Ralph Emery's Olivia interview
Chapter 17. OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: NEW BEGINNINGS
I didn't agree with the brouhaha following Olivia Newton-John's Female Vocalist of the Year win at the 1974 Country Music Association awards show. It seemed like half the people in Nashville were mad that what they considered an outsider
had snared the top prize for women, over Loretta Lynn, Anne Murray, Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker. A group even broke from the CMA for a while and formed their own short-lived competitive organization, ACE, the Association for Country Entertainers.
It seemed to me that it was a slam at the country disc jockeys who were playing her records, and that included me and virtually every other country deejay in America. Her 1973 U.S. debut, Let Me Be There,
was a top-10 hit in both country and pop, as were her two 1974 releases, If You Love Me (Let Me Know)
and I Honestly Love You.
After all, country artists did handstands when they crossed over and made a splash in the pop charts, so why shouldn't Olivia- or anyone else -cross the opposite way if the song fit our format? Moreover, Olivia hadn't been known in this country long enough to have been typecast. According to Olivia, two of the 1974 nominees went out of their way to be publicly supportive of Olivia and her Female Vocalist title: Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Loretta, especially, knew what it felt like to be the new girl singer
in town, and have others question whether the proper dues had been paid. It had been Patsy Cline who stepped to the fore on Loretta's behalf, and Loretta was now repaying that debt in a way.
WHEN I INTERVIEWED Olivia for On the Record in 1998 she told me she had never seen a broadcast of the show since she'd been in England touring at the time. I had a clip of the show ready to roll, and we both laughed when Roy Acuff announced the winner - Oliver Newton-John.
I asked Roy one time how it had happened and he reminded me that he'd tried to get his fellow presenter, Chet Atkins, to read the name, and Chet refused. It was because Chet didn't want all the girls out there to know he had to wear reading glasses,
Roy explained, I couldn't see the name very good even with my glasses.
Olivia learned about the clamor over her new title months later. I was touring at the time,
she reflects. So it took the news a while to catch up to me. I think my manager withheld the story from me for quite a while to spare my feelings. But while I did understand why it would be a bit peeving to see some Aussie woman come along and win, I do think it opened even more doors for country artists to cross over to pop.
I have to admit that I got sick of hearing Let Me Be There.
Not only was it playing nonstop on the radio, but also, every female singer who came on my morning television show that year wanted to sing that song. But I never tired of hearing Olivia sing, and she sings just as beautifully now as she did twenty-five years ago.
In November 1997, Joy and I attended the Operation Smile concert in Nashville. The funds raised at this annual event go to help rebuild children's faces deformed by accident or birth defect. One of the night's highlights was when Olivia and Vince Gill sang You're the One That I Want.
And Vince even danced, although according to Olivia he balked at the idea at first. Vince came to me during rehearsal and said he couldn't dance.
Olivia laughed. I said, 'Would it be okay if I just pulled you along?' He agreed, so that's what I did. I grabbed Vince by the collar and hauled him around the stage.
Her interest in Operation Smile is not surprising, since Olivia is so involved in charity work that people in Australia sometimes compare her to the late Princess Diana, calling Olivia their own Princess of Hearts.
She's currently working for a Children's Bill of Rights and she works tirelessly for environmental causes. One of the ways she's raised funds for her work with environmental groups is by donating a portion of the royalties received from her 1993 children's book, A Pig Tale.
I like pigs a lot,
Olivia said. And one day I mentioned to my son that I was annoyed at the way people disrespected pigs. You know, they'll refer to some despicable individual as 'such a pig'. So I said we should start referring to despicable people by saying, 'Oh, they're such humans!' My son liked that and started writing a little story about a family of pigs. Much later, I attended an AIDS fund-raising dinner in New York and sat next to an editor at Simon and Schuster who liked the idea, and asked me to write it in rhyme. It's all about a pig family who recycles.
Born in Cambridge, England, Olivia moved to Australia at age five when her father, Brinley, was named the Master (Dean) at Ormond College in Melbourne. Academia was an important element to both sides of her family; Olivia's maternal grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Yet Professor Born discouraged Olivia's mother, Irene, from pursuing an academic career. My mother would have been a wonderful teacher,
Olivia said. She is very intelligent and wanted to study science. But for some reason, my grandfather didn't encourage her along those lines.
He did encourage music, though, and Olivia's mother remembers many times that Born, his friend and colleague Alfred Einstein and other family members gathered with violins and cellos at the Born home to play classical music.
Born, whose Nobel Prize was for his work in quantum physics, which led to the splitting of the atom, left Germany as Adolf Hitler was coming to power. He read Mein Kampf and got the family out immediately,
Olivia explained. Born always feared the misuse of the scientific knowledge he and Einstein helped unleash. My mother and I were watching television when the first news reports of the Three Mile Island incident occurred,
Olivia recalled. Mother turned pale and said, 'That's exactly what my father feared.'
The name Newton-John is a combination of her father's surname John, and his mother's maiden name, Newton. It caused some confusion at least once, when a Las Vegas hotel manager mentioned to a well-known comic's manager that his client would be on the bill with Olivia Newton-John. My guy doesn't work with trios,
the comic's representative said.
The first record Olivia's father ever bought her was Tennessee Ernie Ford's Gather 'Round, which included a song that became one of Olivia's favorites, Old Blue.
She's always had a love of folk songs like Banks of the Ohio,
which had moderate success in America, and was a big hit in England. She played this song a lot in her live shows, because as she explained to me: It's only got about three chords, and that's about all I can play on the guitar!
It always mystified me that the British people could identify with songs about American places, like the Ohio River. I asked Olivia if she thought they were interested in the places, or just liked the music. She thinks it's because of the tie to old Celtic folk songs. I don't think I ever understood just how violent a lot of these old folk songs are until much later,
she laughed. They have all these lines like, 'I held a knife against his breast.'
Olivia won a talent contest in Australia at age fifteen, one that included a trip to England where she performed on the Johnny O'Kerfe Show, a British program much like Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Her mother came with her, and when opportunities to perform kept cropping up, the two stayed on. Olivia and a friend, Pat Carroll, formed a pop duet, singing and dancing in numerous clubs in London. They made their own costumes, with Pat constructing the garments and Olivia adding the handwork that made them distinctive.
Pat ended up marrying writer/producer John Farrar, of the British group called The Shadows, who would later become Olivia's producer and write many of her hits. Olivia continued a solo career and in 1971 got an amazing break when she was invited to tour with British superstar Cliff Richard. In 1970 she became a regular on his television show. Olivia continued to have hits through the 1970s, charting for the last time (to date) in country music with 1979's top-30 Dancin' Round and Round.
Some of her hits were Have You Never Been Mellow,
Please Mr. Please,
Let It Shine
and Come On Over.
IN 1978 A chance meeting with a film producer who was looking for a female lead for his musical, Grease, led Olivia to a successful career in films. We talked about Grene, which was set for a twentieth anniversary re-release in 1998. I can't believe twenty years have gone by,
Olivia said. I guess the lesson there is to enjoy every day, because all of a sudden you'll turn around and two decades are gone.
Olivia aced out stars including Ann-Margret and Marie Osmond through a chance meeting with the film's producer. Helen Reddy, who is a fellow Aussie, invited me to a dinner party in Los Angeles,
Olivia explained. I sat opposite Allen Carr, who was looking for someone to play the role of Sandy. I didn't even know about Grease and spent the whole night clowning around, as usual. Allen decided I was perfect for the part, but I was not convinced at all. I asked him for a screen test, so we could make sure I was capable of playing the role. There were actually two roles to be played, Sandy One and Sandy Two. I thought I could carry off Sandy One, the good girl. But I didn't know about Sandy Two, the wild one. The day I dressed in my leather pants, curled my hair and sprayed it and put on all the make-up, a lot of the guys working on the crew didn't recognize me! They started whistling when I walked through the set.
Grease has become an American classic, and I asked Olivia if she had a theory as to why. The music is fun and the characters are cartoon-like, larger than life,
she speculated.
In 1980 Olivia had the opportunity to work with the legendary Gene Kelly in the musical Xanadu, which resulted in a pop hit, Magic.
For this film, she not only had to learn to tap dance, but to roller-skate. You can imagine how nervous I was when I knew I'd be dancing with Gene Kelly,
she said. I'm not a trained dancer. I have to practice every step. And the roller-skating proved a real problem. I fell and cracked my tailbone, so I had to sit on an ice donut between every take!
Olivia has won countless awards throughout her career. One of the most exciting was her first Grammy, in 1973, the first time a singer from outside the United States won the top female vocalist award. Other high points include the 1978 OBE award (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) presented by the Queen of En-gland. She's also made a Command Performance for the Queen (with Paul Hogan, who actually started his career as a comic in Australia) and was a guest star on the Silver Jubilee Television Show, honoring Queen Elizabeth II's twenty-fifth year of reign.
In 1984 Olivia went into partnership with her old friend and duet partner, Pat Carroll, and founded a clothing company called Koala Blue, opening their first store on Melrose in West Hollywood. The business eventually expanded into fifty-five countries.
By this time Olivia was a mother, so throughout the remainder of the decade, Olivia concentrated on her daughter, and on her clothing company. Then, in 1992 her world began to crumble. Her father was diagnosed with cancer and Koala Blue filed for bankruptcy. Olivia hadn't toured for nearly ten years, but she gamely agreed to get back out on the road. She was just beginning rehearsals for her first major concert tour in ten years when she discovered a lump in her breast.
Although a mammogram turned out negative, Olivia was still concerned enough to request a needle biopsy. That, too, had negative results. But Olivia hadn't been feeling her usual energetic, positive self, and she feared there was something the tests had missed. A complete biopsy was finally performed, but her husband withheld the results because that same week, Olivia's father became very ill with cancer.
She visited him in Australia, hoping to return after her tour. When she came back to LA, she had a full biopsy, then went on a short trip to rest and recover. The day she got home, she replayed messages on her answering machine and heard her doctor's voice requesting a callback. In the meantime she received word that her father had passed away.
I knew then that it was cancer,
she said. I had the surgery and began eight months of chemotherapy, all the while worrying that I'd let people down by canceling the tour. Finally I had to come to terms with putting grief over my father's death and concerns about the tour on the back burner. I had to concentrate on getting well.
Concentrate she did. Like Naomi Judd. Olivia made a concentrated effort to learn how to deal with catastrophic illness. She read, meditated, drew on faith and gathered a support system around her. She learned to visualize the healing process by picturing her dog stalking cancer cells in her body and systematically gobbling them up. And she learned she had strengths she didn't know existed, and courage to face down cancer and win. Even the chemotherapy, which scared her more than the initial surgery, was something she could face. I was so afraid when they put the needle in me that first time, that I really thought I was dying. But then I came through it. I learned something very important: cancer is not always a death sentence. I'd always thought it was. The minute I heard someone had cancer, I thought they were dying. But that's not true. In some ways the experience enriched my life. I know that sounds odd, but it has helped me grow and understand my priorities. I'm grateful for every day.
Today she often gives talks to women's groups, talking about her own experience, counseling other cancer survivors. It's so important to have support from women who have gone through this,
she said. When I first started chemo, my doctor gave me the names of two women who had come through it, and I relied so much on them. It was as if I could see down the road when I, too, would be well.
OLIVIA CAN NOW help others look down the road to wellness, be cause she has beat cancer. I don't even use the word 'remission',
she explained. It makes it sound like the cancer might come back.
And in conjunction with her return to health, Olivia is returning to country music. In 1997 she returned to Nashville and began work on a new album for MCA Records. Back with a Heart was released on May 12, 1998.
I don't relate to pop music anymore,
she told me during our On the Record interview. And the camaraderie in Nashville is something I've always loved, something that made me feel welcome.
I asked her what country artist she'd like to tour with, and she didn't miss a beat: Vince Gill.
There is and always has been-room for more than traditional country music in Nashville. Owen and Chet proved that years ago. Patsy Cline proved it. And my next chapter is devoted to a woman who possibly proved it more than anyone else: Brenda Lee.
More from Ralph Emery On The Record Olivia's TV interview.