Olivia goes from mellow to physical
Once upon a time she was mellow. Now she is getting physical. No, not just physical, but animal.
Olivia Newton-John, the pixieish thrush who has sold more than 100 million records since arriving on the scene hack in 1971, is on the road for the first time in four years, bringing her willowy whisper to cavernous stadiums across the land on a 30-date “Physical Tour of North America”. Currently she is riding high in the charts with her singles “Let’s Get Physical”, “Landslide” and “Make a Move on Me”.
THE BRITISH-BORN, Australian-bred singer in understandably nervous about her return to the concert circuit. Speaking, and frequently giggling from her hustle ranch house in the bills above the beaches of Malibu, Calif, on the eve of her nationwide swing. Newton-John was all at witter with anticipation. “It’s a little nerve-wracking,” she confesses in a tweedling Down Under accent. “I’ve kind of lost touch with singing - singing to a live audience.”
So why did the stop touring in the first place!
“Oh, I don’t know. I just got tired of it. I’d been doing it for a long time. And I was fortunate in having the movies out - “Grease” and “Xanadu” - that I didn’t need to be out there.”
But now Newton-John feels the need again “I thought it would be a good chance for me, this tour, I didn’t have anything set for the summer, and everyone kept saying to me. Come on, it’ll be great. You’ll enjoy it. And there couldn’t be a better time to go. So even though I was nervous and unsure. I committed to do it. And I think it’s going to be fun.”
Newton-John is being accompanied on her cross-country jaunt by a seven-piece band and three backup singers. She is dishing out her Grammy award-winning tunes from a specially designed set. And she is wearing lots of spiffy, skin tight outfits as she bobs her shaggy locks up and down, dancing the Pony in her Peter Pan boots.
SPEAKING OF spitty outfits, hulks are still reeling from the drastic image overhaul that Newton-John has undergone these past few years. What is she doing. this innocent girl with the preening teen looks and the teeth as while as cotton bells, writhing around in spandex leotards, cooing stuff about suggestive movies and talking horizontally and inviting guys to “make a move on me” ?
“Well, you have to think of logistics,” she explains. “It was 10 years ago or something since I’ve had those hits” (“I Honestly Love You” and “Have You Never Been Mellow”) I was young and innocent then. But you change over the years: you grow and change. I hope that I wouldn’t be the same at 33 that I was at 21. I didn’t go out and take lessons in being something else, I’ve just grown.”
A cyclone of controversy has swirled around Newton John’s vampy new image. In February protests from irate viewers coursed through TV-station switchboards around the country after the airing of her “Physical” special. Fans expecting to see the down-home ingenue with the daisy in her hair (remember, much to the chagrin of the Country Music Association, Newton-John burst on the scene with a string of twangy Nashvillian hits) were confronted with visions that verged on soft core porn: Newton-John splayed on the sand in a wet T-shirt, Newton-John in tennis togs, wielding her racket at a sauna full of muscle men; Newton-John in cellophane, Newton-John in sultry film noire garb, Newton John in leather, hurling her hips as her band pummeled out a driving rock beat: Newton-John with a headband to match every get-up.
ADDITIONALLY, the “Physical single, which has become the anthem for a teeming throng of fitness freaks, was band in South Africa for its “risqué language.” “That,” says Newton-John with a guffaw, “is really funny”.
For her part, the spunky pop singer is unperturbed by the brouhaha surrounding her steamy new stance. There’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like something.” she observes with the sagacity of a veteran. “You can never please everybody. There are a few people who are stuck in the old image or whatever, but I can’t not do something because of them.”
After the “Physical” tour, which is being filmed for a documentary and which winds down in Los Angeles in mid-October, the winsome performer plans to reunite with “Grease” co-star John Travolta in a new film project. “It’s a comedy that he’s developing,” she says. “We hope to do it the new year. There’ll be some music in it too”.
Has she ever considered doing a non musical, dramatic role? “I’d like to if it was the right thing, but, you know, music is a strength and it’d be kind of foolish to let it go if I had the opportunity of doing some”.
AS SHE SETS out to woo and wow her faithful fans nationwide, Newton-John leaves behind her secluded Malibu spread and the five horses (“I try to ride every day,” she says), four cats and eight dogs with which she lives. She also lives with actor Matt Lattanzi, the young stud who thrust his hairless torso in the direction of Jacqueline Bisset in last year’s movie “Rich and Famous”.
“I believe it’s been in the papers that we’ve broken up.” she says in an amused tone. “I don’t know where they get their information from”.
Newton-John does not spend a lot of time thinking about where her career has taken her and why. And she says she does not like to dwell on the future. “I don’t like to look ahead that far,” she explains. “I think what’s exciting and interesting about life in itself and about a career is that it’s ever-changing. Opportunities are always opening up.”
By Steven X. Rea