This last year has been a bit mind-boggling! - Look-In

Click to enlarge

Think for a moment. If, exactly a year ago - when Mull Of Kintyre was top of the hit parade and Star Wars had just opened d just opened someone had asked you, Who's Olivia Newton-John?, what would you have said? That lady who used to be on TV a lot, singing with Cliff Richard?. An Australian born in England, who's doing quite well in the United States now? America's top country singer?

Or simply Who? Well, you know now. She's the one who got to dance with John Travolta and shared months in the hit parade with him last year.

Her previous success in Britain had been steady, if unspectacular. Modest hits like If Not For You, On The Banks Of The Ohio and Take Me Home, Country Roads in the early days; a disastrous film in 1970 called Toomorrow a very poor Close Encounters with some music she called it recently and those TV appearances with Cliff Richard. She even represented Britain in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and came an undistinguished fourth.

Then she left. America beckoned, and she arrived there a few years ago to seek fame and fortune. Steadily building a reputation, she became increasingly popular, singing soft, country-pop songs in the Linda Ronstadt/Dolly Parton style, and was eventually judged Top Country Singer in U.S. popularity polls. We in Britain, meanwhile, didn't hear very much about her.

Then came Grease. And now Totally Hot, her new-style album. In London before Christmas to talk about it and her new film career, she had some interesting things to say...

She revealed that her very first film wasn't Grease, and wasn't even the awful Toomorrow, but an all-Australian musical called Christmas Time Down Under, which she made at the start of her show business career when she was about 16. This followed her school days in Australia, after emigrating much earlier from Cambridge, where she was born.

So does she consider herself British or Australian, or even American now? Australian!. And with a strong Aussie accent still touched with only the slightest twang of Los Angeles, she couldn't really have said much else, could she? Mind you, she does still have a British passport.

What about working on Grease? One of the most exciting things that ever happened to me, she said. The hardest part was having my hair cut to that 50's style, but everyone else on the set looked the same way, so it was OK. And I loved those clothes! It must all have been very different from her appearance at home in the Californian countryside, where she's pretty much a trousers lady. I wear jeans and T-shirts most of the time, the American way.

Film plans after Grease? Well, she's been offered lots, of course, but the most interesting have been a comedy and another musical. Widely differing locations are involved, too Australia and the French Riviera. I'd rather do musical films, said Olivia, but I'd consider straight roles, too. After all, I won't be able to play Sandy Olsen (her part in Grease) for ever.

She doesn't like travelling between shows - and before Christmas, she was covering thousands of miles around Europe and farther afield - and admits that she gets homesick even though touring is exhilarating in some ways.

She's a bit superstitious, too: I'm not crazy about flying, and I've had a couple of fairly close calls. I suppose the most worrying was one Friday the 13th, when the plane I was on had to jettison all its fuel and eventually landed with fire engines and foam all over the place. I was OK, though.

Her music has changed over the years, and the new album, Totally Hot, is her eighth. Her favourite single remains I Honestly Love You, her huge American hit. She says of her earlier records I still think they're great. All the styles from them are mixed up in what I'm doing now. And, in a sense, she may have been a little ahead of her time with her soft country-pop of the early '70's. After all, Crystal Gayle, Dolly Parton and others do very well now with similar songs.

Olivia's 1974 Eurovision song, Long Live Love, was not one of her best, and its comparative failure must have contributed to her leaving for the States. Funny how things turn out: if it had been successful, she might have stayed, wouldn't have become a U.S. superstar, and wouldn't have teamed up with one Mr Travolta.

I was extremely lucky to be in a film with John, she says. He's a great actor.