Olivia (26 page)

The record was called ‘Physical’, and no matter from what angle the lyrics were analysed there was only one conclusion. ‘Of course the song was about sex,’ said Aussie Steve Kipner, who co-wrote ‘Physical’ with Terry Shaddick.

With Olivia delivering a vocal invitation to get physical horizontally, it could hardly be about anything else. And just before the single was due for release to record stores right across America in November 1981, she worked herself up into a terrible lather about the damage it could do to her image and career.

‘I knew it was a great song and a hit for somebody,’ she said after she had recorded ‘Physical’. ‘But then I had a panic attack. I thought: this song is way too out there, it’s too sexual, it’s way too bold and too cheeky.’

The more she thought about the implications such controversy would have upon her career, the more worried she became. Several months earlier, on 5 August, America’s entertainment industry had accorded Olivia one of its most visible accolades - a star bearing her name on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. America had indelibly honoured the singer they all saw as an absolute sweetheart through and through.

Now, with the imminent arrival in the shops of ‘Physical’, Olivia’s nerves were in shreds and she phoned up her new manager Roger Davies with a desperate plea for him to pull the record’s release. ‘I freaked,’ Olivia recalled. ‘I was terrified. I never wanted to offend anybody. I phoned my manager and said: “Roger, this has gone way too far, it’s way too sexy. I think we should pull this. And he said: “It’s way too late, it’s gone to radio.”’

Olivia kept imploring him to put a stop on the record. She saw herself alienating many of her loyal fans. They might be so offended they could desert her for ever. Even Tina Turner, never the most reticent of songstresses when it came to singing it like it is, or frightened of strutting her stuff and exuding sexuality on stage, had passed on the song before it was offered to Olivia. Tina ventured the opinion it was too sexy, too obvious, when Lee Kramer offered ‘Physical’ to her as a carrot in a bid to take over Tina’s management.

The story goes that the song came Olivia’s way after Roger Davies, then Kramer’s assistant, had happened to overhear Steve Kipner and Lee Chadwick playing a demo disc of ‘Physical’ for Kramer in another room in Kramer’s office. For once the two songwriters had collaborated on a song about physical rather than emotional love and when Roger heard it he thought it was worth offering to Olivia.

Roger, who went on to become Olivia’s manager after her personal and professional split from Lee Kramer in 1980, came from a rock and roll background and he was therefore more adventurous and willing to take risks. He felt ‘Physical’ provided an ideal chance for Olivia to change musical direction, and Roger’s view was endorsed by Matt, who encouraged Olivia to regard the project as a bit of fun and showed his support by being present during the recording.

But as the release drew near, Olivia was getting cold feet. Roger did his best to soothe her nerves over the lyrical content and Olivia found her pleas for the record’s recall were in vain. It was pointed out to her that this was the song the record company had identified as the obvious single from the album, also to be called
Physical
, and they weren’t about to revise their whole marketing strategy at the eleventh hour. Olivia remembers: ‘I was told: “You’re too late. It’s gone to radio,” and before I knew it, it was being played everywhere.’ All she could do was sit back, keep her fingers crossed and wait for the anticipated flak.

The first mutterings about
Physical
’s questionable taste were already beginning to be heard just as Olivia was due to film a video to promote the single and the album. Her management team racked their brains as to how best to go about it without possibly causing further offence. ‘We needed to tone it down in the video, to do something to counteract the sexuality of the song,’ said Olivia. ‘And the answer was exercising.’

The aerobics craze was just starting to take a firm hold in America at around this time, and the video was deliberately set in a gymnasium to latch on to it. The idea was to divert the ear away from the dubious lyrics and concentrate the eye on Olivia, alluringly kitted out in trendy gym kit and singing along during a workout.

Wearing a headband over her hair cropped short and clad in a clinging leotard, a playful Olivia starts off by ogling several hunks working out in just-decent briefs but they then morph into a grossly overweight bunch of fatties sweating away on the exercise machines. After taking a shower still in her workout gear, Olivia returns to the gym wearing badminton kit, and finds the fatties have vanished. Just a few hunks remain, and, in a clever twist at the end, the beautiful hunks of beefcake leave the gym hand in hand and wander off together into the steam room while Olivia walks off with one of the fatties.

‘I thought it was a brilliant idea that they switched it round and came up with a gym idea,’ said Pat Farrar when she saw the end result. ‘I remember Olivia being really, really scared about releasing “Physical” because of the lyric. It was a bit raunchy for her and she was really worried about it.’

During the heat of the controversy Olivia attempted to explain away the furore when she spoke to
People
magazine: ‘I just wasn’t in the mood for tender ballads. I wanted peppy stuff because that’s how I’m feeling. We thought it was a great title because of the keep-fit craze that’s going on.’

‘Physical’ did, in fact, become an aerobics anthem and a favourite workout number at keep-fit classes, health clubs and gyms, but its sexual innuendo was what captured most attention. ‘I think the song has a double entendre,’ its singer finally allowed with remarkable understatement. ‘You can take it how you want to. But it’s meant to be fun . . . it’s not meant to be taken seriously.’

The problem for Olivia was that some radio-programming executives, especially in Utah, took the innuendo very seriously indeed and banned the record for its ‘suggestive lyrics’. One music director explained to the influential
Billboard
magazine: ‘Once the words sank in, it caused an uncomfortableness among listeners.’ The South African Broadcasting Corporation also censored the record as offensive. They insisted that the line ‘There’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally’ be omitted.

In the record business all publicity is good publicity, and the fuss surrounding ‘Physical’ propelled it swiftly into America’s pop charts. It debuted as the highest new entry on Billboard’s Hot 100 at number sixty-six early in October 1981 but took its time to hit number one fully eight weeks later. Once at the top, ‘Physical’ stayed there for an incredible ten weeks, boosted by the coast-to-coast screening of Olivia’s fourth US television special called
Olivia Newton-John: Let’s Get Physical
, which featured songs from the album.

The single’s longevity at the top placed it in a three-way tie for the second longest-running number one of the rock era. Olivia shared the distinction with Guy Mitchell’s ‘Singing The Blues’ and Debby Boone’s ‘You Light Up My Life’. Only Elvis Presley, back in 1956, had enjoyed longer at number one - with ‘Don’t Be Cruel / Hound Dog’ which topped the singles charts for eleven weeks.
Billboard
named ‘Physical’ their record of 1981.

In England ‘Physical’ wasn’t quite the sensation it had been in the less liberal United States, but the record nevertheless reached number seven and enjoyed a run in the UK Top Thirty of sixteen weeks.

The LP was also a winner, peaking at number six in the US and at number eleven in the UK. The international success of both the single and the album went a long way towards moving Olivia on from the panning by the critics of
Xanadu
the year before. In time, post-Madonna, Olivia could look back and ask herself why she had been so worried about ‘Physical’. ‘It was so tame compared with what happens now,’ she laughed. ‘But before the song came out it was really white-knuckle time.’

 

 

The television special,
Olivia Newton-John: Let’s Get Physical
, was in many ways ahead of its time. Right from when he took over from Lee Kramer as Olivia’s manager, Roger Davies had viewed her as a singer who could become a hugely popular video artist. At that point there was no MTV or cable TV channels showing music videos. But he persuaded Olivia to put up the then large sum of $600,000 to make her own video of the album and gave her his word he would get it shown on television.

A sizeable crew was assembled for the project under London-born director Brian Grant, who won the contract from a field of contenders that included several Hollywood feature-film directors. Olivia viewed the composite reels sent in by each of the contenders and chose Grant, who had worked on pop videos with the likes of Kim Wilde. Olivia appreciated the way Grant captured women on camera and liked him instantly when they met up to discuss ideas. ‘He had no preconceived ideas about me, which was terrific,’ she said.

Grant was under considerable pressure to make a good fist of the project to ensure television companies considered it entertaining enough to broadcast. The end product was inventive, imaginative, stylish and classy and presented Olivia in a variety of roles from raunchy space cowboy to aggressive business executive ensnaring a younger male colleague, fittingly played by Matt.

Roger was fully aware the venture was a huge risk, and initially he was unable to raise any firm interest from a single major TV company. ‘I was terrified,’ he said. ‘All this money Olivia had put up and it looked like I’d bombed. But finally I somehow convinced America’s ABC network to take it as an hour special. They’d never done anything like it before, but they took a chance and it went through the roof. It was the highest rating special of all time, gave a new image to Olivia and took the album to number one worldwide.’

Without a hint of blushing Olivia opened the TV special by telling viewers: ‘If you have any preconceived idea about the 1980s or me, you’d better hang on to your hats.’ One reviewer suggested the audience should have also been asked to hang on to their libidos as Olivia cavorted through an hour’s worth of mini-musicals. ‘The costumes were slinky, and the body language was calculated to raise living room temperatures even during the century’s coldest winter,’ the review concluded.

Prior to the hour-long screening of the programme on the BBC in the UK, Olivia explained: ‘At thirty-four I’m too old to be innocent. It’s time that I told my public that I have in fact lived up and down the spectrum. I’ve had lovers and I’ve been hurt and I’ve done all sorts of things that Doris Day wouldn’t have condoned. And I don’t regret a thing.’

Olivia’s song of lust may have been the one to catch the ear on the LP
Physical
, but the two tracks that meant most to her personally were ‘The Promise (The Dolphin Song)’ and an anti-pesticide number called ‘Silvery Rain’.

The former was an emotional ode to dolphins and her concern for their future, which she wrote herself. Olivia struggled for some time with the lyrics and the song remained unfinished until she flew to Hawaii for a working holiday where she spent a day frolicking with dolphins at Sea Life Park. Next morning she woke up with the melody and the lyrics fully formed in her head - a gift she believes from the dolphins themselves. ‘As soon as I saw the dolphins, it all came to me in a great rush.’

To complete the desired sound effect in the production, the noises of the ocean were recorded at Santa Monica and real dolphin sounds were added. For the video, Olivia swam with two dolphins who pulled her through the water while a third led the way.

‘Silvery Rain’ was an ecology-conscious song by Hank Marvin of The Shadows, which highlighted the damage suffered by birds and other wildlife from aerial crop-spraying. Olivia cleverly worked the anti-pesticide song into her live concert act by singing it in a shower of confetti. Typically, Olivia was happiest that the album sold millions because the real beneficiaries, so she hoped, were the dolphins she was championing and the environment.

The success of the ABC special, and of the videos in general, was a pointer to the direction Olivia’s career would take. As she increasingly cut back on tours and concert appearances in years to come, she was still able to remain a very visible artiste on expensively and imaginatively produced videos filmed to accompany her records and with the MTV generation in mind.

Chapter 11

Soul Kiss

OLIVIA

 

 

EVER SINCE THE phenomenal success of
Grease
, Hollywood power brokers had been desperate to pair Olivia with John Travolta in another major movie. The duo had made history as the stars of the most successful movie musical of all time and it was only logical that one day they would be persuaded to team up again.

In the four years since
Grease
, some thirty different projects had come up for serious consideration by the two stars, but all had been rejected. None had ever proved entirely suitable. Each project always seemed to throw up something that either John or Olivia felt was not quite to their liking, and the couple had begun to despair of ever finding the perfect vehicle.

Finally, in 1982, Twentieth Century Fox came up with an original romantic comedy laced with fantasy called
Second Chance
which, although not a musical, Travolta felt could work well for both himself and Olivia. In essence the story involved a robber who meets an aspiring, devious actress, they fall in love and save the world.

John had always stayed in touch with his
Grease
co-star and, after reading the script for
Second Chance
, he called her up to say he had a great role lined up for her. He was so convinced the movie was tailor-made for them both that he intimated that if they failed to agree on this one, then they might never find another.