The Goal Interview (about hockey) - Goal

By Ed Kociela

You can't turn on your radio these days without hearing the whispery, little-girl voice of Olivia Newton-John.

Constantly crashing the Top 10 with such middle of the road hits as Let Me Be There, I Honestly Love You, Please Mister Please or her latest album Clearly Love, this diminutive young English lass is one of the most diverse performers in the business. She can sing pop, traditional and country and western songs with equal tenderness.

But, it's in the country and western market she's best known. Miss Newton-John has already picked up a prestigious Grammy award as the Best Female Country Vocalist, the Most Promising Female Vocalist award by the Academy of Country Music and the 1974 Female Vocalist of the Year award by the Country Music Association.

An international hit, she's played everywhere from England's Prince of Wales Theatre to Australia's Sydney Opera House. In between were such varied appearances as the Tokyo Song Festival and Las Vegas showrooms.

Coming up? I've got so many things in the future, she says softly. But, I don't like to talk about them before they happen. It's bad luck, you know.

Despite her numerous engagements, Olivia still finds time to be an avid hockey fan and attends as many Los Angeles Kings' games as her schedule will permit.

GOAL: How did a foreigner become a top country-western singing hit in the United States?
OLIVIA: Well, in England, they don't really differentiate between country music and soul music and pop music. It's all considered just music, with only one chart. Country was just a style that I liked and I tended to sing those types of songs, those easy, mellow songs. As a matter of fact, an English guy wrote Let Me Be There and I recorded it for England. It was a flop in England but a big success in America, so we followed it up in America with I Honestly Love You. The song still did nothing on the English charts, but from those two songs, I was labelled as a country-western singer. I'd just like to think of myself as a singer. I like to sing all kinds of music, but I started off with a country label and even though I've had two ballad hits, the country image has just sort of stuck.

GOAL: What, besides music, were you interested in while growing up in Australia?
OLIVIA: I was very unsporting when growing up in Australia. I wish I had been more interested, but I was very shy. I was quite a good swimmer, but I always avoided school athletics. I enjoyed it, but I didn't like to be competitive. I used to do modern ballet which is a sort of free ballet, gymnastics, but mostly swimming.

GOAL: How about as a spectator?
OLIVIA: I used to go to Australian football, which is actually soccer. It's rough and they don't wear pads. It's a good game, very exciting.

GOAL: How did you get into hockey?
OLIVIA: As I said, I first got started on soccer in Australia. Then when I moved back to England from Australia, a friend took me to a hockey game saying that hockey was faster and more exciting than soccer. He was right.

GOAL: Have you seen. much hockey in the states?
OLIVIA: Not as much as I'd like because I've been so busy with albums and Vegas and Tahoe shows. Being in Los Angeles, we have the opportunity to see the Kings. And in Las Vegas, KVVU-TV carries the Kings, so one can keep abreast of what's happening. Unfortunately, they don't have the Seals on TV in Tahoe, so I have to rely on newspaper accounts of the games.

GOAL: Is there a different feeling for hockey here in the states than overseas?
OLIVIA: That's tough to answer living in L.A. because hockey is just starting to catch on here whereas its long been popular overseas. But the Kings have made great progress the last couple years and more and more people are now starting to talk about them. It's amazing how many of the producers and directors and behind-the-scenes people in Hollywood are Canadians, and they never stop talking hockey.

GOAL: How does European hockey compare to North American hockey?
OLIVIA: The Europeans have a very organized hockey program. They start young, at the pee-wee and midget stage, and play till the senior hockey level. They can skate, shoot and think as well as North American hockey players, but I don't think the level of competition is as intense at the junior level and this is really where the difference is.

GOAL: Could you elaborate on this?
OLIVIA: Well, when good junior players come up, they usually skip to senior hockey, thus weakening the junior system. The other players in junior miss the chance to improve because they can't compete against the best players. Therefore, need more time to they develop. But then again, it's a different style of hockey.

GOAL: What do you mean by that?
OLIVIA: Here, the hockey players play for money. It's their livelihood, their job. In Europe, hockey players get up at 7:00 a.m., go to work all day and then play hockey at night. They must improve their skills more through competition during games than by practice. Hockey is more of a hobby to them.

GOAL: Does the game lose some of it's popularity this way?
OLIVIA: I don't think so. I remember one game when 20-25,000 people showed up in a driving rain storm. They played the game with half an inch of water on the ice. The rink itself was in one corner of a large soccer stadium with standing room in all the seats and people ringing the field.

GOAL: Do you have a favorite hockey player?
OLIVIA: Not one particularly. But I do like the Swedish hockey players best. Their style is so smooth. Whitey Widing of the Kings really looks good gliding down the ice with his blond hair streaming. But I like Borje Salming a little better. A lot of the defensemen like to think of themselves as goal scorers, but he seems to play his position the way it was designed to be played. Certainly, none of the opponent players has an easy time getting around him.

GOAL: Are entertainers as inspired by crowds as hockey players?
OLIVIA: Certainly. You always put out your best when the crowd is large and responsive. It really gets the adrenalin going. I really think that's one of the reasons. why the National Hockey League games are so exciting. It seems that most of the games are played before capacity crowds like this one tonight at the Forum. To watch Marcel Dionne skating down the ice so fast, with the people screaming their lungs out, that's what sports is really all about. And I guess it's also easier to play a physical type of game with the fans on your side. All that support in Philadelphia-I understand they've played to capacity for more than 150 straight games there- certainly must have helped the Flyers.

GOAL: Were you timid about performing before American audiences?
OLIVIA: At first I was, but the audiences were so great that I lost all my timidity in America. I learned so much from working here. You don't have to be slick-slick in everything. You only have to be yourself and sing and they appreciate it.

Editor's note - Olivia clearly is a big hockey fan. She was in fact to star in the Canadian movie Score. A Hockey Musical many years later in 2010.