Why life never soured for the Singing Milkshake
SINGER Olivia Newton-John is in London to pro-mote her new album which chronicles her triumphant battle with breast cancer.
Gaia: One Woman’s Journey is her first recording since she was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, and it is an album she has written, produced and paid for herself. In 30 years, she’s sold more than 50 million records worldwide, spent four years in the singles charts in Britain and recorded 22 hits, including duets with John Travolta and Cliff Richard.
Yet people ask whatever happened to the squeaky clean singer once called the Singing Milkshake. Her career has seesawed since she starred in Grease in 1978. She had short-lived success as a pop star, her movie career went nowhere fast and a chain of boutiques crashed. She admits Grease was the highlight of her career and insists she is not bothered by being dubbed a has-been.
She lives on an Australian farm which has walls Insulated with seaweed instead of asbestos. She painted it with non-toxic paints, used what she calls fall-down wood or that from sustainable sources. It has no carpets - just rugs - because of dust mites. She keeps compost heaps and units for recycling everything and has a water filtering system.
She built the healthy house as an example to people, before she became sick with breast cancer. And it is here that she does transcendental meditation, yoga, takes homeopathic medicine, grows custard apples and avocados.
Last year it was rumoured that Olivia had constructed a very detached house in her 22-acre New South Wales grounds for Matt Lattanzi, her husband of 10 years, who is 11 years her junior, to live in.
Olivia was born in England, the daughter of a headmaster. When she was five, the family moved to Australia where her father, then 40, became master of a university college. Her mother’s father was a Nobel prize winner and a friend of Einstein. “My parents were educated and academic,” she says. “Then along came my sister and I who wanted to go into showbiz and caused consternation in the family. I could have been academic if I’d applied myself, but I didn’t. I left school at 15. It wasn’t a conscious rebellion. It’s just that I wanted to sing.”
She and Matt had a daughter, Chloe, now nine. Then Olivia had a miscarriage. “Actually I had several. Three, I think. One occurred before Chloe was conceived and the first two happened when she was three months pregnant. The last one, in 1988, was the hardest because I was five months pregnant. The doctors disagree but I believe it was caused by a CVS test (chorionic villi sampling to detect foetal defect).”
In 1992 her fashion empire of 60 worldwide stores, crashed. “They were our baby. It was a difficult time. The hardest part was the lawsuits and litigation. We lost a lot of money.”
Then Olivia was diagnosed as having cancer - which led to a modified radical mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery. Her diagnosis came through on the same day as her father died of cancer.
“Everybody goes through pain and difficulties,” she says. “It’s just that mine happened all at once. I look at it as a growth spurt. I learnt. It was enriching.” She smiles.
By Caroline Phillips. Picture Dave Benett