Up To The Challenge

thanks to Kay

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By Curtis Ross

John Cale sang that fear is a man's best friend, a sentiment Olivia Newton-John might find familiar.

Usually, the things I've been afraid to do are the ones I should do because they are the most challenging, Newton-John says by telephone, calling from backstage at a Dallas theater where she will be performing later that evening.

Those challenges also have proved to be rewarding artistically and commercially.

Think of the impression she made in the 1978 musical Grease, shedding her wholesome blue-denim image at film's end for black leather and high heels.

She went even further with 1981's Physical single and video, pushing into risque dance-pop and scoring one of her biggest hits in the process.

Artistically, Newton-John hit a peak with 1994's Gaia, for which she wrote all the songs.

That album was the release of my fear of trying to do it (writing songs], Newton-John says. There was nothing else to be afraid of after that.

After that refers to the frightening period that preceded Gaia, when a friend's 5-year-old daughter died of cancer and Newton-John herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was successfully treated and the experiences spurred an outpouring of songs.

I was waking up in the middle of the night with songs in my head, Newton-John says. I couldn't help getting up and recording them.

It was winter in Australia so I'd make a fire and set up my little Casio and tape recorder, Newton-John recalls. I didn't intend it to be released. I thought it was just for me. In fact, the album was released on an independent label but found its audience regardless.

People come up now and say, 'I understand what you were saying', Newton-John says. The fact that it's helping other people is fantastic.

Peter Fawthrop, writing about the album for the All Music Guide (www.allmusic.com), says Gaia brings us closer to the singer herself than anything from the past. These songs that intentionally lack lyrical subtlety deal with love, disease, religiosity, wildlife, children and marriage, pain and suffering, and at the core is the artist's belief that there is healing.

Nature and environmental causes long have been close to Newton-John's heart. The Physical album contained her composition The Promise (The Dolphin Song) and she once canceled a tour of Japan in protest of that country's slaughter of dolphins.

She credits her mother with instilling in her a consciousness about the environment, and her daughter with spurring her to greater involvement.

When my daughter was born I realized the fragility of everything. Newton-John says. I wanted her to have fresh air, clean food, things that are her right as a human.

The death of her friend's child prompted the formation of Children's Health Environmental Coalition, which raises funds to research the environmental causes of cancer.

Newton-John appears in a short film for the organization, Not Under My Roof, which is full of tips on how to protect children from environmental harm, she says.

Another recent film role found her taking on another challenge, playing a seamy honky-tonk singer in last year's comedy Sordid Lives.

That was fun for me. It was so far away from anything I ever did, Newton-John says. I bleached my hair and cut it myself. An upcoming film, The Wilde Girls, finds Newton-John playing a singer, albeit a less successful one.

It's a mother-daughter story, Newton-John says. The daughter wants to be a singer and I don't want her to because I was a one-hit wonder. I don't want her to go through the same experience I had.

Newton-John's 15-year-old daughter, Chloe, plays the aspiring singer in the film, to premiere on the Showtime cable network in November.

Chloe is among the countless youngsters who have discovered her mother's most famous film, Grease.

It's still amazing, Newton-John says. Every year a new batch of kids discovers it.

Newton-John says she sees the film a little differently as a moth-er than as an actor.

I didn't realize a lot of that stuff was in there before I had a teen, she says of the film's mildly raunchy content. I never noticed that line before!

Newton-John's last album of new material, 1998's Back With a Heart, returned the singer to the country-pop that fueled her early hits such as If You Love Me (Let Me Know) and Let Me Be There.

In keeping with her current tour, marking her 30th anniversary as a solo recording artist, her next releases will be retrospectives - Magic-The Very Best of Olivia Newton-John, due out Tuesday, and a box set to be released next year.

Newton-John also has been working on some dance tracks with her nephew, Brett Goldsmith.

ON TOUR

Olivia Newton-John
WHEN: Saturday, 8 p.m.
WHERE: Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater
TICKETS: $49.75 and $55.75; box office, (727) 791-7400; Ticketmaster, (813) 287-8844