I wrote the first Olivia Newton-John home page on leland-stanford in 1994, and ran Only Olivia for a few years as joint founder of the erstwhile Only Olivia fan club (no longer in existence).

For over 40 years Olivia has touched my heart, shining her gentle light and inspiration. Her song has helped me laugh and cry, and sometimes see things through different eyes. So, dear reader, may there also be music that gives you as much joy as Olivia has given me.

Photo: Kay Bohlen

I was out of the loop on all things to do with Only Olivia from the end of 2007 up to about the end of 2012. Sometimes life just makes a different call on where priorities lie. I come back to the scene to find Only Olivia collapsed some time in 2011.

I went to see Olivia in London on March 13th 2013, where she weaved her magic, and sounded in great form, better than before my five year hiatus.

It was also particularly special for me, I went to university at Imperial College just behind London's RAH and hearing her in that setting reminded me of the joy and hope and inspiration she brought to my younger self at a turning point in student life. It was good to hear Olivia here in the UK at last, I was not quite old enough to have seen her the last time she was live in London thirty-five years ago.

Olivia seems to be having some better times now too, I was chuffed when she married handsome John Easterling and it sounds like it's doing her music good. I loved the original Grace and Gratitude album but the renewed version of G & G shows extra sparkle, if that's the joy that John is bringing to Olivia then a hat tip to you, and long may it continue :)

Olivia has tackled the 2017 return of cancer with characteristic fortitude, and seems to be responding to new treatments with the help of husband John, he of the beautiful quote She has the capacity to love like no-one I’ve ever seen, bless him. I wish them the best.

I did not expect to see the final chapter quite so soon. It comes to us all, of course, but the 8th of August 2022 was a very sad day for many people who had been touched by the lovely Olivia Newton-John's influence over the years. We have lost a lovely light. This is now a tribute to Olivia's legacy and work as a musician and actress, ebcause that was how she touched my life. She was of course, so much more than that, and her charity work lives on in organisations Olivia started and supported in her later years.

Recovering the website (2020)

Only Olivia had been a continuous work from the early days of the Web 20 years ago to 2011. It's been written by many people in lots of different styles and technologies, and the Web itself has changed enormously. In the early days pictures were small and slow, and we wrote the HTML by hand. Then through the dotcom boom and bust we used WYSIWYG editors of various sorts and people had their different styles. A couple of years ago I had one abortive attempt to try and sort this out, but it was too hard to fix that and keep up with new material.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic gave a second chance to fix things, and reauthor it for today's Web, and hopefully be reasonably smartphone-friendly.

From a technical point of view, there is much mixing of presentation with content, tag soup and error in the pages. Because it grew organically from the early days of the Web, Only Olivia never used a content management system. Digital content doesn't disappear or degrade, but it becomes less usable over time and standards and protocols change. Hopefully there's something of interest to the Olivia fan here, and I have made it findable for you. It is surprising how many of the external links are lost entirely to linkrot.

Thanks

I'd like to thank some special people who made this all possible -

  • Olivia -for being you, for bringing joy and song over so many years
  • Helen - for everything you've done and are doing.
  • Philippe, for all your help with artwork and content. Take a look at Philippe's Olivia blog (in French)
  • Kay Bohlen, for help and inspiration and photos and scans. Kay has a lot of Olivia on his Phenomenal Women site
  • Everyone who kept the flame alive with Only Olivia before. Sorry it all went pear-shaped for some reason.
  • John Ingram who supplied a large archive I used to patch the material from 2007 to 2010
  • all the fans who provided us with scans and photos and material from before. I actually have most of it and it will be back as time goes one. Drop me a line if you want to share something on here.
  • Darren Mason who started it all off in '92