The USA Is Wild About Our Olivia
Derby Evening Telegraph, UK, July 13 1974
AFTER the deflation of the Eurovision Song Contest let-down, Olivia Newton-John is striking it rich in America.
Olivia, first Briton to win a coveted Grammy award (the Oscars of the U.S. music industry), has soared to the American Hit Parade heights with her latest single If You Love Me.
After two months of touring and TV promotions in America, she popped into town for a week to cut an album. Then she was hopping a jet to Las Vegas to open in cabaret with country star Charlie Rich, writes Alan Goddard.
She is booked until September in the States and it looks as if she's going to join the Tom Jones-Elton John pop elite who rate superstar status across the Atlantic.
The professor's daughter has made the big-time grade after only three years as a solo performer.
Last April she was chosen to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest with Long Live Love,
which was widely tipped as a potential winner. It came joint fourth, trailing behind the Swedish group Abba and Waterloo.
When Olivia was afterwards quoted as saying she thought the song was unsuitable for the contest, the critics accused her of sour grapes.
She is still hurt by the slanging. I didn't really expect to win the contest, so I can't say it was a great shock to me in that I was shattered or heartbroken by the result.
I was only disappointed I couldn't have sung a better song for Britain. You see, it wouldn't have been fair to say before the contest that I wouldn't have chosen the song myself.
So after the contest was over I thought it was fair enough to say 'no' when people asked if I would have chosen the song if I had had the choice. It was a straight answer, given with no bitterness.
But it was misinterpreted and the Press had a go at me.
Even so, she still pushed Long Live Love
into the Top Twenty.
But the storm in the Euro teacup is way behind her and she is busily establishing herself in the U.S.A.
Romance?Back home in Britain, Livvy's new B.B.C.1 TV series Moods of Love
has just started. Had the girl, whose three-year engagement to ex-Shadow Bruce Welch was broken off two years ago, any time for romance?
I'm travelling so much at the moment,
she said. and there are so many things on the go that I don't have time to get a relationship established with someone, much as I'd like to.
Was there a particular someone? Well there's always somebody,
she giggled. But I'm not getting married, so let's just leave it at that.