Reversal of Fortune

Olivia Newton-John fans are reminding her lately that she used to wear headbands and leg warmers in public. Her highly questionable fashion accessories stayed on her person for a few months in 1981 and 1982, when her aerobic song “Physical” vacationed at No. 1 on the pop music charts for 10 weeks.

In concerts in 2001, she says, “there are fans in their 20s and 30s going to, like, eight and 10 shows, and they put on a headband for ‘Physical.’ “ But it’s not like Newton-John is following suit. When was the last time she wore a headband? “Me? Ha ha ha. Tennis. But onstage, not since ‘Physical’ was a hit, she says.

Newton-John, who performs at the Las Vegas Hilton today and Saturday, says fans are seeing a more easygoing version of her. For years, she couldn’t even hear her own music not Hopelessly Devoted to You, not Magic for fear of hearing errors.

“I used to not be able to listen (to myself), because I didn’t think I could do anything. I’d say, ‘Oh, why didn’t I do that? What’s more, she was troubled by singing in concert. “In actuality, the energy of (touring) wasn’t something I enjoyed in the past. I was so nervous,” she says. “I was so worried about making a mistake that I couldn’t really relax. But I finally let go of that perfection.”

She doesn’t mention what eventually eased her mind, but she certainly has experienced enough success and tragedy to mock her prior pursuit of perfection. About a decade ago, in the course of one year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, buried her father and watched a side business go bankrupt. She got divorced. She had been planning a comeback, yet her life was chaos, and her career was a stranger to the Billboard pop charts she dominated a decade before.

Newton-John, 52, has been fortunate in other ways. Her cancer has been in remission for eight years. She’s back on a tour. She has a CD box set coming out next year, and possibly a Christmas album this year.

Of course, her most intense success came a generation ago. The winner of a Haley Mills look-alike contest, Newton-John started a pop duo in England, but flew home to Australia to slowly build a solo career that exploded in the 1970s with the pop-country hits “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “I Honestly Love You.”

“My manager believed country was the right choice for my voice,” she says. “I just thought, singing is singing.” She turned to pop with her lead, musical movie roles in “Grease” and “Xanadu.” “Grease” caused widespread Newton-John fanaticism, what with her appearing both as a sweater-wearer and a leather mama.

“Xanadu,” however, featured roller skates and foreshadowed her career’s slowdown. “Grease is great. I only feel very lucky that I was in it. I love the music in Xanadu, (but) I wasn’t so thrilled at my acting,” she says, still sounding irritated. “We had some problems when we were making it…. Script things. It was being rewritten as we went…. It’s a long story.”

But Newton-John considers two of her on-set highlights to have been her dancing scenes with John Travolta in “Grease” and with Gene Kelly in “Xanadu.” “It was nerve-racking,” working with Kelly, “because he’s such a great dancer. Can you imagine the pressure? I was not a dancer. I got two months off to rehearse, she says. “Gene had a real masculine, powerful presence, so he had a kind of sexuality.”

Newton-John and Travolta are still friends. In fact, she and Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, grace the presence of “Not Under My Roof,” a nonprofit video that offers tips on getting child-endangering toxins out of homes.

The video is available through the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (www.checnet.org), a group that strives to clean up environmental carcinogens that give kids cancer. Newton-John got involved with the coalition back when it was named the Colette Chuda Environmental Fund. Colette was a friend of Newton-John’s daughter, Chloe.

Chloe has grown up so far into a 15-year-old who sings a few songs with her mom at summer concerts. But Colette died young.

Newton-John’s voice still drops to a sorrow when she says Colette’s name. “When Chloe was born, my friend Nancy had Colette,” she says, “and tragically, when she was 4, she got cancer, and died when she was 5…. That touches you.” Then she had another reason to join the anti-cancer cause. “I had breast cancer shortly after that.”

Working with charities takes commitment, but Newton-John is used to it. She’s worn her environmental crusades on her sleeve since the 1970s.

“I was always involved in the environment,” she says. “Just because we’re here, doesn’t mean we have the right to destroy everything in our path.”

By Doug Elfam