Olivia Newton-John returns with new music tour
Olivia Newton-John returns with new music tour, role in movie
By TOM GARDNER Associated Press Writer
RENO, Nev.
Midway through a concert here, as Olivia Newton-John is chatting with the crowd between songs, a male fan shouts, “You’re my childhood idol!” Without missing a beat, Newton-John giggles and replies, “You must be very old.”
Consider it more a tribute to her enduring popularity than a comment on her age. Newton-John just celebrated her 51st birthday.
She is well along in her first tour of the United States since 1983 and headed toward her first movie role since “Two of a Kind,” which was released that same year.
“I think what’s kind of interesting about this business is that things keep opening up. I really had no intention of returning, but mentally and emotionally, I’m more ready than ever,” she said.
She sips tea, chatting softly against the background hum of a vaporizer that she uses to counteract the Nevada desert dryness. She puts down her cup when her breast cancer is mentioned. “I draw attention to it. I talk about it even on stage because the feedback I get is that by talking about it, by having survived it, I help other women who are going through that,” she said.
Newton-John recalled a chance meeting as she was recovering in 1992. “It was Australia. Everybody knows what I do. So this lady comes up to me in the bathroom telling me not to worry because she had cancer 20 years ago and she’s fine. It was, like, wow! It was such a great feeling to have some-body say that to me. I’ll always remember those few words.”
Except for one brief costume change, Newton-John sang nearly two hours to a capacity audience without a break. “It sounded really daunting when we started, but now it flies by. You’re getting audience feedback. It’s not like you’re singing to a void,” she said.
The three-song set from “Grease,” her 1978 film, was as much a sing-along as a performance.
“The people come to hear your songs. And they don’t want to hear them different,” she said. “I remember when I was really young, I went to see an entertainer that I loved and she didn’t do her hits and I was really disappointed, so I’ve always remembered that.”
Along with the medley from “Grease” and the title song from the 1980 film “Xanadu,” she mixed the twangy “If You Love Me, Let Me Know,” “Let Me Be There” and “If Not for You” with the soft “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “I Honestly Love You.”
“It’s a journey through all of my music. I haven’t done everything because I couldn’t fit it all in,” she said.
The crowd whose average age fell somewhere between Gen-X and baby boomers wore “Grease” and “Xanadu” T-shirts. Some carried record albums, CDs and scrapbooks for her to autograph.
She hopes to do a new album and concert tape from the tour. “The whole thing, not just individual videos.”
Her next project is an independent film, “Sordid Lives.” “It’s a quirky kind of movie, a funny movie,” she said. “I’m going to play a singer in it. I play kind of a toughie. It’ll be very different for me.”
Didn’t Sandy get a little gritty in “Grease” when she got her perm, put on her leather jacket and sneaked that drag off a cigarette? “This is taking it a bit further. This is like an ex-con this time,” she said.
Photo: Associated Press. Singer Olivia Newton-John performs July 31 in Reno, Nev. As Newton-John, 51, completes her first United States tour since 1983, she’ll turn to her first movie role since “Two of a Kind” that same year. Newton-John will play a singer in the independent film “Sordid Lives.”
More from Olivia’s 1999 Summer tour dates.