Olivia Newton-John Artistfacts

Olivia Newton-John song list

Olivia Newton-John Artistfacts

September 26, 1948 - August 8, 2022
Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, but emigrated with her family to Australia as a child. Her maternal grandfather was German physicist Max Born, who won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for his work with Quantum Mechanics.
She competed on the Australian TV show Sing, Sing, Sing and won a trip to Great Britain, where she formed a duo with Pat Carroll (the future wife of John Farrar, who would become Olivia's regular producer and songwriter). In the '80s, the pair reunited to open Koala Blue, a chain of women's clothing boutiques.
Long before the fantasy musical Xanadu notoriously flopped, she starred in another musical sci-fi stinker, Toomorrow (1970). Producer Don Kirshner was hoping to follow-up his success with The Monkees with the title group fronted by Olivia. It didn't work.
Despite not liking the song at all, her first hit was a cover of Bob Dylan's "If Not For You," using an arrangement by George Harrison. It topped the Adult Contemporary chart and peaked at #25 on the pop chart.
Her first #1 pop hit was 1974's "I Honestly Love You." She found even greater success in the Adult Contemporary market, where she landed 10 chart-toppers and several more in the Top 10 throughout her career.
She nearly turned down the role of Sandy in Grease because, at 29, she worried she couldn't pull off playing a teenager (she's always looked younger than her age, but not that young). Once she met John Travolta, however, their chemistry was instantaneous and she signed on immediately.
Her country-pop ballads were hits on the Country chart, but a 1974 Grammy win for Best Female Country Vocal Performance ("Let Me Be There"), coupled with a CMA win for Female Vocalist of the Year, soured Nashville veterans who viewed her as an interloper who threatened the purity of the genre. Led by George Jones, several CMA members quit and formed the short-lived Association of Country Entertainers to "preserve the identity of country music as a separate and distinct form of entertainment."
She married Xanadu costar Matt Lattanzi in 1984, and gave birth to her only child, daughter Chloe, two years later. She and Lattanzi divorced in 1995.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and stayed in remission until 2017, when she announced the cancer had returned and metastasized to her lower back. She died in 2022 at 73.
Due to a zipper breaking, Olivia Newton-John had to be sewn into the trousers she wears in the last carnival scene of Grease.
In the 1960s Olivia Newton-John and her duo partner Pat Carroll navigated the club circuit in England. One of their most peculiar gigs was at London's notorious Paul Raymond's Revue, a burlesque club in Soho, London they were completely unaware of beforehand. Dressed in pink miniskirts, they performed in front of an audience of men in raincoats, with a topless woman swimming in a fish tank behind them. They quickly realized it wasn't the right fit when the club owner politely dismissed them after the show.

Comments: 1

Samuel Crandall Bender from Vancouver, Washington , UsaShe was the backing vocals in John Denver's "Fly Away."

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