Olivia Gets Physical
Some musicians and singers want to be touring and cutting records all the time. Others are happy taking time off.
Olivia Newton-John is one of the latter. She has a new album, “Physical,” on MCA Records. The single, “Physical,” is No. 26 and climbing on the best-selling chart of Oct. 24.
She says, “It has been two years, maybe three, I think, since I made an album. The ‘Xanadu’ album was after it but that wasn’t strictly mine.”
“I knew I was supposed to have done an album last year but I didn’t do it. So this year I knew I had to do one. We started in March and it took a while, partly because the producer, John Farrar, was doing his own album.”
“I haven’t toured for three years now. I didn’t feel like I wanted to. I don’t miss it yet. I’m very fortunate I don’t have to tour. I appreciate that.”
“It’s fun once you get going. But I’ve been having such a nice time being at home, I didn’t want to leave for a length of time.”
She lives on a small ranch near Malibu, Calif., and has five horses, eight dogs and a cat.
She wrote one song on the new album, “The Promise,” subtitled “The Dolphin Song,” to state her belief that dolphins shouldn’t be caught in tuna nets and killed, in fact that man shouldn’t destroy another species.
On an enjoyable day at home, Miss Newton-John says, she likes to make breakfast and take it back to bed with the newspaper. She swims, then deals with mail and phone calls. Then she rides, checks her property, picks fruit and generally putters around. Then she’ll visit a friend or have someone over.
Choosing songs for an album, Miss Newton-John says, is a matter of listening to hundreds of tapes. “You usually end up with friends. You ring up friends and ask if they’ve written anything.” The new album is her most rock oriented, to give the singer a change of pace.
John Farrar wrote or co-wrote five of the 10 songs on “Physical.” Miss Newton-John says, “He has written most of my hits, ‘You’re the One That I Want,’ ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You,’ ‘Magic,’ ‘A Little More Love.”” She says that “You’re the One That I Want” probably has been her biggest hit.”
Miss Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, and was 5 when her family moved to Australia. She thinks of herself as Australian and, she says, when she saw the movies “Breaker Morant” and “Gallipoli,” she walked out saying proudly to her-self, “I’m an Aussie.”
She says, “I’m supposed to do a movie in Australia next year, a straight drama, based on a book D. H. Lawrence wrote when he was living in Australia.”
Miss Newton-John’s recording career started in England. She toured, early on, with Cliff Richard and became a regular on his TV show. She won her first Grammy Award in 1973. But her big career, leap forward was starring in the movie “Grease.”
“All I knew was I got sent a script,” she says. “I did have an agent, but this came about another way. It happens like that sometimes. John Travolta now tells me he was plugging for me from the beginning, thinking I was a perfect Sandy.”
“I thought John was going to be a big star. ‘Saturday Night Fever’ was not out yet, then. I saw he had charisma and knew he was going to make it.”