Olivia Newton-John - Ed Stewpot Book

Olivia Newton-John

Editor’s Note: Ed Stewpot was a British DJ who had a show on Radio 1 as well as a TV show in the early Seventies. His show was for a young target audiences. This is the chapter about Olivia from a book he wrote about pop stars in the early 70s.

Olivia Newton-John Aged 26 Born 26 September 1948 Singer

The first time I met Olivia Newton-John she was a member of the group called Toomorrow. Then she made some appearances on my “Stewpot” television show and we have met several times since. Each time I’ve seen her, I have come away thinking that she must be one of the most beautiful faces in pop. I love her singing voice, too, and I admire her tremendously for taking the plunge and choosing a solo career for herself. Talk to Olivia, or ‘Livvy’ as all her good chums call her, and you will detect a slight Australian accent. In fact, she came to this country from Australia as the first prize winner in a Melbourne talent contest.

Olivia was born in Cambridge, end certainly not into a showbusiness family. Her Welsh-born father had an academic background and her German-born mother was the daughter of a Nobel Prize winning physicist. In Cambridge, her father was headmaster of a boys’ school and when she was five the family moved to Melbourne where her father became a university professor of languages at Ormond College. Soon Olivia was whiling away the hours by making up tunes on the family grand piano.

At school, despite the academic background of her family, she was not particularly good at either mathematics or science. She admits readily enough today that she probab1y could have been quite good at school, if only she had concentrated l With a great love of animals, which still exists very much today, she had one burning ambition at school and that was to become a veterinary surgeon. But, because her marks at mathematics and science were not very good it was a dream that could not come true and so she gave up the idea.

Olivia has an older brother and sister. Her brother, Hugh, is a doctor in AustraIia. Her sister, Rona, is an actress and lives in this country. Olivia, by the time she was fourteen, was a1ready showing considerable musical talent, and she enjoyed entertaining her friends with her music, and so it was not too surprising when she started a singing group with three other girls. They called themselves The Sol Four. Unfortunately, The Sol Four began to interfere with work at school and so the group was disbanded. It was then that Olivia started to sing on her own in a coffee lounge owned by her sister’s husband.

It was while she was singing here that she heard about a talent contest that was to prove an important milestone in her career. It was being held by Johnny O’Keefe, one of Australia’s top musical personalities and a television star. One of the customers in the coffee lounge suggested to Olivia that she should enter the contest. She did, and she won it. The person most surprised at her success in the contest was Olivia herself! The first prize was a trip to Great Britain. However, because she was still at school at the time it was more than a year before she could collect that prize.

She arrived here when she was eighteen, six years ago. Once in this country she formed a double act with another Austra1ian girl, Pat Carroll. They sang and danced, worked in clubs and army camps and had several spots on BBC-TV. In a short space of time, Olivia and Pat had proved themselves to be a successful combination of talents. Then Pat Carroll’s visa ran out, and she was forced to return to Australia. Today she is married to Olivia Newton- John’s record producer, John Farrar.

The next break to come to Olivia was when she was chosen to become a member of a group called Toomorrow, and was featured in the film entitled ‘Toomorrow’. With this group she had two most interesting years, which included a trip to the United States. But eventually she decided to plunge into a solo career, and as events proved, it was an excellent move - Toomorrow became Yesterday and broke up!

Her first record was called ‘If Not For You’. Besides being a hit parade success in this country, ‘If Not For You’ went on to score a similar success in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Norway and Belgium. At last, Olivia Newton-John was on her way to being a success in her chosen career of showbusiness. ‘If Not For You’ was the turning point for her. “I was hoping to have a hit record”, she has said of those early days. “That was the big dream. It’s only after you have made the record, that you realize just how hard it is to actually get a hit.”

Success made Olivia Newton-John appreciate how much she loved her career, and she worked that much harder, became that much more conscientious. That same success also brought reassurance to Olivia’s parents who, like any parents in a similar situation, had wondered if she was making the right decision in choosing a career in showbusiness. ‘If Not For You’ and many other successes were to clear away all the doubts. A first LP followed ‘If Not For You’ and then came her follow-up single, a song called ‘Banks Of The Ohio’. The success of ‘If Not For You’ was repeated all over again, and ‘Banks Of The Ohio’ became a big hit in many countries.

In Great Britain Olivia received a Silver Disc to mark the 250,000-plus sales of the record, won two Gold Discs for it in Australia, and saw it triumph in Germany, South Africa, Denmark and Norway. During 1971 she toured the Continent with the Cliff Richard Show, she took part in the Antibes Song Festival as a guest, appeared at the London Palladium for three weeks with the Cliff Richard Show and subsequently toured most of the major cities here with the same show.

The year 1972 saw her appearing as a regular guest in the BBC-TV series, ‘It’s Cliff Richard’ and, later in the same year, she appeared at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre in the Sacha Distel Show.

Olivia has made countless club and cabaret appearances in this country including a season at London’s famous Savoy Hotel and more successful record releases, notably ‘What Is Life’ and ‘Country Road’. For two years running Olivia Newton-John was voted ‘Best British Girl Singer’ by the musical paper, Record Mirror, and she has travelled far and wide.

Although she likes the travelling, she doesn’t easily forget a flight from New York to London when the aircraft was forced to turn back to New York with hydraulic trouble and make an emergency landing on a snow-covered runway with fire engines and ambulances standing by. It happened on a Friday the 13th. For a long time after that, if the figures in a flight number added up to 13 Flight 481, for example she wouldn’t take it. She has now stopped adding up the figures, but she still wouldn’t dream of flying on Friday the 13th!

She says that she worries about the little things, is superstitious enough to walk around a ladder, and is both an optimist and pessimist. But what does the girl from Cambridge via Melbourne, the girl who started singing folk songs just for the fun of it, think about all the success that has come her way? “I’m knocked out by it all,” she says. “You see, I never expected it. I never expected to win that talent contest in Melbourne in the first place.”