In Step With Olivia Newton-John
By James Brady
A new album with the title song written by Elton John and a chain of fashion stores… New mommy Olivia Newton-John is back at work.
YOU KNOW WHAT? OLIVIA Newton-John up close looks exactly the way she looks in movies or on television: blond, cute, lightly suntanned, with blue-green eyes, and maybe 10 years younger than she is (40). And she has that Australian accent (she was born in England but raised in Melbourne) softened by California, where she and her American husband, Matt Lattanzi, now live.
I asked her what it is about Australia, with its small population, that produces people like Mel Gibson, Peter Allen, Rupert Murdoch and Paul Hogan. “It’s a fighters’ country,” Olivia said. “They’re all pioneers in a way, fighters a lot of bright, talented people.” Olivia was in New York plugging her latest album, The Rumour, and we met at her hotel with her 2 1/2 year-old daughter, Chloe, and her nanny. Olivia and Chloe had been at a record-company lunch, and when it was over, Chloe, who knows the lyrics to all the songs in The Rumour, was handed a mike and proceeded to sing. But now it was time for important things, “I have to take my vitamin,” Chloe informed me, and her mother and I sat down to talk.
“It has been 10 years since Grease,” she said, “but I still see John [Travolta]. He’s doing three films back to back. I know some of his movies haven’t worked, but he’ll be back.” The Rumour is the first album Olivia has done since Chloe was born. “I didn’t want to be away from her,” she said. “Now my poor husband is alone for three weeks.” They live in the hills above Malibu, with a pool and horses and dogs and cats. “I love to cook, and so does Matt,” she told me, “He goes spearfishing, and we always have fresh fish. Me? I grew up on the beach, but I don’t swim very much. Sharks? The very idea of them terrifies me.”
Her family background was anything but show-biz. Her father was the dean of a college, and one grandfather was the Nobel Prize physicist Max Born. But at age 15 Olivia won a talent contest. The prize was a trip to England, where she and pal Pat Carroll put together a cabaret act. Her first solo record hit was Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You,” and by 1972 she was an established singing star, winning her first Grammy the next year.
Grease was a huge success, but her non-musical with Travolta, Two of a Kind flopped. “There are no movie offers right now,” she said with refreshing candor. “If there were, I’d prefer a musical. It simply makes more sense. There are lots of fine actresses. There aren’t so many who can sing.” Elton John, a close friend, wrote the title song for her new album, but Olivia wrote some of the others, including songs on single-parenting and ecology. “I don’t worry about whether they’re commercial,” she said. “I just wanted to do them because I think people are interested in these things.”
Brady’s Bits
With her one time singing partner, Pat, Olivia founded a line of fashion shops called Koala Blue, featuring goods inspired by or imported from Australia. “I started it because I was homesick for Australia,” Olivia said, “we made up t shirts and they sold out. We struggled and we’re up to 16 stores.” What about the koala bear that we see in all those Paul Hogan commercials - are they as loveable as they seem? “Well”, said Olivia, “they’re wild animals. but they live in the eucalyptus tree, and the eucalyptus contains a drug. So I think they’re half drugged.” Stoned koala bears? In this job you hear something every day.