From white-bread country gal to Grease megastar
From white-bread country gal to Grease megastar to reinvented raunchy queen, Olivia has always exuded star power and timeless glamour
Cut to a vision of saucy blonde curls, whore-red lips dangling a fag, rock’n’roll black leather jacket and skin tight (in reality, sewed on) black satin spandex leggings. She licks her lips, stubs out her cigarette with her heel, waits a beat and meows “Tell me about it… stud. And with that, Sandy Olsson’s transformation in Grease from sweet, naïve innocent into smouldering sexy rock chick is complete. Startlingly, the exact same transformation was taking place simultaneously for the actress/singing sensation playing Sandy, one Miss Olivia Newton-John. Oh sure, her starring role in the movie musical phenomenon of 1978 made her a global sensation, leaving everyone with the image of her dancing her way through a fairground singing You’re The One That I Want with her monstrously hot co-star John Travolta, but it wasn’t always this way.
The same year as the release of the film and trillion-selling soundtrack Grease, Olivia’s first (of several) Greatest Hits collections was released. At this point she was already an established singer with nine albums under her belt. Far from the sass she would become known for, these albums were filled with sweet, gentle feel-good radio-friendly pop-country like Take Me Home Country Roads and I Honestly Love You. She could not have been more apple pie if she tried, appearing on record sleeves in soft focus glowing in virginal white lace. As one US critic infamously commented: “If white bread could sing, it would sound like Olivia Newton-John”
Born in Cambridge in 1948, she relocated to Melbourne, Australia when she was five years old. By the age of 15 she had formed her own girl group but won an Australian TV talent show as a solo performer, the prize of which was a trip to England. After a false start joining a group called Toomorrow (sic) to star in a bizarre sci-fi musical romp of the same name which sunk without a trace, she soon hooked up with Cliff Richard, touring with him and becoming a regular guest on his TV shows. But it was her records that began making waves internationally, and in 1974 she won a Grammy for Best Country Vocalist for Let Me Be There, the same year she represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest singing Long Live Love, to be trumped by Abba’s Waterloo.
Regardless, Olivia had arrived. Her trans-Atlantic career blossomed, notching up hit after sweet, country, summer-breeze hit. Not to mention countless TV appearances. Yes: she really did a primetime duet of Sing A Song with Nana Mouskouri! Yes: that’s her in a late-night jam session with Abba and Andy Gibb!
Yes: her first ABC-TV special in 1976 really did guest both Lee Majors (The Bionic Man) and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman).
But, of course, it was Grease that tipped the scales. While the film smashed box office records, the record-buying and movie-going public at large got to see both sides of Olivia the old squeaky clean girl (Hopelessly Devoted To You) and the good-hearted minx (You’re The One That I Want).
Nothing less than marketing genius! She took the torch and ran with it, releasing the rocky, funkified Totally Hot album, sporting tight black leather and wild hair on the cover but still giving you a flash of that good-girl smile in videos to hits like A Little More Love.
The next logical step was to go back behind the cameras, and in 1980 she starred alongside Gene Kelly in the chaotically camp all-singing, all-dancing Xanadu, in which she played a Greek muse sent to earth to inspire mankind. With a cast of about 400 singers and dancers, she inspires someone to build… a roller disco. (Remember, this was 1980.) Though the film was a disaster, it enabled Olivia to change looks every 10 minutes - once again giving us the range between good girl and sex kitten. And the soundtrack was a platinum smash, spinning off UK and US number ones with the title track and Magic respectively.
What happened next was nothing less than a phenomenon. The now 33-year-old Olivia donned skimpy gym gear (including a sweat band round her head an accessory that briefly became her trademark and a fashion must for girls worldwide) and released the album and single Physical. Riding on the aerobics revolution, the song topped the US charts for 10 weeks despite being banned buy some radio stations for its sexual innuendo (in South Africa the line ‘there’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally’ was actually censored) –and the album spawned a further slew of hits. Olivia was simply as hot as you could get.
A key part of this success was the groundbreaking TV special Let’s Get Physical comprising elaborate videos made for each song on the album. The most famous of course was the title track, featuring Olivia as a gym instructor training a bunch of overweight guys who hello transform into toned muscle men and then walk off hand in hand with each other. Videos like Landslide and Stranger’s Touch further showed her steamier, aggressively sexual side while employing amazing sets and state-of-the-art production. Her anticipation of the MTV explosion marked her in many ways as a precursor to Madonna, but whereas Madonna was going to either kick you in the balls or blow you in the toilets, Olivia always straddled that line between animalistic and girl-next-door.
Having completed a massive world tour of stadiums and seen her second volume of Greatest Hits do further big business, it was time for her career rollercoaster to do its inevitable thing. The dip started in 1983 with Two Of A Kind, a romantic comedy that reunited her with John Travolta. Hollywood never learns the lesson that what works once may not necessarily work again - and the film bombed. The album did spawn her last US top 5 hit with Twist Of Fate, but it was the start of a commercially downward trend.
In 1984 Olivia married actor and unfeasibly hot stud Matt Lattanzi. He’d been a dancer on the set of Xanadu, an extra in the video shoot for Physical and, ironically, had also had a part in 1982’s Grease 2. The press jumped on the fact that he was 11 years her junior, but if they thought that was scandalous for the still reasonably clean-cut Olivia, they had no idea what was coming next.
Soul Kiss, the title track to her 1985 album, was a thinly veiled ode to oral sex, with the video featuring blatant sexually-charged images. How about Olivia lying on a bed-like altar, all but pleasuring herself while huge phallic cannons on either side of her shoot out loads of white feathers? Whereas before she was sexy but not overt, now sister girl was letting you know in no uncertain terms that she was hungry and she wanted to eat! Even though she looked amazing (especially for 37) and the album got a major push, Olivia had another bomb on her hands. And despite the appearance of Elton John on her subsequent album, 1988’s The Rumour, her luck remained unchanged.
In July 1992 things were to take a turn for far worst. In a cruel coincidence, her father died on the very same day as she recieved a diagnosis of breast cancer. She could not return to Australia for his funeral, as she had to immediately start treatment. She chose a combination of Western and Eastern medicines, which meant that along with chemotherapy she practiced meditation, yoga and spiritual healing. Not only did she win her battle, she’s become an outspoken campaigner on cancer awareness and opened the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre.
At 58, Olivia is still recording, touring and looking as hot as ever. To anyone who hugged their pillow to Hopelessly Devoted, or humped it to Physical, she remains a timeless icon. She’s personified the duality of good girl/bad girl (and what gay boy doesn’t know that one inside out?) She’s come through trauma and heartache and triumphed. And through it all - through the white bread years, through the minx moments, through all the strife - she remains beautiful, strong and in every way a star.