![]() Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee, Lousy with virginity…Won’t go to bed till I’m legally wed I can’t ’cause I’m Sandra Dee? So, digression ended, we can say that not only is she back on top and selling a lot of records, but she’s a film actress whose work in Grease has producers making offers and critics calling her “the new Doris Day.” It’s Olivia Newton-John, pop-folk, pop-country, and pop-ballad purveyor, rocking and rolling for the first time in her thirteen-year career. ![]() The record with Travolta is a sexy, rocky piece of pop. Now, with “You’re the One that I Want” having hit Number One, Newton-John is no longer “so alien to the paper,” as she put it. Pink Honors Late Olivia Newton-John With ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ at 2022 AMAs And so, over the last three years, despite occasional interviews there just was no story. And without the hits, without the constant reminders of her pop power, there was less reason to “face this subject,” as our London correspondent put it. Sure, her albums are automatic gold, but what does gold mean anymore? Those hit singles just don’t keep coming.Īside from the current hit, a duet with John Travolta of “You’re the One that I Want” from the movie Grease, her radio play has been oldies, not recent singles. And those first paragraphs were written ages ago, when Olivia was in fact selling lots of records, something she stopped doing in late ’75, just around the time this story was getting started. I mean, Olivia and I have even taken to observing the anniversaries of this poor thing’s assignment. This story has taken three years– three years!–to get into print. The question is: What is Olivia Newton-John doing? Well, for one thing, she is selling a lot of records…Ī digression. It isn’t an overnight sensation, and I like what I’m doing…and I believe in what I’m doing.” But it’s a career that’s taken me 10 years. “I’m not,” she said, “a manufactured person who’s been made by these moguls…I’ve read in lots of articles that they think, obviously, some clever businessman has given her this song and done these things…I have done it. I have to like it, or I wouldn’t sing it.” It’s completely opposite: if it’s commercial, people like it, and that’s what it’s all supposed to be about.” At the same time, she is not a pop puppet or a showroom dummy. “It annoys me when people think because it’s commercial, it’s bad. Whether he likes the way I sing it or not, that’s his personal taste.” “I actually believe ‘I Honestly Love You’ is a great song. ![]() “Well, obviously if I thought there was some truth in that, it would upset me,” she said. But she addressed the Newman comment directly, in a soft, accented voice that somehow sounded both hurt and firm. She had just done what she thought was a mediocre opening-night show, the result of misplaced orchestra charts and a guitarist who overslept and was shaken awake just 30 seconds before the curtains rose.Īll she needed was Rolling Stone bringing more negativity into the room. She was in her dressing room at the Riviera, wearing a half-sleeve blouse, a full-length suede steel-gray skirt and violet high heels. In Las Vegas, I read the Randy Newman quote to Olivia, and she cringed at the unpleasantness of it. Good Christ, what is that all about? For the life of me, I can’t understand the vast appeal of a song like ‘I Honestly Love You.’ I mean, it’s boring, even.” But some of that stuff…confounded me completely. “Fairly often, I can figure out why things are successful. “Out on the road, I listened to a lot of Top Forty radio,” he said. ![]() In Playboy magazine, I found Randy Newman, the pop songwriter, attacking Olivia mentally. One reporter came in and attacked her mentally, and that bothered her.”Ĭritics did pick at Olivia, dismissing her as “just another pretty voice” or “a giggly blend of pop and country.” But the press wasn’t alone. “But sometimes they come to take shots at her and write that she has no range. “She’s keen to sit down with any members of the press,” he said in our first telephone conversation. ![]() Lee Kramer, Olivia’s manager and longtime lover, had okayed the interview, but not before making a request that Rolling Stone be gentle with her. They want to talk to me?’ I’m so out of everything the magazine seems to represent.” When I found out I was doing the interview, I thought, ‘Why the hell would. “I feel it must be strange for you interviewing me,” she said between shows at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, “because I must be so alien to the paper. One of my friends took her out once, and even then she had nothing to say. But this is a story that definitely should not be question-and-answer style, since Olivia in person is quite boring. You are going to have to face this subject sooner or later. A story idea from our London correspondent, circa 1975: Olivia Newton-John. ![]()
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