Olivia (15 page)

‘It’s all music,’ she said. ‘Country music has a style and I love it for its simplicity. But I also believe you can’t put a passport on music. It doesn’t belong to one section of the country. Music is international. The notes, the sounds, belong to anyone who can sing them.’

Dolly Parton later reproached herself for initially aligning with the traditionalists against Olivia and was thoughtful enough to reassure her that the whole issue had been blown way out of proportion. She encouraged her to ignore all the fuss, and in 1977 Dolly was only too happy to accept Olivia’s eighth American Music Award on behalf of her absent fellow songstress. ‘Dolly and Loretta Lynn stood up for me, which I’ve forever been grateful for,’ said Olivia, who recorded a cover version of Dolly’s composition ‘Jolene’ on her 1976 album
Come On Over
as a way of thanking her.

Interestingly, it was Dolly’s lesser-known sister Stella, the sixth of the twelve children of the struggling Parton family from Locust Ridge, Tennessee, who mounted the most conspicuous counter-offensive on Olivia’s behalf. Stella, a country singer like Dolly but not a big country star, was so incensed at Olivia’s castigation by the Nashville protesters that she wrote, recorded and released a special song in Olivia’s defence. ‘I was embarrassed for all my country cousins and sisters here in town,’ explained Stella, ‘so I wrote the song “Ode to Olivia”.’ The lyrics exposed the hypocrisy of other countries welcoming American country singers while America failed to offer a similarly warm welcome for Olivia’s country songs.

In hindsight, the fuss was all much ado about nothing by a few. Olivia persevered by opening shows for Charlie Rich, voted the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year in 1974, and by playing country fairs where the reception she was given was never less than enthusiastic. The fans showed they didn’t care about her lack of bona fide, dues-payin’ country roots by buying her records and by snapping up tickets to see her live. They went in such numbers to see Olivia perform at the Dixie National Livestock Show 6 Rodeo in Jackson in early1974 that the all-time attendance record was comfortably broken.

In strict terminology, a steel guitar - an electronic instrument with pedals and strings - is what officially puts the twang into a ‘country’ song. By that criterion, Olivia’s next two singles, ‘I Honestly Love You’ and ‘Have You Never Been Mellow’, were not officially ‘country’. But by sending both records to number one in the national US singles charts as well as high into the country charts, the fans showed they were none too bothered about categorisation, nor by the slight Aussie accent they could detect when they heard her speak.

Olivia even had the courage to perform live in Nashville, although her concert was staged at the Municipal Auditorium and not the Grand Ole Opry. Any remaining resentment was dispelled when she chose to go to Nashville to record in America for the first time. ‘We actually started recording in Los Angeles but it was an uncomfortable scene,’ she said at a local press conference. ‘My producer and I were only going to do a single at first but somewhere between LA and Nashville, we found three great songs to go with the four we already had. So the session turned into an album.’

The LP
Don’t Stop Believin’
was released in 1976 and produced a number-33 single with its title track. It earned Olivia a gold disc, her sixth in succession, and spurred ABC-TV to realise her dream of having her own TV special. Woven into the show’s song and dance format on 17 November 1976 were several big guest stars of the day, including the actor Elliott Gould, TV’s Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, Ron Howard and Tom Bosley from the hit television sit-com
Happy Days
, and Lynda Carter, TV’s Wonder Woman.

It’s a fine line between pop and country and not too many country singers have managed to become crossover stars with any consistency. Once the CMA row had subsided, it was Olivia, with John Denver hot on her heels, who managed it with ease. ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know)’ was a number-two hit in America’s country chart as well as reaching number five in the national singles chart. ‘I Honestly Love You’ was a number-six country hit and a national chart-topper. ‘Have You Never Been Mellow’ reached number three in the country charts and also became the nation’s number-one single. ‘A lot of people are listening to country music because of me,’ Olivia was able to say, and even the Nashville hardliners had to agree.

Olivia had opened the door for a brand new audience into country music and the likes of John Denver were quick to follow through it. It was Olivia’s and MCA’s good fortune that both country and pop music lovers continued to buy her records in vast quantities and that her concerts attracted audiences who appreciated her soft country vocals as much as her sugar-coated, slicker-sounding hits.

‘When I branched out, I found that country people were extremely loyal and stayed with me when my songs weren’t country,’ Olivia reflected.

And to country music journalists quizzing her about the fuss she had caused, Olivia countered: ‘I think it was understandable in a way. Someone new comes along who isn’t even American and steals an award that was theirs and it gets up their noses a bit. But music has to expand. You can’t keep it in a bag.

‘I felt like I was a scapegoat. I really think now they have to admit it’s been beneficial to them. They’re getting a pop audience they never had before. A lot of people are listening to country music because of me. You don’t have to live in Nashville to sing or like country music.’

Still, not everyone was entirely happy at the country-pop crossover part-pioneered by Olivia. At the 1975 CMA awards, Charlie Rich, 1974’s Entertainer of the Year, was entrusted with the task of announcing the name of the new winner of the CMA’s top award. Charlie, who had seemingly been enjoying some refreshments backstage prior to his appearance, proceeded to pull out his Zippo lighter and, with a triumphantly mischievous smile playing on his lips, set light to the card bearing the name of 1975’s Entertainer of the Year . . . John Denver.

Chapter 8

Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong

JOHN TRAVOLTA

 

 

IN THE EARLY 1970s, America was awash with nostalgia for the 1950s. On television, 1950s-era shows like
Happy Days
and
Laverne And Shirley
had captured the mood of the age, pulling in huge audiences. In the pop charts, a reissue of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, Elvis Presley’s first hit in 1956, made the Top Ten in 1971, and the following year Elvis was even hotter, with ‘Burning Love’ hitting the top spot. Don McLean also reached number one in 1971 with ‘American Pie’, a song about ‘the day the music died’ - a reference to 3 February 1959, when Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash - and Elton John in ‘Crocodile Rock’ professed to millions of record buyers what fun he’d had ‘when rock was young’.

Further ‘fifties’ fever was fanned when Elvis Presley’s birthplace, a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, was opened for the first time to inquisitive fans, who formed long queues. And in 1972 even New York City’s New School for Social Research jumped on the bandwagon by becoming one of the first institutions, if not the first, to offer a course on rock ’n’ roll music.

That same year, 1972, a new stage musical called
Grease
, written by two semi-pro American actors, Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, first found a home for itself at the off-Broadway Eden Theatre in New York. Essentially an amiable ‘period’ musical,
Grease
turned out to be a vibrant, gritty but fun, rocking 1950s comedy. With a satirical and highly entertaining score, it took an irreverent look at the era’s fashions, music and morals, which it gently and affectionately mocked with numbers like ‘Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee/ Lousy with virginity’.

Grease
the stage show took excited audiences, and not a few approving critics, back to the rock ’n’ roll days of the 1950s when bored, sexually frustrated teenagers went around in gangs with names like the Pink Ladies and the Burger Palace Boys. At a reunion of the class of 1959, the assembled group relive the days when Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski unexpectedly meet up again at Rydell High School after an innocent summer romance. At first they appear an unlikely couple - Danny with his tough, macho image and Sandy so prim, proper and virginal, very different from Betty Rizzo, the hard-bitten member of the Pink Ladies. However, by the end of the piece, Sandy changes her attitude and dons leather jacket and tight pants, adopting the uniform of a greaser’s steady girl and landing her man, Danny.

The stage production had obvious appeal to teens as well as a carefully built-in attraction to older age groups rejoicing in the memories of their own college days, and it caught on, in the words of one of its songs, like ‘greased lightning’. It was so popular that it went on to become one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history. By the time the final curtain came down on its six-year run on 13 April 1980,
Grease
had notched up an impressive 3,388 performances, a Broadway record that stood until it was overtaken by
A Chorus Line
.

The stage success of
Grease
earned a fortune for its co-writers Jacobs and Casey, who had first met in Chicago through their mutual interest in amateur dramatics. Jim Jacobs played guitar and sang with rock groups in his native Chicago before becoming involved with a local theatre group, The Chicago Stage Guild. It was there, in 1963, he met Warren Casey, who had moved from New York to the windy city armed with a fine arts degree and a similar interest in becoming involved in the local theatre scene.

In 1970 Casey was fired from his job as a lingerie salesman and bought himself a typewriter in preparation for a new job he was taking as an advertising copywriter. It was the best purchase he ever made.

With Jacobs drawing on his experiences as a ‘greaser’ in 1950s Chicago, the duo tapped out a play with music satirising the dress, manners, morals and the doo-wop music of teenagers in the rock ’n’ roll era. Little did the co-writers know they were creating a phenomenon.

Jacobs remembers that the germ of the idea for
Grease
came to him during an after-show cast party for a small production both he and Casey had appeared in. ‘Just for a laugh, I pulled out some old 45 records from the 1950s,’ he recalled. ‘These songs sounded extremely dated compared with the very hip psychedelic funk of 1970. But it was a change of pace among the repetitious favourite dance tunes of the day.

‘It was after singing along to several of these old, scratchy 45s by the likes of Little Richard, Dion and The Belmonts, and The Flamingos, that I first suggested to Warren Casey what a funny idea I thought it would be to see a Broadway musical that utilised this type of score: i.e. the basic acapella/falsetto/doo-wops/hic-cupping/ R&B music of the late 1950s instead of the traditional, “legit” show tune type melodies.

‘Warren raised the rather obvious question: “Yeah, but what would the show be about?” A few beers later, with daylight rapidly approaching, I hit upon the idea that it should be about the kids I went to high school with, mainly the “greasers” and their girlfriends back in the golden days of rock and roll. Harking back to a lifestyle that seemed centred on hairstyles (oily, gooey quiffs), the food (cheap, fatty hamburgers and soggy fries) and cool custom cars (more gunk and sludge) or any and all things greasy - I suggested we call it
Grease
.’

The Jacobs-Casey musical was staged for the first time as a five-hour amateur production in Chicago on 5 February 1971, at the small experimental Kingston Mines Theatre, a damp and draughty converted tram shed. With a cast of eighteen non-professionals,
Grease
played to full houses of 120 seats for its four scheduled performances. It went down well enough with the audiences to earn an extension, and a pair of alert New York producers caught the show and made an on-the-spot deal to adapt it for New York.

The following year, 1972, on St Valentine’s Day, it moved, with slight alterations, to New York to the off-Broadway Eden Theatre, where it gained recognition by receiving four prestigious nominations for a Tony award, Broadway’s equivalent of an Oscar. Eventually, with a further reworking of the script, the show moved on to Broadway proper on 7 June 1972, at the Broadhurst and thence to the Royale and from there to the Majestic.

Explaining its runaway success,
Grease
’s Broadway producer Kenneth Waissman said: ‘Ours was the first show that spoke to a new generation, and it spoke about that generation.’ He conceded, however, that it was the musical’s good fortune to hit Broadway at a time when ‘the theatre was menopausal’.

‘It’s not just nostalgia for the 1950s that has made it such a hit,’ he observed. ‘I think it’s because
Grease
deals with the universals of adolescence, with problems we all go through, problems of relating to the opposite sex or to peer groups for the first time.

‘There are many uncomfortable teenage moments in the show - like being rejected by someone you have a crush on. But, here, you laugh at these things, you have a good time. It’s escapism that minimises the pain of what were once major problems for us all.’

Long before the stage show gained its irresistible momentum, the film rights were purchased by Allan Carr, a chubby, caftan-wearing, larger-than-life camp showbiz entrepreneur, who in time would change Olivia Newton-John’s life for ever. Born the son of a Chicago furniture salesman, Carr had been smitten by showbusiness from an early age. Even as a teenager he had taken to investing his weekly allowance in Broadway shows and, inevitably, he eventually headed for Hollywood in the mid-1960s intent on grabbing himself some showbiz action.

With flamboyance and flair, he worked his way into a position where he personally managed an impressive roster of major stars, including the actresses Dyan Cannon, Melina Mercouri and Rosalind Russell, singers Petula Clark and Peggy Lee, and actors Tony Curtis and Peter Sellers.