Waiting For Mr Right
By Clive Russell
“I WOULD dearly love to make a record which was a smash hit in the States,” said Olivia Newton-John in January this year. “Then I’d like to go over and work for a time.”
Sure, thought hard-bitten showbiz observers, and every stage actor wants to play Hamlet at the Old Vic. And there aren’t many models who’d sniff at a chance to feature on the front cover of Vogue.
But if typical-English-rove Olivia, with her typically English name, and gentle, reserved style of ballad singing made a smash hit in the States, thought these aforementioned steely gentlemen, we’ll eat our expense account hairpieces.
That there are now droves of suddenly bald gentlemen with indigestion around London’s Tin Pan Alley goes to show, among much else, that the typical English rose is as much in demand as ever it was before the Vanessa Redgrave style of Englishwoman became the best-known export model.
Less than eight months after stating her dear love, Olivia Newton-John’s record, I Honestly Love You, topped the US charts making her only the fourth British woman ever to have scaled the pinnacle first conquered by Vera Lynn.
She also became the first British performer to win a major Grammy award (the music world’s Oscar), for Let Me Be There, the best Country record of 1974.
I Honestly Love You not only got to the top of the charts and stuck there, it won her a Golden Disc and established her as a top-name American entertainer with the reputation as a real folk singer as subtly distinct from the less artistically distinguished reputation as a ballad singer she enjoys in Britain.
Her hit was the culmination of a wildly successful three-month tour of the United States. After a short European tour in October, Olivia returns this month for more American concerts, and then perhaps settle down in the States for good.
“There is so much work out there and my records are selling so well that I’m seriously thinking of going to live there,” she says.
“There’s a chance I might settle in California.”
Like so many other successful British entertainers, from Elton John outwards, twenty five-year-old Olivia is being hit hard by tax. In the past month she has won two golden discs in Britain and her LP album is close to the million sales mark.
All this success after flopping in last year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Before she went to America, Olivia had some fear about how a girl with a nice innocent image would go down in Las Vegas. (As a measure of just how pure her image is she has been romantically linked with that Peter Pan of British music. Cliff Richard, whom even the most protective mother would approve of as an escort for her daughter.
“Everyone warned me that Las Vegas people are tough they don’t listen to the show. They’re just thinking about the next buck” said Olivia before the tour. She didn’t have to worry. They loved her.
Olivia may look as though she’d be more at home in a convent than a night-club, but she’s no softie.
She was first launched as part of a test-tube pop group called Tomorrow. James Bond producer Harry Saltzman helped create the million-dollar group, along with the man who put the Monkees on the map. A film was built round them, a massive publicity campaign trundled out, and the whole caboodle flopped.
“There must have been a jinx on all of us at the time,” says Olivia, “Behind the scenes everything went wrong. People seemed to resent a plastic-made group.”
It might have been the end of Olivia’s career, but she worked hard for several years to make the top on my own real, not a plastic doll.
“My career now seems to be developing the right way. I’ve been singing on stage for just ten years, but I’m only just learning to relax and be myself.”
“The film-makers seem to be showing some interest but I just couldn’t do any roles which involve nudity, and that probably limits me.
She keeps her private life very private. Her father is vice chancellor of a New South Wales university in Australia.
“I love life: I love working and it’s exhilarating to be successful. I do relaxing things, simple things like horse riding, reading and catching up on the latest films.”
“I don’t go out much. If I do it’s generally for dinner or to a show or the local pictures. Then I don’t have to get dressed up. I can go in a pair of jeans.”
For a pop star she’s remarkably conventional. Her only mild eccentricity is sleeping on the floor - “The first time I tried it I slept like a log; it’s proved marvellous for my back.”
What next for Olivia Newton John?
“I love singing and wouldn’t really want to give it up.” says Olivia, who also writes songs. “But if I got married and my husband said: “Pack it in,” then I would.
“If the right man came along and wanted me to give up my singing career, I would just like that.”