Cream Of The Crop

The front of the chocolate box has changed for ever. Or has it? OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN has cut her hair, shed her old image and entered the brand new world of video. But, says, ROBIN EGGAR the sickly-sweet centre still remains the same.

THE COURTYARD of London's Somerset House in the early hours of a cold autumn morning is an unlikely venue for a superstar. It is better suited as a final ghostly resting place for the millions of dusty files entombed there, in an endless catacomb of bureaucracy. It has the cobble of a bygone age, and the cobwebs of history.

A Buick limousine with white walled tyres draws up at the main entrance. Out steps an elegant lady clad in forties' fashions, a pencil- thin black dress, covered with a fur coat and topped with a hair style swept sharply sideways. She rushes to kiss her lover, resplendent in a white dinner jacket. Cut.

The clatter of stiletto heels is heard through the mist that swirls through the alley, long before the same frightened lady, now, is seen rushing past a bemused tramp, pursued by a sinister looking private eye. Cut. Is this really Olivia Newton-John? The cute blonde from such sun- swept California myths as Grease and Xanadu? In Somerset House there are none of the trappings that you associate with multi-million dollar film budgets. The superstar trappings are confined to a small mobile dressing room.

But then this is not a movie. For Olivia is making a video album, whose contents mirror the changes in her career, which complement the reversion to her natural mousey brown hair, the docking of her pony tail. The videos that accompany her new Physical album certainly show a much more drastic change of image than the blander recordings allow. Olivia plays a bewildering variety of roles. One moment she plays a raunchy space cowboy, the next she is cocooned like a foetus inside a plastic bubble. The clip for 'Physical', shown on 'Top Of The Pops', has her as a playful minx in a gymnasium full of obese middle aged men the bit the bountiful BBC didn't show had Olivia rejected by two beautiful hunks of beefcake who wander off together into the steam room, hand in hand, leaving the lady with a lucky fatty!

On Landslide she is an aggressive business executive entwining a hapless younger male colleague, with her charms. He just happens to be 22-year-old American dancer Matt Lattanzi, Olivia's current boyfriend. Marriage is rumoured to be in the air, and it is his domestic influence, coupled with that of two other men that has provided the springboard for the 33- year-old singing star to finally take a few risks with her career.

Matt may not have been present at Somerset House but the other two were. Her new manager Roger Davis and video director Brian Grant. Davis was originally assistant to Lee Kramer, Olivia's longtime manager and on-off lover. A tall, bearded and remarkably genial, Australian he took over the direction of her career a scant six months ago. His influence shows already. But most important on the night is Brian Grant. The London-born video director's work is familiar to any TV watcher on classic pop videos for the likes of Kim Wilde, Landscape and Kiki Dee. He won the contract for the half a million dollar budgeted album against such competition as Hollywood feature film directors. He wrote the story lines himself and still expresses a naive surprise that Olivia has so wholeheartedly endorsed his ideas. Talking to Olivia at one in the morning, her harsh vamping Bette Davis costume for 'Stranger's. Touch' belies the tiredness in her face and the enthusiasm for the whole project in her voice.

Brian is marvellous, she says, because he has absolutely no preconceived ideas about me, he makes me think in a different and more relaxing way about performing and acting. I play more parts in one song on this video than I have in my entire acting career. I wish movies were as exciting to make. They move so slowly. At least that would have made Xanadu more bearable.

That film did fall a little short in the dialogue stakes. The script used to change daily and I was really embarrassed with some of the lines I had to say. We even came back from a Christmas break to find the whole story changed. Working with Brian has restored my faith in acting and makes me want to work more perhaps in straight acting. I've had a straight dramatic role offered me in an Australian script. It's perfect for me, as I'm just an old romantic at heart.

Anyone hoping to see Miss Newton-John, on anything other than their TV screen, is in for a disappointment in the immediate future. The whole video album has been made with the express intention of sales to American and international TV networks. Olivia is nothing if not commercially shrewd. One television show is seen by more people than a six week tour. I've been on the road for so long, now I'd rather sit at home and send out a tape. But I won't go so far as to say I will never tour again.

She leaves me with the unspoken impression it wouldn't break her heart either. But in the three years since her last solo album, Olivia has obviously made the decision to break away from her prissy, never- been-kissed, girl-next-door image. Musically the contents of Physical are scarcely radical. John Farrar is still the producer, writing the majority of the songs and playing all the guitars. Olivia's only musical contribution comes in The Promise (The Dolphin Song), a surprisingly emotional ballad, reflecting her concern for the future of those delightful mammals of the sea, and for me the album's highlight. We recorded the sounds of the ocean down at Santa Monica, says Olivia, Then we added real dolphins' sounds. We owe it to our children to treasure dolphins as a source of love and to keep them alive.

Excepting Hank Marvin's anti- pollution song, Silvery Rain, which is given a sharper focus by the video and Physical, with its blatantly suggestive sexual lyrics which has led to the song being banned in conservative mid-Western states like Idaho and Iowa the new album is classic MOR pop plodder, stylish and forgettable. But Olivia, herself, has gone visual. Deliberately and with style. I was very frightened of losing my traditional following in the States, she says frankly, there I've almost been a country singer. But when I did Grease it turned around and released me to try new things. In other words the little girl from the Antipodes, donned spray on black trousers and grew up sexy, without leaving the neighbourhood. We were more up-tempo and aggressive with Physical, because it mirrored the changes in my life and society. Both are now more open, more liberal and more relaxed. Eventually you have to stand up and do what you want to do. I can't live my life on what people might think.

After I d finished filming Xanadu I just decided to cut all my hair off. It had been ruined by filming anyway and I decided not to dye it any more either. It was wonderful. I felt like a whole new person. Nobody recognised me on the streets of LA for months. I was just a girl with short dark hair, who looked a little like Olivia Newton-John.

There is no longer any love for Britain in Olivia Newton-John. The little blonde, fresh off the boat from Australia and given her breaks by the Shadows in the late sixties, is grown up and wiser. Although born in Britain, raised in Australia and now living in California, she definitely considers herself to be Australian. Her lack of enthusiasm for the UK may, unsurprisingly, be related to her relative lack of sales here. I've never shaken off the image of the cute kid on the Cliff Richard TV shows of over a decade ago. On the way up the press love you, but England is so changeable that if you're out of the public eye for three months, you're dead and forgotten. And I've been away for years. Xanadu wasn't exactly a box-office smash here, although in the States the kids loved it. London isn't the same any more either. Everyone seems so depressed, no one is lively any more. There aren't any good nightclubs.

I passed by the opportunity to deliver a sociology lecture on the length of the British dole queue and other irrelevant (to her) facts, while she reminisced to her personal stylist Fleur and hairdresser Armando, about swinging London, just 13 happy years back. Then it was time for the professional actress to pose for the camera once again. It was accomplished quickly, competently and efficiently. And mainly without feeling.

Perhaps then I saw Olivia Newton-John clearly for the first time. She is a product. A classy, attractive, superbly packaged box of expensive chocolates. And this whole video business, so technically excellent and innovative is just a simple marketing exercise. The wrapper has been redesigned, updated and re-marketed. With great success... to all us mugs. For while the packaging may be very different, the chocolates still have the same soft sticky centres.