Olivia's triumph
She was trying to deal with all those feelings her breast cancer had stirred up, says Olivia Newton-John, and the song just came to her - Not Gonna Give Into It
“I USED TO BE REALLY afraid of dying.” said Olivia Newton-John. “It was a fear that was always there, at the bottom of everything. I was afraid of getting old. I was afraid of a lot of things.”
In 1992 - just as the Australian singer was about to embark on a U.S. tour, her first in 10 years-Olivia Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer. She canceled the tour and underwent a partial radical mastectomy and eight months of chemotherapy. I recently visited Olivia, now 50, at her home in Malibu, Calif., to find out how her struggle with breast cancer had changed her life.
“I see it as a gift,” she said. “I know - it sounds strange to people who have never been there, and I don’t wish it on anyone. But I don’t think I would have grown in the areas that I did without that experience.”
Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children and the granddaughter of Max Born, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. When she was 5, her family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father. Brin, had taken a job as headmaster of a college. Olivia’s parents split up when she was 10. She lived with her mother until til she was 16, when she won a trip to London in a talent contest.
“My mom wanted me to get out of Australia, because I had a boyfriend, and she thought I was too young,” Olivia recalled. “She thought I needed to go and see the world and get some life experience. I didn’t want to leave. We went to England, and I worked some pretty divey clubs. I wasn’t terribly thrilled. I wanted to go home.”
Olivia teamed with fellow Australian Pat Carroll, and the duo Pat and Olivia performed at cabarets, clubs and on television. Pat’s visa eventually ran out, but Olivia remained in England.
“I stayed because my mother had established an English passport for me because I was born there,” said Olivia. “1 was very upset. I wanted to go back to Australia, to my boyfriend.”
She eventually combined her talents with another Australian, John Farrar, and produced her first hit, “If Not for You.” She toured and then left England for America, where she became a regular on the pop and country charts.
For the next two decades, Olivia Newton-John was a huge pop star, topping the charts with songs like “I Honestly Love You,” “Have You Never Been Mellow.” “Magic” and “Physical.” She won three Grammys, an array of gold and platinum records and the Order of the British Empire. Olivia also starred opposite John Travolta in the 1978 film Grease.
In 1984, she married an actor, Matt Lattanzi, and they had a daughter, Chloe, the inspiration behind her well-received children’s album Warm and Tender. Today, the couple is divorced and Chloe, 11, lives with her mother.
“My daughter is my priority now,” Olivia told me as we sat in her ocean-front home. No mementos of her career are on display except for a piano used on tour in the early ’80s. It was in 1992 that her latest tour had to be canceled because of her illness. I asked her about her reaction to the news that she had breast cancer.
“I think the first days were the most scary,” she said, “but I laughed a lot. The only way I could really cope with it was laughing. Laughter was my respite. Of course, at night when I was by myself, I was frightened. There were moments when I didn’t know what was going to happen. You cannot face something like that and not consider death.
“I made a decision that I was not going to give in to it. Your mind is a very powerful thing. You either see the positive and go with that, or you let yourself go into the negative. I was definitely not going to do that. I used a lot of positive affirmation and really started taking extra care of myself.”
"I see it as a gift," says Olivia Newton-John about her struggle with cancer. "I know it sounds strange. But I don't think I would have grown in the areas that I did without that experience."
Olivia combined Western medicines, such as surgery and chemotherapy, with Eastern techniques, like meditation, yoga and homeopathy. Friends and family helped too. She was most concerned, she said, with “getting through and being healthy,” not about her physical appearance. “My self-esteem was not attached to my breast,” she added.
As she recuperated from surgery and chemotherapy among the green hills and citrus trees at her 150-acre farm near Byron Bay, Australia, Olivia found inspiration. For the first time, she wrote, co-produced and financed her own album bum, Gaia, One Woman’s Journey, a collection of songs about her experience with breast cancer.
“I started waking up in the night with songs in my head,” she said. “I had just finished chemotherapy. I really had no intention of performing again. I thought I was going to retire. It was a catharsis for me the writing and recording and talking about the whole process.”
One song, “Not Gonna Give In To It,” was written after a chemotherapy treatment. “It was not a pleasant experience, and it was a little frightening.” Olivia said. “And that’s really how I felt. But the song came out as upbeat, not a victim thing. I’m not gonna give in to it.”
Another song, “Why Me,” written after surgery, is dedicated to her father. “The day I was diagnosed, he died from cancer,” Olivia said. “He never knew about me, actually. And I’m glad he didn’t. He was extremely dignified. He never complained. He still had a sense of humor. He wanted to go quickly and keep his dignity. And he never said, “Why me?” And I didn’t either.”
Gaia, which means Mother Earth in Greek, was released in 1994 in Australia, where it went gold, as well as in Europe and Japan. While Olivia has been unable to find an American record company to distribute it, the album is available here as an import. “I see Gaia as something that really happened to me,” she said. “It was an amazing experience, and even if nobody hears it, I’m still glad I did it.”
“I don’t know if I thought this at the time,” Olivia told me, “but later on I thought that maybe this all might have happened for a reason - so that I could share my experiences and show that, look, it could happen to me, and I got through it. So can you.”
“Once you face your fear,” she said, “nothing is ever as hard as you think. Now I concentrate on living. I eat well, take care of myself, I don’t smoke, I’m not a drinker. So what is it? I think stress plays a part in it, but I also think that our environment is playing a great role in the increases in cancers of all kinds.”
An active environmentalist, Olivia Newton-John has been busy with a number of projects since recovering from her illness. She was host of a documentary on the possible environmental causes of breast cancer and co-author of a children’s book with an environmental theme. A country album, Back With a Heart, was just released in May.
Olivia will serve as a goodwill ambassador for the Olympics in Australia in 2000 and is scheduled to perform at the opening ceremonies.
By Gregory Tasker