The Past of Olivia - Popfoto

Translation:

Issue no 12

Sweet little Livvy, with her innocent blue eyes and neat pleated skirts, captured every mother's heart in her Australian hometown in her youth. It's no wonder, then, that a wave of alarm swept through the neighborhood when the same Olivia demonstratively threw her pleated skirt in the trash and started looking like a homeless person!

Olivia Newton John still laughs when she remembers the looks on her friends' mothers' faces when Livvy, the proper girl from an equally proper family, stood before them one fateful day in black slacks, a black turtleneck, and her hair wild!

I was living in Australia at the time, and it was the era of the so-called beatniks—the precursors to the hippies, really. Just like in Grease, I went from being the proper girl in the nice clothes to being, uh, a wild type, because I had formed a singing group with two other friends. We just wanted to look 'modern'!

But of course that wasn't the real reason for that dressing up party.... She chuckles at the memory. There was a boy at our school who always dressed like that. And I was after him.. When he later started dating a friend of mine, I took revenge and put on the first pleated skirt I could get my hands on.

A similar story to Grease? Well, hey, only that ends quite differently!

With neatly coiffed hair and in a decent suit, Olivia presented herself when, years later, she ended up back in her native England. There she fell in love with Bruce Welch (one of the legendary Shadows) and even made a few records with (the also quite decent) Cliff Richard.

Olivia seemed to be destined for a quiet, and above all civilized life, until one very lucky day Lee Kramer, her current boyfriend, entered her quiet existence.

It was then that I really got to know myself, Olivia says now. Lee was an adventurer in those years. He had made a lot of money importing the famous American cowboy boots into Europe, but despite his business, he remained a wild boy. He took me to America, where I went through a kind of metamorphosis. I suddenly didn't like those frumpy clothes any more, I was sick to death of myself when I looked in the mirror. Together with Lee, I bought a whole new wardrobe, and I really started to live... You know the result!

Indeed, the world was able to thoroughly enjoy the new Livvy, which, as it turns out, was a great success!