Olivia Scheduled at Biloxi Grand
Grand Casino Biloxi is wel-coming Grammy, CMA, AMA and People’s Choice Award-winner Olivia Newton-John to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Newton-John will perform at the Biloxi Grand Theatre 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 8 and 9.
Newton-John, whose debut of her 1973 album, “Let Me Be There,” produced her first Top Ten single in the title track. She was honored by the Academy of Country Music as Most Promis-ing Female Vocalist and with a Grammy as Best Country Vocalist.
She has had five No. 1 pop hits, 15 Top 10 singles and a starring role in “Grease,” the most successful movie musical soundtrack in history.
Her newest MCA Nashville album, “Back With a Heart,” is her first after a four-year hiatus spent raising her daughter Chloe and successfully fighting breast cancer.
The album includes such classic honky-tonk songs like “Fight For Our Love,” her tri-bute to ’50s-style C&W, and the sparkling pop-soul of her re-make of her first chart-tipping hit, “I Honestly Love You.”
“I see it as a new start,” says Newton-John, who either wrote or co-wrote seven of the album’s 11 tracks. Although she had no intention of returning to her musical career, she said, “I’m strong, more ready than I ever have been before.”
Born in Cambridge, England in 1948, the youngest child of a professor of German and the granddaughter of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Olivia Newton-John moved to Melbourne, Australia with her family when she was five. As a teenager, she formed an all-girl group with friends and won a talent contest, which included a trip to London.
By 1963, she was appearing on both a local daytime TV show and a weekly pop music program in Australia. The following year, she headed back to London and formed a duo with Pat Farrar and toured Europe and plaved nightclubs and Ameri-can armed service bases.
Success has been Newton-John’s for years. Her album, “If You Love Me (Let Me Know),” produced yet another Top Five hit in the title track and her first chart-topper in “I Honestly Love You.” For this, she earned a Grammy for Record of the Year and also took home the statue for Best Pop Vocal Performance Female.
She followed that up with her chart-topping album, “Have You Never Been Mellow?”
With John Travolta, she co-starred in “Grease” and they produced a No. 1 duet, “You’re the One That I Want.” The Grease soundtrack album remained on the U.S. charts for 12 weeks and has sold more than 10 million copies.
After releasing her Geffen album, “Back to Basics,” Newton-John took a step back from the public eye in 1992. Her concern for the environment, and experience with breast cancer brought about the 1994 release of her album “Gaia.” The world’s girl-next-door with a girl of her own is now all grown up and is back with “Back With a Heart.”
“It’s such a different time in my life,” she says. “I’m a mother first now. I like the peace in my life. And that’s an important thing to learn in life happy where you are now and not with you were somewhere else.”
Tickets are $34.95/floor. $29.95/balcony. For information, call the Biloxi Grand Theatre Box Office at 1-800-WIN-2-WIN, or any Tick-etMaster outlet.
Biloxi Grand Theater, Grand Casino, Biloxi, MS, USA Jan 8 and Jan 9 1998
Editor’s note Now known as Harrah’s (Hard Rock) Gulf Coast - Biloxi Grand Theater was demolished after Hurricane Katrina.