Olivia Emigrates To Country Music
By Jerry Bailey
Like a round peg in a square hole, Olivia Newton-John doesn’t exactly fit in country music-but it’s doubtful she’ll fall out anytime soon.
Until her Nashville visit earlier this week. Olivia had never tasted redeye gravy and learned only a few weeks previously Hank Williams is dead. The England-born Australian couldn’t fake a drawl with a mouth full of biscuits.
An academic dropout her-self, Olivia is the daughter of a Welsh-born teacher of German in an Australian college. Her grandfather was a Nobel Prize winning physicist.
“I didn’t think I would be considered a country singer,” she said while powdering her delicately-featured face in a WSM-TV dressing room. “But I was hoping for a hit record, no matter what it was.”
She not only got a hit, but received a Grammy this year for Best Female Country Vocalist. In addition, pop stations which normally exclude any song smelling of hay jumped on Olivia’s records with gusto.
“People often ask me, “How do you like being a country singer?” she said in amusement. “Well, I don’t feel I’m accepted as just a country singer, so that doesn’t hold water, does it?”
Miss Newton-John’s accent was delivered in a voice so soft she was occasionally inaudible. Having just come out of a three-hour taped interview for Ralph Emery’s syndicated radio show, she kept her answers brief now, and complained once that her head was no longer operating at optimum efficiency.
The sandy-blonde singer began her current visit to the United States about four months ago. She had been in the country previously, but not being a star here at the time, had little to keep her busy professionally. That was before America had heard “Let Me Be There” and “If You Love Me (Let Me Know).”
She was already widely known in the United Kingdom. having won a British Silver Disc and Australian Gold Disc for record sales of hit stature on a song called “Banks of the Ohio”.
Currently she is in the midst of a 14-city U.S. concert tour and is climbing the charts a third time with an un-country-sounding ballad called “I Honestly Love You.”
“With this new single - I can’t believe it’s jumped up the charts like it has - it opens a new door to me,” she said. getting excited enough to talk above her usual whisper. “Now I can sing ballads like that, which I love doing. I hope to do some more of those, as well as the country stuff. which I also like.”
The song, “I Honestly Love You,” is one of those rare delightful numbers capable of turning a worn disc-jockey’s ear. In one such instance on WSM, a jock heard it the first time and declared, “I’m going home to get a divorce.”
Olivia Newton-John’s looks are a bit on the skinny side, but have won widespread admiration in the record industry, which was the only place she was seen until the current tour.
She has recorded so far in England with the help of Australian musicians-which seems to many persons an unusual birthplace for an American country record.
She has a boyfriend - though she wouldn’t disclose his name. “That’s private,” she smiled. “He’s English. Nobody would know him anyway.”
The 25-year-old entertainer has kept a two-bedroom flat in London, but says she will settle “probably in America.” Rethinking, she added, “Well, that’s a hard thing to say. I have friends in England and family there, and I’ve got family in Australia, and I’m making friends here. So I don’t want to make any decision about that.”
So far, her favorite place in America is San Francisco. “It’s a beautiful city,” she explained, “and down by the waterfront, it’s like the south of France. I love the south of France and I love Portugal. I love interesting places, you know.”
Our brief interview ended with a knock on the door signaling the time was near for her to face the TV cameras. She did a couple of minutes after the night newscast, telling viewers, among other things, that she had called her gravy “redeye sauce” that morning.