited 45 years to hear this right. Thank you, whoever fixed this at the BBC, a heartffelt thank you ;) And yes, this is the programme that gave our erstwhile fan club and this website its name.
I do not know what is in the tribute programme, but if it features some of the 1970s recordings at the BBC that will be a treat too, as Olivia appeared and a lot of early 1970s TV musical variety shows and Cliff Richard specials, and there are many songs that have never been released.
The Only Olivia programme is slated to start 12:50am (ie technically on Sunday) after a showing of Xanadu. Enjoy!