I'm Afraid I'm Not Allowed To
POP MUSIC has moved irrevocably into the realms of middle-aged respectability, to judge from the huge success of Miss Olivia Newton-John at the Savoy Hotel, where she is currently appearing in cabaret.
As one of Britain’s top girl singers and a chart regular, she’s an unlikely feature of London’s most immaculate but hardly swinging nightspot. And yet, along with the lobster thermidor, Miss Newton-John is going down a treat with the stock-brokers and their wives. What does she make of it?
In her dressing-room after a performance she said she knows that if she can get the mums and dads on her side, the kids will automatically follow. She added that most of the people who stop and ask for her autograph are around 50 anyway.
Photograph: Tony McGrath/The Observer
Miss Newton-John has been in the pop business for nine years and is now 24. While she talked she was telephoned constantly by admirers who had just watched the show. She answered politely, saying: “That’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid I’m not allowed to.”
Her career started when she won a talent competition in Australia (her parents were emigrants) when she was 15. She made records and had her own television show. Her mother wanted her to be a vet, but was persuaded to accompany her daughter to England in search of the Big Time. It took some finding and included a few flop records and a disastrous tour of America to launch an even more disastrous film. Now she buys couture clothes and lives in St John’s Wood. She said yes, she thought she was happy.
Ed- a rather cynical conclusion to this interview