Olivia's home base is Nashville during tour
Photo of Olivia with Crystal Gayle and Lynn Anderson
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UPI) - The goldfish swimming around in the sides of singer Olivia Newton-John’s purse are fakes, probably plastic.
When you’re making $100,000 -“plus or minus $10,000” - a night, you can pretty much walk around with anything in your purse - except cash.
Newton-John has made her base of operations in a four-bedroom, three-story home in Belle Meade, where old-line Nashvillians reside, during her 50-stop “Physical Tour of North America.”
But she was not content to remain cooped up in the fashionable home between jetting to her concerts from rural Smyrna Airport.
She went horseback riding at Larry Gatlin’s farm and dined with singers Crystal Gayle and Lynn Anderson at an expensive Italian restaurant where there are even statues in the ladies room. It was there Newton-John was spotted with her now-famous goldfish purse.
After the food, she and Anderson decided to kick up their heels at the Hall of Fame Motor Inn to the tunes of Jim Vest and the Nashville Cats.
“They wanted to go honky-tonkin’,” said Jerry Bailey, a spokesman for her record company. “They were afraid Olivia was going to get up and sing ‘Physical’ with the Nashville Cats.”
It isn’t every day that a star of her stature comes to town even in Nashville. So the woman who was hired as a dog-sitter to watch Jackson, Miss Newton-John’s 8-year-old Irish Setter, was thrilled. She was tipped $100 and taken home in a limousine the first night.
“She had a fantastic time,” Bailey said. “John Travolta called and wanted to talk with Olivia, so she got to chat with him a little bit.”
“When they first flipped me that bill my jaw fell to the floor. I said, ‘No, that’s not necessary,” said dog sitter Joan Griffith, 22, a college grad who hopes to make the music business her career. “But they insisted.”
For three nights of dog sitting, she earned $230.
“The home she leased had oriental rugs. The dog could have had an accident on the rug and they would have been responsible for it. It shows she respects her pet and the house,” she said admiringly.
Griffith was given permission to “raid the refrigerator” during her assignments.
“I really didn’t, though,” she said. “She had lots of real fit kinds of foods-health foods, cut up fruits.”
Born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Newton-John decided to forego college for a career in music. That probably didn’t sit well with her grandfather, Nobel Prize winning German physicist Max Born, or her father, a college principal.
She came to Nashville looking for success and in 1974 earned the first of three Grammys. During the next few years she sold 100 million records.
First came “Grease” with Travolta, the biggest grossing musical film ever made. Then a world tour and another movie, “Xanadu.”
She’s riding a new wave of success from her latest album, “Physical.”
The song of the same title sold more than 2 million copies and remained on the Billboard charts for 10 weeks, breaking records by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Barbra Streisand.
She has been packing auditoriums at a time when other artists are having to cancel shows.
“She makes $100,000 a concert, plus or minus $10,000,” boasts Bailey.
By Mark Schwed