I'm Just A Mom
Olivia Newton-John may be singing again, but she has a new message
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN is back after a three-year maternity leave with a new brand of music and a new appreciation of motherhood.
The 40-year-old rocker discovered after the birth of her daughter, Chloe, now two, that there’s more to being a mom than changing diapers. “It’s a valuable, tough, underrated job,” she says.
“I used to wonder what women did when they didn’t work. Now I know. It’s marvelous what a difference a baby makes. Chloe has changed my life completely.”
She’s also found that there are more important ways to express herself musically than with the throbbing love songs that made her famous.
The Rumour is her first album in three years, and it gives Olivia an opportunity to show off her newly awakened social consciousness by singing about ecology, AIDS, women’s rights, role reversal, marriage and children.
She recently performed many of the songs, which she co wrote, in a one-hour cable TV special HBO World Stage Olivia Newton-John In Australia.
Olivia feels her latest transformation is even more dramatic than when she went from “wholesome” with such bouncy hits as If Not For You in 1972 to sultry and sexy a decade later with Have You Never Been Mellow, and Physical.
And what helped prompt the newest change is her rediscovery of her Australian upbringing, a period in her life when glitter, hype and pomp were about as foreign to her as tuxedos in a shearing shed.
THE singer explains: “I’m back to me, not a Hollywood image. My experiences have changed so much it didn’t feel right any more to be singing I love you, you love me.”
Olivia, who married actor Matt Lattanzi in December 1984, could say the same about her experience with parenting It’s been far more profound than she ever expected. “Before you have a child, it’s me, me, me,” she says. “Suddenly, it’s the child who comes first. That’s an amazingly important part of a woman’s development. Maybe it’s the first time you become aware of your mortality. I didn’t have a clue what to expect. It changes your priorities. Before Chloe, I’d think: Maybe there’s something happening, some where else to go. Now all that - even my career seems so unimportant by comparison”.
“Today, I’m teaching another human being values. I’m concerned with how far to go with discipline, how to ensure my child grows into a good person, teaching right from wrong.”
With her now emphasis on motherhood and her Australian roots, Olivia doesn’t long to return to her previous image as the sexy blonde with the beautiful voice who slithered into black spandex for the 1977 film, Grease, and suggestively sang to John Travolta.
“I haven’t missed the limelight in the least,” she insists.
In fact, now that her album has been released, she hints, it may be a long time before she’s back in the public eye again.
“I’m happiest now when I’m in the park with Chloe, she says “1 have my hair tied back, I’m wearing glasses and I talk to other mothers.
They don’t even know who I am “I’m just a mom and I love it.”
Photo captions: The "now" Olivia croons a tune to raise the consciousness of her Australian countrymen
Olivia with hubby Matt Lattanzi and daughter Chloe. "She's changed my life completely," Olivia says. Once a sexpot in spandex (right), she's now content to vacuum floors
More from the Down Under, Olivia Newton-John in Australia HBO special.