Olivia honestly loves her hideaway
At 28, the pressures of being the most popular singer in the United States and now, arguably, in the world, are fearsome. But Olivia Newton-John, who still enjoys being happy and uncomplicated, has kept her cool and created her own hideaway world ranch in California where, with her dogs and her horses, she gets away from it all.
Exclusive interview by Julia Orange, in Malibu, California
Photographs on previous page by Bob Michaelson
What makes Olivia Newton-John 'the world's most desirable woman'
On a blustery day that whipped the glittering waves into a frenzy and had the horses huddling irritably for shelter and the dogs yelping with excitement, Olivia Newton-John smoothed down her hair, soothed her dogs and smiled radiantly for the camera.
On this particular day she had risen early, set about her hair and makeup with the professional ism of a model girl; done a photo session at llam; an interview with me at 12; a short promotional film at 1pm.
She went riding; ran up and down the long flight of stairs that separates the house from the stables, to keep in shape; talked to her business manager; consulted carpenters who were helping to renovate her house and sympathised lavishly with one of her great danes who was throwing up and regarding her reproachfully as if it were somehow her fault.
'Breather' between engagements
She made arrangements for the vet, and took more phone calls. She was on “holiday”, by the way: a short breather in between the filming of a television show and a big Las Vegas engagement.
Thank heavens for being mellow. At 28, the pressures of being the most popular female singer, certainly in the United States and now, arguably, in the world, are fearsome. They say she will be a legend in her life-time before she is 30.
“I dunno how I deal with it.” said Olivia vaguely. She was wearing her favourite pair of jeans made in Australia, secured with a belt with “Australia” embroidered on it. She was pottering around the kitchen hunting up cups for coffee. Her big sea-greeny eyes looked clear and rested. “Partly,” she added, pouring coffee, “it’s this…” And she indicated her home.
Very few journalists and even fewer fans ever penetrate the house that Olivia has built. On top of the hill in Malibu, California, and protected by a 1.6 metre storm fence (which the neighbours moan about), it’s her retreat from the music business, from an adoring public who send her up to 2000 fan letters a month.
“If things are getting to me,” said Olivia, gesturing towards a winding track on the side of a hill that led up to the brilliantly blue sky, “I take my dogs (rapt pack of irish setters, labradors and danes shift at her feet) and my horse and I escape up that hill. It’s wonderful.”
The house, with its simple rattan and bamboo furniture, lots of plants and mixture of elegant junk (like a beautiful old wood-burning stove) and solid farm-house furniture, is sunny, large and casual. Reported to have cost $350,000, it’s set in 1.6 bucolic hectares of some of the most expensive real estate in the world. There are rolling canyons behind and the Pacific Ocean ahead, and, in similarly expensive, carefully unpretentious houses dotted up the coast live people like Streisand, and Bob Dylan and Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen in fact, about two-thirds of the music and film business.
Olivia, who was re-decorating her house, stopped to admire some new sprigged curtains, and some beautiful old Chinese plates stacked on a Welsh dresser. Carpenters were sawing away in the bedroom. A maid hummed in the kitchen. A dog barked outside. Freesias were in full bloom on the veranda. All very nice.
And Olivia, who is sometimes criticised by journalists for being too gentle, casual, undramatic for their tastes, must sometimes allow herself to think how odd it is that, at 28, she’s earned every cent of this house herself.
Her string of firsts and awards would fill this page. Apart from being the biggest-selling singer in America, she is the first female to have had three successive Number One singles on the charts.
And to have turned out nine gold records! She has won three Grammies for her renditions of Let Me Be There (Best Country Female Vocal, 1973) and I Honestly Love You (Record of the Year, 1974) and Best Pop Female Vocal Performance, 1974.
She is, according to the polls, one of the most desired women in the world. She is beautiful, bright, disconcertingly normal. Some writers are openly cheesed off that she is not more neurotic, more driven. “Ye-es,” says Olivia she stretched the word out like an Aussie “people are always telling me how cheerful I am.” She sounded almost apologetic, and grimaced humorously.
“Friends call me with their problems because they say I’m so calm, when sometimes I’m feeling absolutely useless. The answer, I guess, is that when I’m not feeling cheerful. I keep my pain at home.”
The impression she gives isn’t simply of woozy, insipid niceness. She will, in fact, talk about herself with startling directness. Her gentleness seems to spring from a kind of self-contained inner strength. She enjoys being happy and uncomplicated. Not a very American characteristic, hence, I suppose, the criticism.
Olivia’s grandfather was Max Born, a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist. She was born in Cambridge, England, where her father was a professor of German.
By a coincidence, I met Olivia’s father, Brin, and his wife, Val, a number of times in Australia about 10 years ago during Olivia’s struggling years in England. Her father was a professor at Newcastle University where my husband was a PhD student and I was a waitress by day, an English student by night.
Dinner at the Newton-Johns was fun: Val cooked casseroles and salads and we brought a bottle. There was good music, nourishing conversations, lots of laughter.
Reminiscing with Olivia, she said suddenly: “You know, I miss that sort of thing sometimes. Dad and Val (Olivia’s step-mother, a psychologist) just came to stay here. I realised we talked for hours at night that there had been part of myself that hadn’t been used enough living here. They talk about everything: issues, people, books, politics. It’s very easy to get too self-enclosed just talking to people in the business.”
Said Olivia in another interview: “Dad even thought of becoming an opera singer once. He has a beautiful voice and they offered to train him with one of the top bass baritones in Italy. When I was a kid I always heard classical music playing full blast around the house.”
“It’s funny, I can’t listen to classical music today because I get really depressed, really sad. 1 think I must relate the music to my father and I don’t see much of him these days.”
Nowadays, although most of her extra-music activities are outwardly directed - she loves riding, swimming and tennis Olivia says she craves time to read, to write, to do what author Barry Sutton once called some “really purposeful idling”.
There is some lingering guilt about not following through with her parents wishes that she get a university degree. “I have these dreams,” she said with a nervous giggle, “in which I’m in this exam room about to sit an exam and I suddenly realise I’m completely unprepared for it. Dreadful.”
When she was 17 she took off to England with another girl singer. The long haul to the top started with playing sleazy clubs and Army bases. In those days she was “absolutely terrified” of performing.
No wonder her parents were terrified: even now, approaching 30, she has an air of wistful, fragile innocence. At 18 it must have looked like Hayley Mills going off to Gomorrah.
Olivia answered two more phone calls and brought more coffee. The conversation flowed easily to men, friends, children, solitude. She’s very easy to talk to.
Friends are a complicated matter when you’re successful. She enjoys a close friendship with Helen Reddy “she’s funny and honest: it cuts through all the nonsense.”
But she added with a wary look, “Before all this happened it was easier in certain ways to make friends. When I talk to people I don’t think who I am or any of that it’s very open. Sometimes I hate small talk; I want to dive down to basics. This has been misinterpreted.”
“Recently I had an experience. I was talking very easily to a girl and she suddenly opened up to me and told me she was in awe of me. That absolutely shattered me. It didn’t flatter me. It depressed me. It made things seem very unreal.”
“Luckily, I’ve managed to stay in touch with, and really close to, a few friends that I’ve had for years.”
On men, the same philosophy of sticking to the tried and tested seems to hold. For the last two years her boyfriend has been a tall, handsome Englishman called Lee Kramer, a one-time shoe importer turned Svengali-figure who came over to America with her.
She admitted to contradictory ideas about the kind of qualities she admires in a man. A brilliant intellect who was also warm, “animal” and kind might fit the bill.
Frightened of marriage
Marriage as an institution frightens her. “My parents, my sister and so many of my friends have been divorced. I wouldn’t rule it out completely because you never know, but right now it’s not a necessity for me. I’m self-supporting so I don’t need a man to look after me, in that sense.”
The phone rang. “Could you please call back?” she said in her sweet, well-bred voice. “I’m giving an interview.”
The great dane threw up on the steps again. “Poor darling.” said Olivia, with her arms round his neck. “I’m going to take you to the vet.” The film crew have arrived. The photographer told her shyly that she’s wonderful: “You’re always so cheerful.” “Um, thanks.” She smiled.
SEE OLIVIA ON TELEVISION
The Olivia Newton-John Special will be screened on Channel 7 in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on Wednesday, April 20, at 7.30pm.
PHOTO PREVIOUS PAGE LEFT: Relaxing... "I take my dogs (Olivia has irish setters, labradors and great danes) and my horse and I escape up the hill..."
Editor's note - this interview appears to have been conducted in 1976 but not published until 1977