She's Quiet and Powerful
By John Huddy, Knight News Service
MIAMI America’s most-honored female singer these days, whose triumphs and prizes in the past year alone would take up a column of space, is pretty and proper in a flowerlike, fragile fashion-and her pristine voice seems to complete the picture: it is a sparkling clear sound, pure and without flaws, much like a cool mountain stream.
Otherwise, just who is Olivia Newton-John, this softspoken lady in the fluffy white gowns who seems so much younger than her 26 years?
Known as an Australian singer who’s nipping at the heels of another frontrunning Aussie named Helen Reddy, Miss Newton-John admits she was born in Cambridge, England, not Australia, and hasn’t lived Down Under in years. She lives mostly in California, with an apartment in London on the side.
And although we think of the young recording star as a country singer after tunes like “If You Love Me, Let Me Know” and “Let Me Be There” (both sound as though they were hung in a shed with the smoked ham for a month) in fact, Olivia Newton-John played Nashville for the first time in February.
So we start over, discovering that we know rather little about the winner of the Best Female Pop Vocalist Award at the recent Grammy ceremonies, holder of four American Music Awards, the Rising Star of the Year honor by the American Guild of Variety Artists, the best country-singer title, the People’s Choice Prize as Favorite Female Singer and the Record of the Year Award for “I Honestly Love You”
Is she a country singer? A folk artist?
“That’s a good question,” the small voice laughs on the phone from Malibu Beach. “I guess I don’t put myself in any category, although probably my earliest influence was folk music: I like to sing that sort of stuff. I prefer folk, too, compared to straight-out pop. I like the simplicity, the basic quality, the pretty melodies and the good words. But I try to listen to all kinds of music.”
Largely because her earlier record producers were toying with pop-country sounds, the daughter of an English college professor who moved to Australia when Olivia was 5 became identified with what dise jockeys called middle-of-road country music. Not hard country in a Merle Haggard sense. But more like the tunes of Mac Davis and John Hartford.
After winning the country music award as best C & W singer, Newton-John fought a brief skirmish with country purists who protested the top prize going to a non-American, non-Southern belle. The dispute quickly passed, however.
It’s apparent that this is one star who doesn’t talk about herself with much enthusiasm: “I play a lot of tennis, but I’m not good,” she says, adding that she spends a good deal of time with her sidemen, disapproves of drug use, makes a point to listen to all kinds of music.
And from time to time, while fiving in a rented Malibu Beach house, she listens to old tapes, done in the days she sang in working men’s clubs in England or, before that, as a folk singer in Australia. “You’d kill yourself laughing if you heard my old tapes,” Newton-John says. “I sound like Joan Baez, only louder.”
Today the dynamics are much softer. “I haven’t got a terribly strong voice, but it’s a lot stronger than most people think. I just find that it is not attractive to belt. I used to sing much, much louder till I learned better. Now it is more important for me to get the lyrics across.”
Her attention to those lyrics, and the soothing effect of her laying back may explain the unexpected success in nightclubs, after two years of college concerts across the U.S. “When I first opened in Las Vegas, I was terrified,” Newton-John says. “I expected the people to be terribly sophisticated. But they weren’t, really. They were no different than any other audience. Very nice, very attentive.”
The next trial of sorts came on a tour of the South, including a stop in Nashville. “It’s an important music town and I expected everybody to be involved in music. But it was a typical audience. Very friendly, no different than the others I guess I’m always a bit nervous, but I can control it.”
Newton-John controls more than the opening night nerves, the interviewer discovers. Not even Johnny Carson on a recent Tonight Show interview could break through the singer’s shell during a discussion of love affairs. “I’m old-fashioned, guess,” the singer says. “That’s one phase of my life I like to keep private.”
Olivia performs at Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, TN, USA March 23 1975.