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Countdown turns 50: Revisiting an Australian icon

Revisiting the magic of Countdown

Olivia Newton-John was a fan favourite.

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The Australian Women's Weekly

 

Olivia Newton-John

• The Australian Women's Weekly
• 10 Aug 2023

Olivia Newton-John was just 17 when she first appeared in The Weekly – a wide-eyed teen in a sleeveless, white go-go dress. 

Five years later, with the release of her debut album,

If Not for You, she became a cover star. And we marked her 70th birthday with a final cover for The Weekly, captured at her retreat near Byron Bay. Olivia was always our golden girl.

In a career-long friendship, we celebrated all her transformations, from country-pop sweetheart to leatherclad Sandy in Grease. And her awards – four Grammys, 10 American Music Awards, an Emmy, Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and more. But it was not just Olivia’s gentle soprano voice that won our hearts. It was the way she lived with courage, kindness, a rare honesty and authenticity, embodied in her dedication to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre. “I have such a blessed life,” she told The Weekly, and she passed those blessings on.

“She was an angel, that one,” her friend Gregg Cave told us, just days after Olivia succumbed to the cancer that was her great challenge for the last 30 years of her life.

“She was a giver, and she gave with all her heart.”

Même contenu pour l'édition Néo-Zélandaise ! 

 

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John Farnham family exclusive: “Dad inspires us every day”

As John Farnham recovers from a battle with cancer, ahead of a new film about the legendary Australian singer’s life, family and friends share his deeply personal story with The Weekly.

• The Australian Women's Weekly 
• 20 Apr 2023
• WORDS by SUE SMETHURST

....

In August last year, the nation held its collective breath when the Farnham family announced that their adored husband and father, John, would immediately undergo a marathon 13-hour surgery after finding a cancerous tumour in his mouth. The diagnosis was an especially brutal blow because John was still reeling from the passing of his dear friend, Olivia Newton-John, just weeks earlier, and the sudden death that February of his long-time manager and best mate, Glenn Wheatley, from complications related to COVID-19.

.....

The biopic had John’s blessing, but when it came time for him to be interviewed, he was so bereft from Glenn’s loss, he felt unable to speak. So, Gaynor called the one person who could always buck John up, his long-time friend, Dame Olivia Newton-John.

“John was really sad,” Gaynor explains, “so I thought ‘I’ll ring Olivia.

She knows exactly what to say.’ And of course she did. In typical Olivia style, she said, ‘Yeah darling, I’ll give him a call. He needs a kick up the backside!’”

It worked a charm and with Olivia’s voice ringing in his ears, the ARIA Hall of Fame inductee opened up about his family, friends and his incredible career, and the film was back on track.

.......

Little could they have known that Olivia, who was also interviewed for the film, would soon pass, the news breaking as John was driving to hospital for a pre-surgery meeting with his own medical team.

“Olivia’s death was another huge blow for John, for everyone,” Gaynor says. “Two people he really loved and respected gone in a short period of time. It totally changed the context of the film. It’s even more precious to us now because it was Olivia and Glenn’s last interviews and then John … It’s quite profound when you watch it, and takes it beyond whatever Glenn imagined it would be. It's something I’m really proud of.”

 

EXTRAITS

 

Delta The view from the top

• Australian Women’s Weekly NZ
• 23 Feb 2023

“Now, my other love at this time was Grease. And then I spotted Olivia Newton-John. I remember saying,

‘Oh my God, that’s Sandy coming in!’ Anyway, Olivia heard me, heard our Australian accents and walked over and said, ‘Are you from Australia? How long are you here?’ We said yes, we are and had a quick chat. She asked where we had been and I told her I’d been to Phantom of the Opera. She said, ‘Well, I hope I see you around tomorrow.’

“The next day I kept looking for her and my parents were like, ‘Delta, you’re not going to see Sandy today, you’re not going to see Olivia.’ I was like, ‘We’ll see about that, I’ll find her in the future!’

“I’ve always thought of that moment when I see young ones at a table. It’s my responsibility to walk over there. Olivia was an incredible teacher like that. The kindness she showed me that day had a profound impact on how I would treat people

“The kindness Olivia showed me had a profound impact.”

that I met later in my life – by her example.”

The first meeting may have been pure chance but the threads that would draw the two women together later in life would cement an incredible relationship.

“Olivia told me that one day – not now but one day – you’ll see [your cancer diagnosis] as a gift, to be a pillar of strength for other people,” Delta says. “I was forever grateful and forever loyal for the love she’d shown me. She’d been there. She understood the fear. She was an example to me of how, once I got through my own health journey, I’d commit to being that way for others, too.”

Olivia had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time in 1992 and would go on to start the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre to support others going through the fight. And, after years of privately helping those in the thick of the battle, in 2020 Delta followed in her idol’s footsteps, partnering with the three doctors who had been instrumental in her treatment to launch a not-for-profit charity. Today, the Delta Goodrem Foundation aims to advance vital research for blood cancers, such as the one she herself overcame.

“It’s a beautiful thing that I’m very proud to have partnered with, privately and publicly,” she says of the timing.

As we speak, she’s still struggling with the grief of losing her friend, Olivia, who finally lost her cancer battle on August 8, 2022.

For someone who makes a living expressing themselves through lyrics and song, finding the words to describe how she is feeling isn’t coming easily. She stops and starts as tears threaten, her voice growing raspy as she struggles to express her sentiment.

“I don’t have the words yet,” she eventually says. “I’d love to be more eloquent for you. I find it really hard to talk about because I was very lucky to have such a special bond, a real kindred. We were always there for each other in a beautiful mentorship and friend way.” And so we leave the topic for now and agree to speak again in a month or two, when she’s had more time to process and think about what she really wants to say.

We catch up again two days after Delta’s moving tribute to Olivia at the G’Day USA gala in LA, which she attended along with Olivia’s husband, John Easterling, her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi and many of Olivia’s inner circle. That week she’d also visited John at the home he’d shared with Olivia.

They’d spent time reminiscing and honouring the woman they adored.

“It was obviously a very emotional night but I loved seeing everyone sing along for Olivia and honour her,” she says now. “Everyone grieves differently and what I’m learning is that it’s about holding space for someone else’s process. Holding space, just being there, knowing you are there for somebody. No matter what, this is a lifelong friendship of being part of a support system when you have so much love for someone.

“She gave us all so much joy. She touched people around the world.

She stood for good values – kindness, integrity, love for people. She had such generosity of spirit. You felt like she was there for everyone.

“This has been a new experience of heartbreak. But then you have to walk through it. This week was a big, important part for me.”

OU SONT LES PINK LADIES ?

Remembering ONJ

• New Idea
• 20 Feb 2023

As Sandy, the late Olivia Newton-john was initally “too pure to be pink” – but off-screen, the Aussie star was warmly embraced by her co-stars. When ONJ passed away last August, her Grease girlfriends shared beautiful memories. Didi said Liv “radiated this kind of positivity in spirit”, while Dinah called her “so decent and so humble”. But it was Stockard – who played Olivia’s polar opposite in Grease – who shared the most touching tribute. “Olivia was the essence of summer,” she said. “Her sunniness, warmth and her grace are what always come to mind when I think of her. I will miss her enormously.”

.

 DANKE KAY 

 

OFFICIAL MEMORIAL

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ROUND AND ROUND

Olivia Newton-John · Round And Round (Remastered 2022)

 

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OLIVIA PORTRAIT 

 

KARAOKE 

LE DAILY

 

 

CUISINE

 

L’artichaut cuisiné par le chef Barr pour Olivia Newton-John !!! A vos casseroles ! 

Danke Kay ! 

ON THE COVER

Olivia Newton-John On The Cover Of The Australian Woman's Weekly Magazine !! 

 

Dame Olivia Newton-John shares her bonds with family and nature.

In an exclusive interview from her farm in California, Dame Olivia Newton-John talks about her bonds with family and nature, and how these two helped her through the dark days of the COVID crisis in the United States.

• The Australian Women's Weekly 
• 9 Sep 2021
• WORDS by SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

· PHOTOGRAPHY by ALANA LANDSBERRY

Olivia Newton-John sits cross-legged on a couch the colour of a dusky pink poppy. Afternoon light filters through windows, beyond which lie the fields and coops and barnyard animals of her story book pretty Californian farm. Raven, her German Shepherd, sleeps peacefully on the carpet. Her husband, John Easterling, pops into frame to say hello down the Zoom lens, touches her affectionately on the shoulder and moves on to tend to the medicinal cannabis and other herbs that he grows on the property. It’s a lazy, warm late summer afternoon, and it feels like siesta time (at least Raven thinks so), but Olivia has set this time aside to chat with The Weekly.

“I’m okay,” she says in answer to the obvious question, and she looks more than well – rosy-cheeked, bright eyed, relaxed; all easy, open conversation and unabashed smiles.

That said, Olivia concedes that living through the COVID outbreak in the United States hasn’t always been easy. She was admitted to hospital briefly earlier this year – a temporary road bump on the wellness journey that has seen her through a number of bouts with cancer since her first diagnosis in 1992. She’d rather not go into the details of that most recent hospital visit but she has fully recovered now, and she says it helped her to understand how frightening COVID has been for people with compromised health or immune systems.

“I was very afraid at the beginning,” she admits. “I think we all were … It was a scary time for everyone because it was unknown … I had friends who were in New York high-rises and they couldn’t leave, which would have been terrible and frightening. I have friends who have gone through COVID and friends who have lost friends. No one has gone unscathed.

“I was lucky to be living outside the city – I’m grateful for that – and in my own life, I’ve tried to turn this into something positive, because it’s given us all the opportunity to find out who we are, who the family is and get down to the really important things. I think we get very distracted, as humans, with all the technology and the stuff that’s going on. But when it comes down to it, the people you love are the most important, and I think it’s given us that opportunity to re-bond.

“I’ve spent so much of my life on a plane or in a hotel, so to be home for a year and a half is pretty amazing. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I didn’t because you kind of get onto a treadmill, and you keep going and going. So, I think it’s been a very special time to re-evaluate what’s important to me in my life.”

Olivia’s daughter, Chloe, now 35, who lives in Oregon with her fiancé, James Driskill, has been to stay twice since the pandemic began, once for three whole months, “which was the best,” Olivia says. Mother and daughter recorded a song, Window in

the Wall, while they were together, which carried a message about “finding we’re not so different after all” to an ideologically divided America.

Chloe says one of the things she admires most about her mum is her positivity, and her ability to “… see beauty in everything. She chooses to be positive,” Chloe says. “That is so hard. Most people choose the easy way, which is being negative.”

Reminded of this, Olivia smiles. “I try to,” she says. “To see the beauty and not the ugliness, to see the good and not the bad. That’s a decision you can make. It’s very difficult these days to get away from the ugly and the bad, but nature balances you, I feel, because we are part of that. We are part of the natural kingdom. As humans, we think we’re separate but we’re not. Chloe’s father [Matt Lattanzi] once said to me that nature was his church and I thought that was a beautiful description.”

Olivia wasn’t planning to do any interviews right now, but she agreed to chat with us this month because she has such special memories of the Great Barrier Reef and she feels so deeply about our “love the planet” theme (read our special feature on saving the reef on page 40).

“I have wonderful memories of the Barrier Reef,” she says. “It is the most beautiful place, and I have the most beautiful memories of seeing schools of brightly coloured fish under that blue, blue water, and just incredible wildlife. It’s an experience I cherish, and I hope that we can do something to preserve the reef for future generations because it is exquisite.”

Olivia traces her love of nature back to childhood, growing up on the leafy University of Melbourne campus, where her father, Brinley Newton-John, was master of Ormond College (during the war, he’d worked in British Intelligence at the top-secret Bletchley Park).

“When I was a little girl,” she says, “I used to bring home stray animals. People would dump them in the university grounds because there were lots of trees and bushes where animals could hide. So, from a young age, I used to get really, really upset, and I would rescue these animals and take them to the RSPCA or whatever. Mum wouldn’t let me keep them, which was probably lucky because I would have had 50 dogs! I was always very aware of kindness to animals.

“After my parents divorced, I'd wait for my father after school. I would sit under this gorgeous tree in the middle of the driveway, and I used to write stories about birds and trees and the sky. I don’t know, I just felt very connected to it.”

“I want to pass on something good and valuable that is going to help people.”

Olivia’s mother, Irene Born, was also an early influence.

“My mum was very observant about nature,” she recalls. “I remember her seeing patterns in clouds and all these things. She used to take us digging for fossils on the weekend, down to Frankston. And she was always very concerned about trees in the Botanical Gardens – we lived next door to the Gardens and we used to walk there every day.”

Irene was also a sustainability trailblazer, years ahead of her time. It was important to her, even back in the 1950s, to tread lightly on the earth.

“She was a very wise woman,” Olivia explains. “She loved the environment, cared about recycling – those were ideas that I grew up with. I think people who have lived through a war are more like that.

"I remember, she would tie up elastic bands [and keep them] and she would roll up paper bags. Nothing was wasted – we recycled and re-used everything. I heard this all my life and it is important to me. I really value nature – above just about everything.”

It’s a philosophy that Olivia not only tries to live by day-to-day but has incorporated into her music and her career. 

She has made two spectacular nature documentary series – One World and Wild Life. There is perhaps no more joyful sight on earth than Olivia riding a white horse across La Camargue in southern France in one of those episodes. And her 1994 album, Gaia, was both a coming to terms with that first cancer diagnosis and a heartfelt expression of her connection with the earth.

“Perhaps I should release it again,” she suggests. “It seems like all the things they talked about and

predicted 30 or 40 years ago are happening now … We’re having these horrendous storms and fires and the ice caps are melting. People have known this was coming but we haven’t … we haven’t done anything. We’re all connected, we’re all affected. We should try to help however we can.”

But even here, Olivia says, she’s hopeful. “I’m always hopeful,” she smiles. Young people give her hope, the resourcefulness and brilliance of the human mind gives her hope. Has that positivity of hers ever let her down?

“Well, I’ve had quite a few challenges,” she laughs, “but I’m positive about those too. You have to believe that you’ll be okay. I mean, there are times when you go, ‘oh gosh, what’s going to happen?’ But at the bottom of all that, you have to believe you’ll be okay because your attitude is so important to your healing. The body wants to heal naturally. It wants to do that if given the opportunity. I intend to live for a long time and

I’m doing everything I can to help other people do the same.”

In Olivia’s philosophy, that’s crucial too – the ability to look beyond your own situation and make a commitment to help others.

“It’s very important,” she insists.

“As you get older, you realise you’re going to be passing things on. I want to pass on something good and something valuable that’s going to help people. So, I think it’s a natural progression – part of being a human

– to want to give back. It’s part of your evolution.”

One of the ways Olivia gives back is through her involvement with the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre in Melbourne. Right now, the team there is getting ready for Olivia’s Walk for Wellness, which is held each year on her birthday – September 26 – and raises money to, as she says, “help people with cancer to thrive”.

This year it will celebrate her 73rd birthday, and it will be virtual, in that everyone will walk where they can, locked down or not. But rest assured Olivia will be walking on the farm, and she’s offered some phenomenal prizes for those who raise the greatest funds, including a virtual fireside chat and a birthday tea with herself.

Olivia has certainly not been idle in lockdown. This past year, she and John have also formed the Olivia Newton-John Foundation, which aims to fund research into plantbased medicine and other holistic and wellness therapies to prevent, treat and cure cancers.

“We’re looking for kinder treatments for cancer,” Olivia says, “using herbal medicine, because that really is what has kept me doing well. We want to fund scientific research so we can clearly identify which treatments work.”

This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Physical, the siren call of the gym junkie generation and the song that completed the transformation (three years after she played Sandy in

Grease) of Australia’s sweetheart into an empowered 1980s woman who was not afraid to express her own desires. To mark the occasion, there’ll be a re-release of the Physical album with bonus tracks, remixes and a video recording of the entire album, replete with Olivia in sweat band, purple tights, tennis gear and sultry, smoky eyeshadow.

Does she look back on that young woman – all of 32, with a tousled blonde bob, not unlike but messier than Princess Diana’s – and feel like she was someone else?

“Yes, I was a different person then,” she admits. But she was on a steep learning curve.

“I remember at the time I recorded that song,” she says, “I thought it was great but I got really nervous after I’d finished it. I called my manager, Roger Davies [an Aussie who went on to manage Tina Turner and Pink], and said, ‘Roger, I’m afraid I’ve gone too far with this song. I think it’s too raunchy.’

“He said, ‘It’s too late. It’s gone to radio and it’s going up the charts.’

And of course it was one of the biggest songs I ever had. So, sometimes you’ve got to let go of the fear and just go with it.”

She doesn’t remember now what her parents thought, but she laughs, “I’m sure they were tut-tutting”. Nonetheless, she has no regrets because that song gave her the freedom to grow as an artist.

“It gave me an opportunity to change my image,” she says. “They call it reinventing yourself now, but at the time it just meant an opportunity to change genres and it gave me an ....

“When it comes down to it, the people you love are the most important, and it’s given us that opportunity to re-bond.”

...... opportunity to do more rocky music than I’d done before. I’d been more into the ballads and the mellow stuff.

“It was amazing because with all the controversy that went with it, there also came this opportunity, as is often the way, and I just had to embrace it. I was banned in Utah, which was very exciting. You haven’t made it until you’re banned, right? I look back now and think, what was I so worried about? I was so worried about everything. That’s the beauty of getting older, I guess.

“You know, when you’re 20 or 30, you look at being 50 or 60 as being really old. And then when you get there, you go, ‘I get it, I know how you look at me’. But because you have more wisdom and you’ve lived more, things aren’t as difficult as when you were younger. You’re more relaxed, you’re able to handle things better.”

And perhaps love can be more whole, more fulfilling too. When Olivia posted a photo to Instagram of her and John kissing under mistletoe, their online community went wild. (It must be said that it came with a tip on the medicinal use of mistletoe.) It’s been 14 years now since their wedding and Olivia’s fans still love the warmth and the spark between them.

“He’s a very special human being,” Olivia tells The Weekly. “He’s honest, loving, creative, funny. He’s incredibly intelligent. I’ve learnt so much from him ... He’s wonderful, he is. I lucked out.”

The sun is lower in the sky now than when we began and the light filtering through the windows is golden. There’s a cat at the door scratching to be let in and it’s almost time for Olivia to feed her horses.

Before we go, of course we must find out about Chloe’s wedding. After a long engagement, she and James were finally set to tie the knot this year but their plans were scarpered by COVID.

“I think she will replan it,” Olivia says, “but we haven’t done it yet.

She’s got her dress though – I had that wonderful experience. You think, as a mother, that you want to be there to help pick out the wedding dress and I got to experience that with her. It was just the two of us and we had the place to ourselves – it was a beautiful boutique in Los Angeles – and it was very special.”

It was one of “oh so many things” that Olivia feels grateful for right now, from her friends and family to the little bird sanctuary that she’s set up outside her bedroom window. “I can sit there for hours and watch 10, 20, 30 different kinds of birds come in.

It’s so beautiful.”

Mostly though, she says, “I’m grateful for life. After all I’ve been through, I’m just very grateful that I’m here.” AWW

“I was banned in Utah, which was very exciting. You haven’t made it until you’re banned, right?”

 

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