More than Just a Pretty Voice
By Ben Fong Torres, Las Vegas -
Olivia Newton-John righted herself. We were backstage at the Riviera Hotel, where she was, as they say, packing them in. Now, after gliding through a hit-riddled show that, as they also say, was pretty neat, she was listening to a reporter recite what newspapers have called her: “Just another pretty voice,” “A giggly blend of pop and country,” “A voice less wonder.”
Now, Olivia’s usually con-trolled politeness gave way to a defensive assertiveness.
“I’m not a manufactured person who’s been made by these moguls,” she began. “I’ve read in lots of articles that they think, obviously, some clever businessman has given her this song and done these things.” She leaned forward. “I have done it.”
Quickly, she added, “with help from other people. But it’s a career that’s taken me 10 years. It isn’t an overnight sensation, and I like what I’m doing… and I believe in what I’m doing.”
What Olivia Newton-John is doing is selling a lot of records, winning a lot of music awards and, obviously, annoying a lot of people, who believe her success owes more to her looks than to talent.
She has won so many awards that it’s even become irritating for her. After she swept the American Music Awards this spring, her boyfriend and former manager, Lee Kramer, commented, “She felt discomfort beating Elton John and the Eagles for Album of the Year. But you have to consider that when you take a 30,000-person poll of the people in America, what’s going to show is the 60-year-old, 50, 40 and 30-vear olds and they’re not going to go for Elton John and the Eagles. So Olivia Newton-John, to the cross-section of America, is the most popular artist out of those three.”
Some might dispute the use of the word “artist.” Olivia can indeed sing, and on stage she is a crowd pleaser. But she is not a creative artist; her music is mostly written and arranged by others. But she has, as she’s said, been working at music for over 10 years, since she was a teenager. She even has roots - frail ones, but roots, nonetheless sorts - as a beatrik of sorts.
Olivia, born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Melbourne, Australia, sang, danced, acted and read poetry in school. At age 15, she joined three girlfriends in a group called the Sol Four (“we thought it was really chic at the time”). “This was trad jazz, which was the big rage, ‘Down by the Riverside’ and everything. We used to wear black turtle necks and the long, beatnik hair.”
Not that Olivia really was a doped-up dropout -it was more a matter of musical preferences. “The grammar school kids would like the trad jazz,” she said, “and the mixed secondary modern schools would like rock.”
“We were the cool ones, and we used to go to trad concerts, and the rock kids would be at the rock concerts on the other side of the park, and there would be awful clashes on the way home. I remember my girlfriends and myself and a couple of guys were walking home, and we got attacked, and my girlfriend was thrown on the road by one of these kids. There was no provocation. They’d shout, You should like rock and roll! It was stupid, just stupid. And then, my mother felt I was spending too much time singing, not concentrating on my school work, so she put an end to it.”
But, soon, Olivia became a winner of a televised talent show, a hit as a hostess of a local TV show, and dropped out of high school. She flirted with a group that Don Kirshner, the TV producer, was putting together as a vehicle for movies, then hooked up with the country-pop sound that would make her a worldwide star in 1974.
Although she and Lee Kramer, whom she made her manager in late 1974, have lived a low-profile life in Los Angeles, they were recently the subject of gossips, who reported a split in their relationship. After a steady stonewall of denials, Kramer has acknowledged an end to their business relationship.
Kramer admitted that he felt pressure being her manager, that he was new to the music business (he was successful in the shoe business when he met Olivia), and that it was difficult not being able to close the door on business matters when the two were home. Or, as he put it, “I live, sleep, eat, everything else, Olivia…
Now, he said, she would continue with plans to tour the eastern states and the Far East, tape a TV special this winter and visit Vegas again without a manager.
“The most important thing is her and me,” said Kramer, “and whatever future we have together.”