The Roaring Thirties (Physical era interview)
Mike Gardner goes fishing for the innocent truth about Olivia Newton-John
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN is not a goody two shoes. Rock’s eternal sweet and innocent girl next door is growing up.
The 35-year-old Cambridge barn singer of ‘Heart Attack’ is fed up of being pop’s Doris Day. “They call me white bread or milkshakes, meaning that I’m bland. I’m not a goody-goody. I’m really not.” she complains.
“People always say a four-letter word has never passed her lips. It makes me sound as if I’m not human. That’s nonsense, I am.
“But I’m not innocent. I’m too old to be innocent.” she says. “It’s funny, Doris Day was saying the same thing. She had four husbands and yet she was still the virgin.”
Her Physical single last year and the suggestive video that was censored by ‘Top Of The Pops’ have gone some way towards adding some spice to her squeaky clean image.
“Everybody knocks me for being pretty,” she has said, “but what’s wrong with being pretty? Anyway if people like it and buy it, that’s the name of the game.”
“They may be calling me white bread but an awful lot of people eat white bread. I would rather my music appealed to the masses than to just two people in Surrey.”
OLIVIA certainly appeals to more than a couple of people. At the last count she’s sold over 30 million records It’s a far cry from the academic background of her family. Her grandfather was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and a friend of Einstein. Her brother is a doctor specialising in bone diseases and actually invented the portable iron lung.
Taken to Australia at the age of five she sauntered through local girl groups before entering and winning a TV talent show. Her prize, a trip to England. She soon got a solo contract through Bruce Welch of The Shadows and became engaged to him in 1971.
It was the Americans who took her flaccid country style to heart and she became the only English person ever to have been voted as the best country and western artist in an American poll.
Now after film successes like ‘Grease’ and astronomical record sales she finally agrees that she’s grown up.
“I’m more secure and I feel more comfortable. I think that comes with age and maturity.” she says.
“I don’t think I ever felt persecuted when critics said nasty things about me, but I did wonder what I’d done to deserve it. Now I’m being more adventurous. I don’t mind taking chances and being in my 30’s is proving to be the greatest time in my life.”
AFTER a lengthy relationship with her ex-manager Lee Kramer and a romance with Andy Gibb she’s now with actor Matt Lattanzi, the man in the ‘Landslide’ video, who at 23 is 12 years her junior.
“I don’t like talking about my private life because I have to struggle hard to preserve it as it is.” she says. But marriage is in the air.
“I have just bought a farm in New South Wales. Australia. That is where I want to bring up my children. I was brought up in Australia, and I love the country.”
“There, kids are reared like they ought to be and they remain kids longer.”
“I know a woman can have children right up until she is 40 but I believe it is better to have them earlier and grow up with them, Now that I’ve travelled and done so much it might be nice to have a child.”
But marriage is a pre-requisite for Olivia.
“I have a traditional instinct about me that says people should be married before they have children. And when I do marry I want it to be forever. That is extra Important for me because my parents divorced,” she says.
“I’ve seen other people rush into a relationship at my age because they want kids, only for it to turn sour in a couple of years. I suppose I’m a bit fatalistic about that sort of thing,” she admits.
“When I was much younger I thought I wanted a home and kids and dogs, but obviously I didn’t or I would have done.”
“Underneath I must have been ambitious. But I never want after success with my fist clenched.”