Olivia - Boy Music

(Rough) Translation:

For Olivia Newton-John, her huge success in Italy came surprisingly late compared to the acclaim the actress had already achieved around the world, especially in the United States and England, as a respected country singer.

Perhaps many are unaware of Olivia's second career. In reality, she has been a professional singer since she was young, and in recent years, thanks to her growing success, she has won gold and platinum records seemingly whenever she wants and dozens of major awards.

The girl with a natural appearance in the film with John Travolta is actually an established music professional, with many years of apprenticeship behind her before exploding and climbing the record charts with the ease befitting an artist of her calibre.

Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England 31 years ago, on September 26, 1948, to a family of university teachers. Her father, a renowned scientist in the British Empire, even won a Nobel Prize in Physics.

I've always respected my father, Olivia said in newspaper interviews, even though I'm too different from him to devote myself to the study and analysis of matter in motion and the mechanisms that govern the complicated world of physics in general. I prefer singing and making films: it's less of an effort.

The First Record In Australia

At five years old Olivia moved to Australia. It was there that I discovered my love for singing. I remember being very young when I joined an all-female group, a quartet, the Sol Four. At first everything went well, but then I realized that I felt a bit cramped with the other three. I wanted to sing as a soloist rather than having to share the limelight with the others. This opinion of mine was shared by several of my friends who came every night to hear the Sol Four.

That's how Olivia started singing on her own: she was hired as a singer in a bar. I sing everything, Olivia continues, but given my love for country, I introduced numerous pieces from that genre into my repertoire.

Olivia wins a ticket to participate in an amateur competition broadcast on television. These competitions bring musicians good luck: the Bee Gees, still wearing shorts and knee-high socks around the same time Olivia makes her decision, participate in a similar event and emerge victorious. Things go equally well for Olivia: she wins the television amateur competition.

As a prize, she is offered a trip to England. I feel immense joy knowing that thanks to that prize I'm returning to England: there they tell me it's easier to make a fortune, the musical scene is explosive, there's more chance of emerging.

Olivia spends another year in Australia before receiving the well-deserved prize. Once in England, she becomes a steady partner with singer Pat Carroll, the same woman who would later marry Olivia's current producer, John Farrar. Her musical partnership with Pat didn't last long: the Anglo-Saxon authorities didn't renew her residence permit in England.

In The Homeland Of The Beatles

I found myself singing solo and after a certain period all sorts of things happened, Olivia continues. Pat has returned to Australia, but in the meantime, the two of us have also achieved our small amount of popularity.

After Pat left, producer Don Kirshner decides to put together a group in which I can sing lead. Kirshner is a strange guy. I remember he employed a lot of people: Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Barry Man and others. He churned out one hit after another, often crafting them in a small room with a piano. When he contacts me, Kirshner has just finished making a nice fortune with the Monkees, who had had a huge launch around the world thanks to a television series that served as a springboard for their songs. Don has to replace the Monkees with another group: I'm proud that the choice fell to me.

Meanwhile, at 23, Olivia officially became engaged to the guitarist of the Shadows Bruce Welch (the Shadows are an instrumental group that achieved worldwide success during the Beatles period; it was between 1965 and '68,). Welch took care of the production of Olivia's first album recorded in 1971, simply entitled Olivia Newton-John.

The album has good sales thanks to her frequent appearances on television specials, in musical variety shows and above all thanks to the fact that Olivia often appears in public to work with the singer Cliff Richard, also known in Italy for having won the Eurovision Song Contest in the 1968 version with the song Congratulations.

Olivia begins to take off. After her first recording on vinyl, she achieves enviable success with hit singles: If Not for You and Banks of the Ohio in 1971, What is Life in 1972, and Take Me Home Country Roads in 1973.

The Disappointment Of The Eurofestival

1973 is the year of my definitive launch: while in England I am successful with my single, in the United States I literally explode with an LP and a single entitled Let Me Be There, a splendid song by Elvis Presley, a mix between a pop song and a gospel song. It is a year that I particularly remember. On the one hand, I get the success I'd been chasing for so many years, on the other, I leave Bruce. Our union has become unsustainable for a few months, whether because of our commitments or because there's a certain tension between us.

Bruce is also my producer, but after our separation, he leaves his place to his colleague from the Shadows, John Farrar. Under Farrar's management, Olivia participates in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest.

After her appearance and the verdict that excluded her from a hypothetical victory, a newspaper writes: Olivia 'fails' to win the festival that six years ago saw the triumph of her stage partner Cliff Richard. With a bitter taste in her mouth, Olivia emigrates to the United States.

Here she settles in immediately, finding a world congenial to her: the conditions of the American record market allow her to sing the music she loves, country. Thus, almost without realizing it, Olivia becomes one of the most prominent country artists. The last three years have been a real escalation.

Queen Of Nashville

My life is changing radically, Olivia concludes. After all, I've been used to living very much from day to day, with whatever comes along. Finding myself at the height of success in the US is at first almost scary, then it intoxicates me, it gives me a drive and the desire to continue and at the same time stay afloat on the crest of the wave, perhaps at the top of the charts for a while longer.

The success continues. In Nashville, a hotbed of American musicians, Olivia is awarded a special recognition. She, an Englishwoman, is voted the best artist of the country and western genre in the home of the prairies and the films of John Wayne and John Ford. Her love for the country genre — a sort of fusion between the popular ballad of the Wild West and the rhythms of modern pop — is so visceral that Olivia's voice is modelled on this.

Olivia's warm but intense voice ranges with flexibility from slow pieces to songs with a livelier rhythm. This is why, having to continue to interpret the role of the successful singer. I combine my vocal expressiveness with the interpretation of music and songs that nod to the most modern rhythms, even to disco music. I think my latest LP is a bit like the result of all my experiences in the musical field since I was a child, Olivia recently stated during a press conference for the presentation of her latest LP, Totally Hot.

In this latest recording effort of mine there is really everything: from country to West Coast, from rhythms to almost disco and to the most intimate ballad, from funk to the hot dimension, which reaches its conclusion in the song by Eric Carmen, Boats Against the Current, in which I try to blend the sound of the piano with that of my voice.

Success Hasn't Changed Me

Someone accused me of going for the more commercial part of the music market for including a piece by the Spencer Davis Group, Gimme Some Lovin', in the album. The song was already good in itself, so why not give it a further interpretation in tune with the music of our time? Popularity, after Grease, hasn't affected me that much. Maybe, that's the key to my success.

The greased girl knows how to extricate herself well from the traps set by journalists' questions, proving that she is anything but just greased. It's a definition they pinned on me after my performance as Sandy in the film, Grease, but that doesn't concern me. In an environment like ours, if I were just Grease, I would have ended a few years ago.

Instead, Totally Hot is going swimmingly. But for Olivia it's nothing new: platinum record are common for her.

By Fabio Santini