America's Adopted Sweetheart
Olivia Newton-John has scooped up more music awards this year than most singers dream of getting in a lifetime. At 26, her soft melodic voice and gentle songs have catapulted her to superstardom. The fact that she’s beautiful and extremely well liked by those in the music business has not hurt her either. She’s labeled the hottest songstress in country music, but the fact is Olivia came to America by way of Australia and England. Unlike most female country singers, she didn’t spend her childhood in the cotton fields and has no trace of a Southern drawl.
The fact that Olivia rose to prominence without being a native American and without the benefit of a country upbringing has irritated some of the traditional country artists in Nashville, but to the American listening public, Olivia is as welcome as a breath of fresh air and flowers in Springtime. She’s so popular these days, Americans have adopted her as their new sweetheart!
Olivia quickly picked up momentum with three gold singles (“Let Me Be There,” “If You Love Me Let Me Know,” and “I Honestly Love You!”), and won the Country Music Association’s Top Female Vocalist Of The Year Award in 1974. A protest group of country artists formed in Nashville claiming that it wasn’t fair for a “foreigner to come from another country and take away what other country artists had worked so hard for years to achieve.”
But their protests fell on deaf ears when it became clear that Olivia was winning the hearts of Americans everywhere and that her records were selling like hotcakes both in the country and pop fields. Olivia outsold every other female recording artist last year except for her sister Australian Helen Reddy. And she beat out Helen and Barbra Streisand this year for the Favorite Female Vocalist Grammy, won four American Music Awards, Country Music awards, and she also carted home the biggest Grammy of all- Record Of The Year. Her new single, “Have You Never Been Mellow” was a hit only days after its release.
To many. Olivia appears to be an overnight success, but the truth is she’s been involved with music for most of her life. Somehow, despite her very academic background, show business got into her blood at a very early age. Her Welsh born father has an academic background and her German-born mother was the daughter of a Nobel Prize winning physicist. By the time she was five, her family had moved from Cambridge, where Olivia was born, to Australia, It was there, while her father taught at Ormond College, that Olivia began making up tunes on the family piano.
When she was fourteen, she and three friends formed a singing group called The Sol Four, but when the act began to conflict with her schoolwork, the group disbanded. Olivia went on to sing as a solo act in a local coffee lounge owned by her brother-in-law. A customer suggested that she enter a talent contest organized by Johnny O’Keefe, a popular Australian record and TV artist. Olivia won the contest easily, but because she was in school at the time, more than a year went by before she could enjoy her prize trip to London. Soon after her arrival in England, she teamed up with another Australian girl. Pat Carroll, and they appeared on British television and in cabarets. When Pat’s visa ran out, she was forced to return to Australia.
Olivia stayed on in England and early in 1971 recorded her first record for Festival Records International, “If Not For You.” The song became a hit throughout the world. An album followed and then another successful single. “Banks of the Ohio” which won her a Silver Disc in Britain and a Gold Disc in Australia. She toured Europe with Cliff Richard and took part in the Antibes Song Festival in France. She also performed with Cliff at the famed London Palladium.
By 1972, she had become a regular guest on the BBC-TV series, “It’s Cliff Richard” and she recorded another hit single “What Is Life?” Olivia was voted Best British Girl Singer by readers of the weekly Record Mirror in both 1971 and 1972. Her performances have included appearances at England’s Prince Of Wales Theatre, the Tokyo Song Festival, and at Australia’s Sydney Opera House.
In the U.S., Olivia has amassed her most impressive credits. She earned five gold records and one platinum album in a mere ten months, and most of her albums since have been platinum or gold!
Olivia has been touring the U.S. and winning more fans wherever she goes. She still maintains a flat in London, but also rents a Malibu beach house with the current man in her life. Lee Kramer, a former shoe executive who is working as her manager. However, Olivia says she’s not ready for marriage yet. “It frightens me,” she says earnestly. “My parents, my older sister and so many of my friends have been divorced. and I’m not ready for children yet.”
While breaking attendance records at the Dixie National Livestock Show And Rodeo in Jackson, Miss.. Olivia comments on the criticism she’s received from some old-timers in Nashville.
“I’ve never claimed to be a country singer. To call yourself that, you’d have to be born in that background. I simply love country music and its straightforwardness. And since the records have sold well outside the country field, it seems to me that we’re broadening the acceptance for country music. I wasn’t out to do anybody out of an award. I didn’t put myself up for it!”
Olivia’s voice has a quality that no other female singer has. Listening to her mellow laid-back melodies is comforting and entertaining at the same time, and many radio disc jockeys unashamedly admit to sitting around staring at her beautiful face on her album covers!
She has composed only a few of her own songs (like “Changes” on her last album, which depicts the impact of divorce on a child). She can play only a few guitar chords and sings strictly by ear. Yet, she’s a superstar today.
She’s been touring America by bus between headline engagements in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. She has a work permit to remain in America until October, and what happens after that will largely be up to her, the immigration authorities, and her public.
From everything we’ve observed so far, it looks as if Olivia has found a new home in America, and the people who have adopted her as their new singing sweetheart will insist that she spend at least part of every year here.
One thing is certain, the way her career is going these days, she’s going to go on to even bigger and better things, before she’s through!
By Jenny Harrington