Olivia's On The Comeback Trail
After the collapse of her Koala Blue business, she is going back on the road with a new record ... at 43
Olivia Newton-John takes a deep breath and her eyes drift momentarily away to the carpet of wild flowers surrounding her Malibu mountaintop retreat. “Sure I’m nervous,” she says finally. “It’s a nerve-racking thing to do”. She hasn’t really wanted to say that.
For a genuine pop superstar, with record sales topping 50 million, four Grammy Awards and the starring role in the most successful movie musical in history “Grease” a little thing like hitting the comeback trail should be a breeze. On the other hand, one of the things that propelled this particular Melbourne teenager to pop pinnacles millions only dream of is a streak of tough-minded honesty.
So, if you ask her if she’s nervous, and she is, she’ll say so. She’ll also go right on to add that this is one comeback that’s going to work. “I have to believe it’s going to work, otherwise I couldn’t do it,” she goes on.
“So yeah, sure it’s a little nerve-racking, but I think I’m going to enjoy it. It’ll be a challenge for me, because I haven’t done it in such a long time.”
Olivia’s comeback album, “Back to Basics”, will be released worldwide this month. In the meantime, she has signed up to star in a new movie, and she will shortly hit the road with a live concert tour-her first in 10 years.
The Weekly went to find out why this sudden flurry of activity. Olivia has had her financial woes in the past year, with the collapse of her Koala Blue clothing empire, and also has encountered personal tragedy, with the death of her best friend’s child from cancer.
She is determinedly putting all that behind her, al-though she continues to serve on the board of a foundation for research into childhood cancer set up in the memory of five-year-old Colette Chuda.
At 43, Olivia’s face and figure are still those of a girl, but the tensions of recent times have fined her face down, leaving the big eyes looking even bigger. With all that, she is still a classic example of the California time-warp. All she has to do is flash the famous grin and she looks 17.
She is frank about why she has chosen this time for a comeback. “I remember about a year and a half ago people asked me whether I going was to tour again”, she says after curling her feet up under her on an over-stuffed sofa in her cosy living room. “And I said, ‘Well, I should never say never, but I don’t think so. Well, I’m glad I never said never, because here I am”.
“It’s going back to what you know. Because Koala Blue kind of collapsed, I needed to go back to roots, go back to something I know how to do. So I think that probably pushed me into it. And I need to earn some money, too, because I’ve had a lot of years of not working, and everything I’ve been doing has been gratis all the environmental work.”
(Although she can’t talk about the case of the 55-store Koala Blue chain, which is still before the courts, Olivia revealed in an interview with The Weekly last year that she had never drawn any profits from the venture.)
“1 want this album to do well,” she continued, “because I don’t want to put all this effort into it and let it fizzle. The only way to get the most out of it is to promote it properly, and the only way to do that is to get out on the road, out there with the people”.
Olivia has already begun turning up at record conventions and visiting radio stations in preparation for the record’s release. She is training for the live tour like an athlete, with gym routines and regular voice exercises. Your voice is like a muscle. If you stop for a while, you have to get it back in shape.”
Asked about reports that her voice is better than ever, Olivia replies, grinning: “Well, I hope so. I think it’s got a little richer. That’s probably age. I think I have some low notes that I didn’t have before. I guess your voice drops along with every other part of your body.”
The new album, Olivia says, will reprise many of her greatest hits, and also will include four new songs.
Whether Australia will see her this time around depends largely on how well the album is received. “If you have a hit album, then you’re going to do well in concerts. And if not, well, you know But I’m hoping I will get to Australia next year”.
Olivia is keenly conscious of the challenge she is facing. “The standard of singing is so great these days,” she says. “There’s a lot of competition. I feel very lucky that I’ve got a history. If i was coming into this business now, without a history of hit records, it would be very difficult. It would be overwhelming.”
She is not, however, letting the necessity of earning a living derail the environmental concerns that fill every spare minute away from her work, husband Matt and daughter Chloe, now six.
It was Chloe, in fact, who got Olivia turned on to the environment in the first place. “You look down at this little thing who depends on you,” she says, “and you think, I could be poisoning her. She was my inspiration.”
Chloe, in turn, has already demonstrated her own sensitivity to environmental problems, says Mum. “She’ll say things to me like, ‘Mummy, they’re littering Mother Earth. And when we went to New York, she said: ‘I can’t breathe here, there are no trees! The children are ahead of us.”
The question of her eventual return to Australia is one Olivia doesn’t want to face right now.
“I used to say I’d go back to Australia when I had children. But then, when I had Chloe, there was the business here. And there’s Matt’s career, and now I’m going back to work.”
“We talk about moving. We both have a desire for a back-to-nature existence. I think everyone’s starting to feel that way. It’s a natural instinct as we get to feel more and more hemmed in.”
But for now, the silence of Australia’s remote reaches remains a dream for Olivia Newton-John.
By Paul Dougherty