Why Olivia isn't sure about men
Ed - this interview starts off rather sexist, it was the 70s I suppose!
Her former fiance, the one time Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch describes her as “the most perfect woman in the world.” Certainly, Olivia Newton-John is a delectable dish. She is the quintessence of the Contemporary Girl: generous mouth, wide blue eyes in an elfin but sensuous face and a slim figure.
With a happy, smiling personality, she strikes you as a fresh Spring daffodil.
She is 24, and for me is the Girl-Most-Likely-To-Make-It among the crop of girl singers who are succeeding Cilla, Lulu, Sandie and Co. in the pop charts. Already she has had several big record hits: If Not For You, Banks of the Ohio and Country Road. She is often on television (this Tuesday in the Jimmy Tarbuck Show, for instance) and has had the accolade of a West End show with Sacha Distel.
She has also had her trials and tribulations. Her four-year engagement to the aforesaid Mr. Welch (she was the co-respondent in his divorce case) ended last year. Two days after the announcement he was rushed to hospital having been found unconscious in his flat by Miss Newton-John. Though plainly upset, she went on stage that evening.
However, she is a resilient lady is “Livvy”, with a mind of her own which she has shown since she went against her parents’ wishes and left school in Melbourne, Australia, to sing for her supper.
She speaks with a slight Aussie accent but in fact she was born in Cambridge, where her father was headmaster of a boy’s school. When she was five the family moved to Melbourne, where her father became a university professor of languages.
“My background is very academic,” she says with a grin. “My grandfather (physicist Max Born) was a Nobel Prize winner as part of the team that split the atom, and my brother is a doctor in Australia. But I was not good at Maths or Science.” Her first break came when she was singing in a coffee bar run by her brother-in-law, and a customer suggested she entered a television pop-song contest. “To my amazement I won it-and the prize was a year’s trip to Britain.”
In Britain she worked in clubs and Army camps and then got what looked like the Big Break. She was chosen for a singing group called Toomorrow - created by the man who made the James Bond films and the man who invented The Monkees pop group. But after two desultory years the group fizzled out.
“It was a bit deflating,” she recalls with youthful understatement, “but at that stage I wasn’t terribly career mad. I’ve found since that success makes you develop more of an interest.”
But the experience did teach her something. “I learned that there is a lot of phoneyness among the film set. When you are up-and-coming everyone is terribly interested and very nice. But when you can’t make money for them they briefly bid you Goodbye.” After Toomorrow she determined to make it on her own -and has done just that. But what of her private life? Has the unhappy outcome of her relationship with Welch made her more cautious about getting involved romantically? “No,” she says, “but it has made me a lot more fussy.”
She says she does not have a regular boyfriend, and is honest about the reasons. “An ordinary girl meets a guy and knows whether he wants her for herself. I can never be sure. People can be swayed by television and success and get the wrong picture of you.”
She dashes off to another appointment - a girl who is finding that success does have its drawbacks.