Australian singer wants to be more than a Pretty Face
By Elizabeth A. Harris
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UPI) -Olivia Newton-John walked out of a Dallas hotel and bumped into a tall Texan, complete with cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat.
“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” he drawled, looking the blonde Australian beauty up and down.
“Are you a model,” he asked, all innocent curiosity.
“No.” she replied in her clipped accent.
“Well, are you an airline stewardess,” he persisted. “No.”
“You’re pretty enough to be either one if you want to be.” he reassured her and nodded farewell.
But, the 28-year-old singer is trying hard to be more than just another pretty face.
Reserved and shy, she is -reluctant to talk about herself “There’s so very little I can keep to myself.”
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist In what I do as far as my work goes. I tend to do things in a hurry…I hate things unfinished. But I tend to learn very fast so I can afford to do everything at once.”
Asked to assess her strong and weak points as a singer, she smiled and said, “Oh, I can’t do that. Then you’d notice everything that I do wrong.”
An associate confided that she is sensitive about criticism that she is a slickly packaged, mediocre talent. She has just survived a grueling interview with a well-known rock music magazine.
“We knew it would be bad.” he said. “But it was worse than we expected.”
Olivia is more interested in discussing her next album, the first she has recorded in Nashville or the United States.
-Although she walked away with the Country Music Association’s best female vocalist award a few years back setting several veteran country performers’ teeth on edge - she has never recorded in country music’s capital.
Her country-pop hits such as “Let Me Be There”, “I Honestly Love You”, and “Come On Over” were cut In London or Australia.
“I’ve moved to America )now she lives in Los Angeles with her friend and former manager, Lee Kramer) and my producer is here,” she said.
“We’ve always wanted to record in Nashville, but we knew virtually no one here apart from some record company people.”
It was Chris Christian, part of the pop trio Cotton, Lloyd and Christian, who arranged the recording session and convinced her to come to Tennessee.
Olivia spent one day recording in Los Angeles “but the studio went wrong, it just didn’t work out” and came to Nashville two days later.
“I feel at home here,” the English-born vocalist said. “I love the green. I miss that in Los Angeles.”
Christian said Olivia was impressed with the studio musicians’ interest and talent and she plans to record here again.
After they lay down some tracks, the musicians hung around to see how the music sounded. You don’t find that in LA,” he said.