Olivia Makes New York Debut
By Mary Campbell, The Association Press
Olivia Newton-John, wearing a bright green veleur outfit, her blonde hair in two pigtails, looks younger than 28, shorter than five-foot-six and smaller than 110 pounds.
Twice during an interview she reacted to questions by rolling over on a couch and kicking her legs gleefully up in the air like an adored child. Her smile flashed frequently, making her face suddenly quite beautiful.
She was in New York for her first-ever performance in the city and it was her decision finally to play there.
“I just didn’t think the time was right for New York for me,” she said. “I was apprehensive. But nothing is decided without my ΟΚ.”
A classy hall was chosen for the concert, the Metropolitan Opera, and each person attending was handed a long-stemmed rose.
The New York Times review headlined “Olivia Newton-John conveys her niceness,” had some flattering things to say, some not, describing her as blending “images of the crinolined, antebellum South with the buoyancy of a modern-day cheerleader.”
In her teens, Miss Newton-John just sang naturally, without working at it. Later she had some good advice which steered her toward country-flavored songs and now, she said, she has the experience to know what’s best for her. It’s still ballads and the country-flavored.
She was born in Cambridge, England, where her father taught in a college, moved to Melbourne, Australia, when he accepted a job there and lived in Australia from 5 to 16.
At 15 she won a talent contest. The prize was a trip to England which she didn’t want. Her parents had been divorced when she was 10 and her German mother thought she should sample some of England’s culture.
“She encouraged my singing career and made me work hard. I was no different from any other kid of 15; you resent your mother. Now I look back, I see she was very important to me.”
“When I went to England I had a boyfriend in Australia. I intended to stay three months; all I wanted to do was go back and get married and settle down. I went home after a year and heard myself saying, ‘No, I don’t want to get married. I want to go back to England.”
She toured as a duo with Pat Carroll, another Australian, until Miss Carroll’s visa ran out and she had to go back.
“I had an English passport. My mother again. I wanted to be like everyone else and have an Australian one but she said someday I’d be pleased to have a British one and she was right again.”
Now she lives in Malibu, Calif., with a cat, dogs and horses.
All six of Miss. Newton-John’s MCA albums and four singles have been certified gold. She has also received three Grammy awards.
After Pat Caroll went back to Australia, Miss Newton-John joined TooMorrow.
“It looked like a sure shot. It was going to be the new Monkees, in a series of films rather than TV. There was a black guy, a Cockney boy, a handsome cowboy from Georgia and me. We made a film and it died”.
“For two years we were being flown around and introduced to people and we didn’t work at all. I think we were a tax writeoff, actually.”
Then Peter Gormley, her manager at the time who liked country music, picked If Not for You for her first single and it became a hit in England.
Some Nashville folk objected to this foreigner’s success with country music, a brouhaha she says has blown over. “You can’t put music in a suitcase and shut the lid.”
Her biggest success has been I Honestly Love You.
“My producer rang me up and said he’d found this incredible song in a box of demos. I heard it and flipped. Helen Reddy tells me she’d heard it and told them to send it to me. I didn’t know that; it was just among a pile of junk. Now we listen to everything that comes in, just in case it happens again.”