Recent reports that cancer has returned in Olivia Newton-John for the third time are unfortunate. But I know that Olivia, who turns 70 this month and whose mother and sister died of cancer, intends on thriving, as against merely surviving, as she once told me during one of our interviews.
The singer, whose work I’ve long covered and admired, released a statement that she is currently undergoing treatment, emphasizing her use of natural healing methods and cannabis oil for the pain. Olivia founded the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Australia.
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So, letting her own idea of “love and light” guide her, Olivia continues to live large, brave and graceful by example. And I continue to draw from her strength, encouragement and balanced, peaceful reality checks, in her appearances, statements, movies, performances and music. When one in my own family was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, I turned to Olivia Newton-John’s positive-themed 2008 duets album, A Celebration in Song, as both a source of clarity and as a gift for the loved one. The impact and gratitude for her album is now a cherished memory.
A Celebration in Song, as well as ONJ’s other softer, more personal albums since the height of her popularity, inspires. I listen to and appreciate every tune, though I consider “Courageous” the perfect song for summoning one’s innermost abilities to thrive in the face of hardship.
I first met and interviewed ONJ nearly 20 years ago and mine was her premier Las Vegas headliner show’s first review. I would love to meet Olivia again for an interview to discuss the publication for her forthcoming memoir. Once again, I wish Olivia a speedy recovery and the best of everything…with love for this phenomenal woman.
Grease revels in the pure enjoyment of contrasting clean-cut and raunchy un-seriousness. It brings both into alignment and this is its enduring charm. Forty years after Grease debuted in movie theaters to major blockbuster success, the 1978 Allan Carr musical adaptation of the Broadway show deserves closer examination.
Opening with romantic pictures of oceanfront sunsets and sand castles and a handsome boy’s pledge to his pretty new girlfriend that “it’s only the beginning”, Grease gets going with an upswell of title music from the 1955 William Holden film Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. More than a melodramatic means of introducing a tale set in the 1950s, the song signals a stroke of unabashed romanticism, which director Randal Kleiser expertly captures and mixes with its blue origins.
As superficial as Grease is and continues to be, the opening orchestration from that other movie’s title theme also cues a streak of defying the status quo. This is easy to overlook but it’s in almost every sumptuous frame of what at first blush might seem like a movie musical accompaniment to TV’s 1974 Happy Days, Elton John’s 1973 “Crocodile Rock”, American Graffiti (1973) and other 1970s-era nostalgia for the 1950s.
Thanks to the creative team, especially Kleiser, songwriter John Farrar and Farrar’s collaborator, pop star Olivia Newton-John, and those in charge of casting, cinematography, music, choreography and costumes, Grease skates along.
For example, animated opening credits feature caricatures of every major Fifties figure from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to You Bet Your Life‘s Groucho Marx. Barry Gibb’s title theme song, “Grease”, perfectly blending Seventies pop into a Fifties attitude and vigorously sung by Frankie Valli over the opening credits, bounds through the speakers as an animated deer and rabbit snuggle up to the cartoon version of leading lady Olivia Newton-John in character at her vanity mirror. This knowing wink with its burst of joy sets the tone for a smart and deviously good sendup. During its 40-year existence, Grease usually gets credit for being fun. Rarely does it get credit for also being sharp.
It’s cutting on multiple counts, if not as raunchy as the original Chicago stage production at Kingston Mines. One of the characters, who’s part of the leathery high school gang led by John Travolta’s Danny Zuko (that boy at the beach as the film opens), lays on his back for an indulgence in what today would be called upskirting. He gets busted and chided instead of being tagged as a “sex offender” for the rest of his life. Such is the picture’s context that any act of sexuality or rock-n-roll rebellion, and the two do go together, amounts here to a dig at the repressed status quo.
The female counterparts, the girl gang Pink Ladies, led by Stockard Channing’s cynical, black-clad Betty Rizzo, suggest that they too, do what they ought not to do, singing in “Summer Nights” about shallow exploits such as golddigging. It’s worth noting that Rizzo’s decked in black before Sandy goes that route. So, there’s a real thread in Grease about reclaiming one’s rebelliousness within the pack of one’s choosing.
This happens amid numerous nods to Lucky Strike cigarettes, an anti-gay gag, a famous adult TV star spiking a precocious child’s drink, jokes about stolen auto parts, a broken condom and the line that “men are rats, fleas on rats, amoebas on fleas on rats”.
There’s also the song “Born to Hand Jive” and a dance scene that puts West Side Story in the dust with nearly every girl hiking her skirt or having it lifted by boys. Then, there’s this exchange between a high school student who hops into a hot rod and a group of boys: “You think this is a gang bang?” One of the boys’ reply? “You wish”.
Carefully, in full color, with vibrant costumes, lush photography and loose, improvised dance movements by Patricia Birch, Grease unleashes and unspools the teenaged anxiety and sexual liberation with cartoonish awkwardness. The kids’ lingo rhymes. The plot skips and moves. Thus, Grease memorably expresses the ethos of the Fifties. Primary colors, simplicity in functional clothing designed to accentuate the human body, wind caressing tousled hair as the American flag waves in the background — Grease puts us on with polish and shine. It’s a movie which is inviting to watch.
This is the Randal Kleiser touch. The director that John Travolta had worked with on ABC’s 1976 telefilm The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, whom Travolta would insist be part of his studio deal, adds depth to every candy-coated scene in Grease. Where there’s raunch, Kleiser delivers warmth. Where there’s sugar, he adds bitterness. Bringing each contrast of the conformist, only partly fabulous Fifties into balance with a winking, buoyant sense of life, Kleiser sunkisses every scene and shuttles between dark and light themes. When the Scorpions come to rumble, Jeff Conaway’s Kenickie flips a switchblade. But Doody’s in the frame with a squirt gun. The gloom of Rebel Without a Cause slips into the youthful energy of West Side Story, always in color.
Grease endures as a film with a reputation which unfortunately gets reduced to the second-to-last scene, in which Newton-John’s Sandy enlists her friend Frenchy (Didi Conn) to turn her into a vamp.
However, judging Grease primarily, let alone solely, by this scene ignores the power of Sandy’s choice. For starters, her display happens only after she witnesses Danny’s brave and magnanimous demonstration of loyalty at the drag race. Also, Sandy’s makeover helps and vindicates Frenchy, her friend and Pink Lady sponsor. Sandy’s sexual coming out follows Danny’s mea culpa and willingness to improve and earn back Sandy’s trust. Danny proves this again and again — with Travolta basically playing his ABC character Vinnie Barbarino from Welcome Back, Kotter — in a series of sports vignettes with Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun.
Sandy is hardly a feminist. Her origins are as a wholesome girl who prefers a pedicure to pierced ears. She makes Travolta’s Zuko the focus of her most concentrated efforts (and he reciprocates her intensity of romantic interest). But, bearing in mind this is Grease, not Shakespeare, Sandy is also relatively dimensional, openly flirting without shame with the athlete played by Lorenzo Lamas, asserting herself with Danny as they enter the Frosty Palace, where she judges and snubs nasty Rizzo, proving that, like Doris Day and Sandra Dee, it’s a mistake to underestimate the good girl. After all, John Farrar’s “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is the movie’s moral center, complete with a reflection of her beloved dreamboat in the pool. So, it’s a male to whom Sandy, pre and post-makeover, pledges her devotion.
With great casting, especially Eve Arden, and an old-fashioned, Technicolor flair for a sense of the cinematic, Grease gels at a summer carnival, where the nerd, too, is uplifted and transformed. Even hardened, jaded Rizzo softens and becomes human. One of the film’s happiest moments comes when it’s disclosed that the girl rumored to be in trouble isn’t pregnant after all, as if to prove its radical status, whether for 1978 or the Fifties context (making it even more radical more today). ,
That someone won’t be forced to raise an unwanted child is a fact which is cheered, even celebrated. All of this comes in the afterglow of John Farrar’s two-minute-plus declaration of desire, “You’re the One That I Want”, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John back in black, shaking, dancing and dominating the screen against a yellow backdrop with a sign warning Danger Ahead.
Everything ends with not a hint of doom as Grease lifts the audience and glides into the air to the cast’s climactic song and dance to “We Go Together”. There’s a reason why Grease, sharp and slick as it is, still connects with audiences. It’s not necessarily the best or the brightest musical in movies. But — thanks to the stellar cast and crew and Randal Kleiser’s direction — its blend of nice and naughty, reflecting the Fifties’ innocence, goodness and liberation, shines.
I was sorry to learn today that Olivia Newton-John is “reluctantly postponing her June U.S. and Canadian concert tour dates”, according to an authorized statement on her behalf, as the back pain the singer initially attributed to her sciatica “has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasized to the sacrum.” Olivia pledged in the announcement to pursue natural wellness therapies, complete a short course of photon radiation therapy and is “confident she will be back [on tour] later in the year, better than ever…”
I decided on my direction of therapies after consultation with my doctors and natural therapists and the medical team at my Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia,” says Olivia Newton-John.
I have long admired her work as an actress, songwriter and singer—since the 1970s, when I first heard Olivia’s hit songs on AM radio during family road trips to Wisconsin and soon discovered Olivia’s albums in record stores. I had the pleasure to meet and interview Olivia at her home in Malibu and, years later, backstage at her shows at the Greek and in Las Vegas, where I attended a preview concert which was the basis for her Vegas show’s first review.
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I know firsthand that Olivia, whose 2008 duets album, A Celebration in Song, provides some of the best music for those with cancer, is a thriver, as she once told me. This outstanding artist is a leading champion for finding a cure for cancer and she does so with grit, grace and strength. As I wrote of her collection of inspirational songs on this blog in 2009, Olivia makes music “for anyone battling cancer or any of life’s difficulties.” From the opening anthem, “Right Here with You” to the last track, Belinda Emmett’s (1974-2006) “Beautiful Thing,” it’s one of her best. “Courageous” is the perfect tune for summoning one’s innermost abilities to thrive in life. I’m wishing courageous Olivia a speedy recovery and the best of everything with love.
Rescheduled concert dates will be posted on her official Web site “in the coming weeks”, according to the statement.
Musician, producer and photographer Brett Goldsmith recently talked with me from Melbourne, Australia, about his new work with Olivia Newton-John, Hotel Sessions. The record is an extended play (EP) collection of previously unreleased demo tracks that he made with his famous aunt between 2002 and 2011 at various Melbourne hotels (read my review here.)
Goldsmith, 52, is the son of Olivia Newton-John’s late sister, Rona Newton-John, to whom Hotel Sessions is dedicated. Hotel Sessions is available at the Flamingo Las Vegas, where ONJ is an artist in residence for her premiere residency program, Summer Nights, as CD and digital download on her Web site and soon for downloading on iTunes. This is an edited transcript.
Scott Holleran: What would Rona Newton-John, to whom Hotel Sessions is dedicated, think of the record?
Brett Goldsmith: I think she would like it. My mother was a fan of Olivia’s. She was a big fan of Olivia’s voice. Being a fashion model and hanging out with rock stars, my mom Rona was a super cool kind of chick. I think she would especially like [the song I co-wrote with Olivia Newton-John] “End in Peace”. I would send my records for her reaction and she would criticize them in terms of my songwriting and my voice, which she told me she thought was getting better. A couple of lyrics were written while she was alive. I think she would like certain parts of Hotel Sessions. She would be the first to say what she didn’t like.
Scott Holleran: Do you consider this record a tribute to your mother?
Brett Goldsmith: I do now, yeah. It was almost like this record was never going to come out. The inspiration [for release] was Olivia cancelling her [impending] Las Vegas show after Rona’s death. Then, we said let’s make this happen and put this in some sort of cohesive order. We figured Rona would like that we were working together. Some of the songs mean a lot to us. Hotel Sessions was originally for me to put my production sound on Olivia’s voice. That’s how it was originally conceived.
Scott Holleran: How did Hotel Sessions evolve into an extended play record?
Brett Goldsmith: I had made an album in 2002 called Drive Time, which I’d made in a room on my own featuring songs I had written [that were] recorded by eight different vocalists—all Australian—and I was thinking it would be great if [my aunt] Olivia sang “Best of My Love”. She sang it and then went back to L.A. to [her manager and the record’s executive producer] Mark Hartley—or I sent her a mix—and she wanted to re-record the vocal and do another performance, so I went [to L.A] and did the vocal. While we were there, we wrote “End in Peace” in Malibu. After that, I think Mark Hartley turned to me and said how would you feel about taking a few of these songs and turning it into an Olivia record? I didn’t have to think about that for very long. So, Mark was very instrumental. I had pretty much let it go, storing these songs for whatever reason. I thought one day it might come to fruition. When Rona passed [due to brain cancer on May 24, 2013, in Los Angeles], I don’t think Olivia wanted to sing for while. So Mark was instrumental in pulling this together. Her publicist Michael Caprio and his partner, Randy Slovacek, also helped put Hotel Sessions on track. Randy in particular with his input and enthusiasm was a champion for making it happen. I shot the cover, we added dance remixes from David Hornos as DayBeat, because he had a good groove about him, and Mark went along with all that. It was very organic.
Scott Holleran: When was your cover photo taken?
Brett Goldsmith: After Mom died. It wasn’t planned. Unless I’m shooting [photographs for] a fashion story—that’s all premeditated—it’s improvisational. Olivia had asked me to find an image for the cover. I was actually at a soccer match—and I’m not that into soccer—and I saw this flock of seagulls. My iPhone was actually on the HDR setting—which means it takes two or three images in one hit and you get a flock of seagulls—and I happened to get that shot. So, I didn’t lay the images together. The double image was some weird anomaly. The phone was in portrait [not landscape mode] and [the image was] super grainy. And the city shots [on the back and inside the compact disc packaging] were taken during the same soccer match when the iPhone was pointing at Melbourne. I remember [looking out and] thinking that the city [Olivia’s hometown] would be a great shot. When I sent the images to Olivia, she loved them. There was no manipulation of the image, though. It just looked so haunting.
Scott Holleran: How was working as a producer for Olivia Newton-John?
Brett Goldsmith: Like most artists, Olivia knows exactly what she wants. She left me alone – she respects me as a photographer and as a musician – to work. The same goes with production. In fact, there wasn’t a moment when she questioned my grooves, arrangement or production. We’re talking about a singer with absolutely perfect pitch. I think I know what she wants, I know where the vibrato works and I know she has an incredible ear. When you’re cutting vocals with Olivia Newton-John, you’d better be on your best behavior. She’s a serious singer.
Scott Holleran: Are there any unreleased songs not included on the CD?
Brett Goldsmith: I did record one other song written for Olivia—but I got another engineer to come into the hotel and unfortunately he distorted the vocal. It sits in my computer. There were meant to be more songs.
Scott Holleran: Do you have plans for another ONJ collaboration?
Brett Goldsmith: Olivia’s the artist, I’m the producer and it’s her call. If she rings me up, of course I would jump at the chance. I would actually like to do a kind of modern country record or something in that type of genre.
Scott Holleran: You’re also a singer and your own music album includes the original version of “Ordinary Life”. Why no duet with Olivia on Hotel Sessions?
Brett Goldsmith: I never thought about that. I mean, Olivia sings duets with [singers such as] Tony Bennett. Every time we recorded in one of the hotels, I would literally go pull it apart. I would bring a Macintosh, a pre-amplifier, microphone, microphone stand and headphone and engineer and record her vocal in a hotel. I would hear the room as it is and record one song at a time. Because her time was so limited and frankly I was not sure if she was recording these songs as a favor – I could only do a couple of songs in Melbourne at different hotels while she was in town for the hospital in order to raise money, so it wasn’t a priority. I had these songs sitting on my hard drive and, as formats would change, [keeping up with upgrading technology] was crazy. In fact, I just found some video footage [of the hotel recording sessions]. I had happened to record some footage of Olivia and I’m there coaxing her through the vocals—she didn’t like her vocal—she wanted to record it more like the way I had done it. I knew I could get a beautifully tuned, unedited performance and maybe some harmonies. I think I managed to do that under tough circumstances.
Scott Holleran: On your version of “Ordinary Life”, you sing a different lyric than Olivia sings on Hotel Sessions. Why change the lyric?
Brett Goldsmith: I wrote that song reflectively talking about myself. When we got to sit down, she changed a lot of lyrics—we did it together just before we tracked the vocal, to change perspective [to reflect] her age and feeling. When I get up and sing, I sing whatever comes out. It starts with a melody. I never really think about it once I have the first verse. Olivia wanted to change a few things.
Scott Holleran: Had you recorded with Olivia before Hotel Sessions?
Brett Goldsmith: I did the world leg of her Physical tour and I’ve been in the studio with her, though not with musicians, bands and producers. We recorded “End in Peace” at a home studio in L.A. Olivia bought my first guitar for me and encouraged me to become a musician. She’d told me: ‘you’re a great songwriter’. I wish I had been in the studio during her country records in the 1970s. I’ve never really thought about this until you asked.
Scott Holleran: Is it possible that Olivia will perform the Hotel Sessions songs during her show in Las Vegas?
Brett Goldsmith: I really hope so. I would love that. If she put them in a set, that would be awesome. There’s no going back years later and fixing this or that. I’m glad it’s been released as demos, other than “Ordinary Life”.
Scott Holleran: Let’s talk about the impetus for each song on Hotel Sessions. What made way for “Ordinary Life”?
Brett Goldsmith: The whole point of the lyric is feeling pretty ordinary. The flipside is feeling pretty extraordinary. We all have ordinary types of days. The idea is that you can get through them, no matter how mundane [things seem]—you have an extraordinary story. We tend to feel ordinary based on fear of the unknown—I’ve had those days and all have been scary and worked out just fine. You remake yourself. Making records of my own is another reinvention. Now, I’m a photographer. But I was not until after I was 40 years old. Every one can remake oneself.
Scott Holleran: What is the impetus for “Best of My Love”?
Brett Goldsmith: It’s a love song, really, with a bit of heartbreak. It’s a story about people who give their all and get nothing back. I had that Emotions record [an entirely different song, “Best of My Love” on their Rejoice album] and it reminds me of [producer and musician] Nile Rodgers. So, I wondered if I could sing that title and lyric. I had to sing that [other] song in order to find Olivia to sing [mine]. I’m not a big fan of my own vocals—but she kicked it.
Scott Holleran: What is the impetus for “End in Peace”?
Brett Goldsmith: I watched 9/11 happen. It was overwhelming. I’m Australian—not American—and everyone was so sad about what happened. That’s all I had. When I went to L.A. to re-record the vocal for “Best of My Love”, we wrote “End in Peace”. I didn’t want to tell Olivia [what moved me to write the tune] because I am not an American. It was not really my place to say something but 9/11 was the impetus. I gave it to Olivia. Within an hour, I was sitting around the pool, playing verse chords and that’s when she wrote it. It happened quickly and I didn’t preempt her writing with my meaning. I’ve never even told her that. I didn’t think it was appropriate.
Scott Holleran: What is the impetus for “Bow River”?
Brett Goldsmith: The song is written by Ian Moss [of the Australian band Cold Chisel] and I came up with the idea to completely change the groove. I slowed it down. I recorded the whole music track in a particular key, then I rang up Olivia and she ended up nailing the vocal. It was originally done by Cold Chisel. Their song was literally in double time. Who knows what they think of it.
Scott Holleran: What is the impetus for the cover of Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings”?
Brett Goldsmith: I wish I had more originals but I just had an idea to produce a version of that song even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the original. I must have picked up my guitar and I think it was in A minor with no singer in mind. I got a groove and I thought this record was really cool. So I flew it over without the vocal. They liked it and it ended up being on there because that’s all I had. The five you have on the record is the five I had.
Scott Holleran: How did David Hornos, as mixer DayBeat, become involved for the dance remixes?
Brett Goldsmith: Unbeknownst to me he had been recording and remixing Olivia’s songs. He had actually sent them but I didn’t know it [because his messages were unopened]. There had been some other dance remixes [of Olivia’s songs] I’d heard. Most of them including mine were awful. Then David’s [messages] turned up and I was quite embarrassed and said what have you got. He’d done a remix of “Broken Wings” and he mixed his beats and added piano. I gave him the vocal and he got it back in two weeks. Then I also sent him the vocals for “Best of My Love”. He did a great job.
Scott Holleran: Your parents, nightclub entrepreneur Brian Goldsmith and Rona Newton-John, divorced when you were three years old and your dad owned music clubs and bars in Australia. Did having access to your father’s businesses influence you?
Brett Goldsmith: Yes—in everything. You couldn’t find a 14-year-old collecting every vinyl record [like I did]. My dad having the hippest clubs when I was 14 or 15 years old, I was playing my record collection—from Kool and the Gang to orchestral music—and my music to an audience and seeing them out on the dance floor. It was amazing. Between the experience of his nightclubs and his encouragement for me to become a musician and letting me be who I am was really encouraging. I went to a stuck-up private school—it was sort of Ivy league and people became lawyers and doctors—and my dad was great. Between Olivia and him, I felt very encouraged [to pursue a career in the arts]. That and I’m really good at reading manuals.
Scott Holleran: Some people might not realize that growing up privileged with an aunt who’s Olivia Newton-John might not always be so fabulous—
Brett Goldsmith: —That’s true. My sister Tottie and I had a band called the Chantoozies—we were a kind of cheesy Bananarama type band—and we had a couple of hits in Australia. We toured for years. I got to write those songs and it was my dad who paid for our first video. So, there’s no doubt that our upbringing was privileged and, yes, there is a lot of pressure to live up to expectations. I can certainly see how difficult it is. Privilege and money can be the kiss of death. And there are people out there that just up and go about their lives without much money. So, it’s a personal drive that everyone needs to have—you have to eat well and get sleep—and if you wind up in the wrong place, know that there are people who want to help.
Scott Holleran: We’re coming up on Mother’s Day in the U.S. What to you is your mother Rona’s legacy?
Brett Goldsmith: She was the coolest. She is known by people who didn’t know her as being beautiful—and my mother was beautiful—but within and behind that beauty was a great fashionista and reader and writer and movie watcher who had talents of her own. Some of them were fulfilled and some were unfulfilled, just like all of us. Her legacy is that she was witty, sarcastic, brutal, funny and cool—she didn’t brag—and she lived a life and married interesting men, met presidents and traveled with Olivia and was a super cool chick. She had style and she loved my photography—she was a model and I started as a fashion photographer—and she was a fan of mine. And I am a fan of hers.
An extended play recording of seven unreleased demo tracks by legendary artist Olivia Newton-John is on sale exclusively at Olivia’s new residency venue in Las Vegas, The Flamingo. The set goes on sale soon on her Web site and iTunes.
The new songs – titled Hotel Sessions because the music was recorded between 2002 and 2011 at various hotels in Olivia’s hometown, Melbourne, Australia – come in conjunction with her new Las Vegas show “Summer Nights” opening this week (read my exclusive review here).
Produced by Olivia’s nephew, Brett Goldsmith (except where otherwise noted), who wrote or co-wrote three of the songs and whose iPhone photos provide CD cover art, Hotel Sessions is a fresh, mature and surprisingly polished series of techno-pop demo cuts. The opening song, “Ordinary Life”, is a simple guitar looping, driving anthem. The buoyant “Best of My Love” is an instantly enjoyable ode to someone who is hard to love and there’s a dance remix included as a bonus. “End in Peace”, co-written by Olivia Newton-John, is a ghostly prayer for better days which faintly recalls “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” in melody and vocals, “Bow River” rocks and pops with ONJ torching it against backup vocals, piano and synthesizer and Olivia’s cover version of Mr. Mister’s 1980s’ hit “Broken Wings” is, in Olivia’s care, less strained and slightly faster. I never liked the original much and I like her rendition here fine but the dance remix of the cover, which with piano added and ONJ high notes and bass enhanced is more urgent, is even better.
The independent ONJ Productions EP, which is being released after the death of Olivia’s sister, is thoughtfully “Dedicated to our sister & mother Rona Newton-John”.
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