Guilty Pleasures
Olivia Newton-John
A few weeks ago, I was stuck in traffic - late, frustrated, and feeling guilty about everything, including saying yes to this assignment when the good Lord moved my hand to push the right button, and the car suddenly filled with the guttural guitar and sweet steel that introduce “If You Love Me (Let Me Know),” the soundalike follow-up to the wonderful “Let Me Be There.” What an amazing ersatz hillbilly soul song! What a concept: A very nearly perfect creature, a subject of Her Britannic Majesty who’d never been within an ocean’s length of a tent revival in her young life, pretends to be wracked by the heartlessness of her beloved and is supported in her lamentation of vulnerability and exasperation by the $3 Bill Quartet. massed for the white gospel-style BIG chorus. What an exquisite, stirring phony! A veritable Ms. Elvis. My faith in man and womankind renewed and my burdens lifted, I pushed on through the traffic. Yes I said yes I will Yes.
I have never been quite able to account for my 15-year fascination with all the stages of Olivia Newton-John’s superfine career. From mushy folk to carpetbag country to mealy-mouthed MOR to “Let me hear your body talk!”- Sade (Le Marquis, not la chanteuse) would have loved it. In a few short years, a pristinely beautiful, denim-bedecked folkie from England by way of Australia is miraculously transformed into the femme fatale of Hollywood electrodance-fluff, a Catherine the Great with better teeth. Snort if you wish, but the charts don’t lie, and Ms. N-J (don’t drop that hyphen, son) has tallied no fewer than 15 Top Ten hits, with nary a cloven hoofprint in sight.
The dark pact, I think, was with her recently replaced career-long producer, former substitute Shadow (trust me, that meant something in the U.K.) John Farrar, and it seems to have involved Olivia’s extraordinary determination to be the ultimate all-purpose product, the isolated soy protein of pop radio. So, faster than Ms. Ciccone could say “tease,” Olivia had stopped peddling threadbare platitudes-who could ever forgive or forget “I Honestly Love You” or “Have You Never Been Mellow” and started selling damp promises: “You’re the One That I Want.” “Physical,” “Make a Move on Me,” “Heart Attack,” and last year’s coulda-been “Let’s Talk It Over in Bed.” And the album-photo makeover… Totally HoT, indeed! My fave is Helmut “The Swine” Newton boudoir black-and-white, strategically lit and shot from behind, with a topless Olivia wearing a silk scarf, tights, and high leather boots, with a riding crop framing her magnificent tush.
I don’t know the details of her personal life, and I don’t care well, I know a couple. I know she has a kid and she turned forty last fall. Now before she gets written into the last episodes of Dynasty as a treacherous, concupiscent older woman, I have a plan. It is plain that Olivia Newton-John is the one true eternal mate of Elvis Aaron Presley, though neither may have been aware of it in the time they trod this earth together! Had they been a pair, he might never have checked out. Hell, he might never have checked out anyway. So I propose, come August, a Memphis mausoleum-side jamboree: ON-J, backed by Joe South and the Jordanaires, giving the King some old-time religion. Guaranteed to heal the sick and raise the unquiet and uncircumcised dead. Then we’ll know for sure. Meanwhile, as long as there’s VH-1 and award shows and me, Olivia has nothing to worry about.
Jeff Nesin