Olivia (13 page)

It was Lee Kramer who came up with the answer. He realised that if Olivia went off to America he would quite probably lose her - unless he went with her. He was fully prepared to do just that and, since he was now the person in Olivia’s life who loved and cared about her most and was with her all the time, he proposed that he should not only accompany her but become her manager in the USA as well.

News of a shoal of attractive offers from America prompted by the huge sales of ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know)’ persuaded Olivia that she must wait no longer. ‘I remember Helen Reddy saying, “You’ve really got to do it,”’ she said. ‘I decided to go. It’s every entertainer’s dream to make it in America, I’ve no doubts about that.

‘When I decided Helen and Jeff were right, I briefly moved into the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. When I arrived to check in there were a dozen red roses waiting at the desk for me. They were from Glenn Frey [of the Eagles]. The card said: “Welcome to America.” I wasn’t even sure who the Eagles were but I’ve always had a soft spot for Glenn because it was such a nice thing for him to do.’

Olivia’s less than happy Eurovision experience and the British perception that she was not much more than ‘that girl on the Cliff Richard show’ were contributing factors in her decision. In the UK she lacked credibility, and it was not lost on Olivia that America’s record-buyers seemed much more receptive to her than their British counterparts.

‘Let Me Be There’, for example, was released twice in England but still failed to interest the public, whereas Americans bought the record in huge numbers. ‘They took to me,’ Olivia explained, and her new single ‘I Honestly Love You’ proved the point and vindicated her decision to concentrate on establishing herself more fully in the States. A lovely ballad written by Australian Peter Allen and American Jeff Barry, ‘I Honestly Love You’ shot to number one in the US charts in August 1974 but didn’t even make the Top Twenty in England.

Lady Luck was perching on Olivia’s shoulder when she recorded ‘I Honestly Love You’. The song came to her by a circuitous route; Peter Allen had originally intended to record it himself. That he didn’t do so until after Olivia had a hit with it was down to Jeff Barry, a songwriter who had written number-one hits for artistes ranging from The Archies to Manfred Mann to The Dixiecups. Barry was scheduled to produce Allen’s new LP but, when he deemed that the material to hand lacked any obvious hit, he felt he had to come up with one himself.

‘I had this song called “I Honestly Love You” that I thought would be great for a man to sing,’ said Barry. ‘So Peter and I wrote the song and made a demo. Then someone at the publishing office was going to see Olivia with new material and she loved it. She loved it so much she wanted to record the song. So we decided to let her cut it instead of Peter. No one thought it was going to be a single. The label didn’t want to put it out, but radio demanded it.’

Admitting to her good fortune, Olivia said: ‘I flipped out when I heard it. But I was terrified that I would find out it had already been done.’ As Jeff Barry predicted, once radio stations seized upon it as the standout track of Olivia’s album
If You Love Me Let Me Know
, demand from listeners ensured her US label MCA issued it as single. Peter Allen didn’t get around to recording ‘I Honestly Love You’ until several years after it had given Olivia her first number-one hit in America.

Olivia watched with mounting excitement as ‘I Honestly Love You’ moved up the charts and eventually reached the top spot. From this lofty position she could look down and see, two places below her in the charts, one of her original singing idols from her schooldays: Dionne Warwick. To crown a memorable 1974, soon afterwards her album
If You Love Me Let Me Know
climbed to number one in the US LP charts. Olivia had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

Particularly pleasing for Olivia was the knowledge that America had seemingly taken to her because of her voice rather than her looks. The Americans knew little of her and had seen even less and yet she was top of the charts. In England she had always had the feeling that her looks had been a major contribution towards her success. ‘If I were less attractive, maybe they would pay more attention to my talent,’ she was stung into saying of her detractors. ‘They always think you’re playing on your looks. It’s just how I was made. But that old all-beauty-and-no-brains thing is still in existence.’

To build on this welcome from America’s record-buying public, concert appearances were needed and Lee and Olivia decided it would be best for her to play small venues and colleges first in order to gain a foothold. With John Farrar she flew to the US just four days before her first concert to meet the band who would back her. ‘I was absolutely terrified because I’d never worked in the States before,’ Olivia remembers.

In Minneapolis Olivia worked solidly with her hired musicians for two days of rehearsals but she was unhappy with the results and decided she had no option but to fire them. It was a brave move under the circumstances, and it was only on the night before her first concert that she was able to hire a replacement band. Together they rehearsed for six hours, starting at eight in the evening and finishing at two in the morning, before Olivia was satisfied that together they could put on a credible show the following night.

Next day Olivia and the band piled into a tour bus at 10am to head for the gymnasium in north Dakota where she would appear live in the US for the first time. In England Olivia had always favoured wearing dresses at her concerts, but for a college gig in a gymnasium she decided to put on jeans. As ever, Olivia was gripped by pre-concert nerves, but the tension was eased when the MC urged the audience to give the singer from England an extra warm welcome as it was her first-ever US gig. ‘And the whole audience stood up and cheered,’ Olivia recalls. Thus began an American love affair with Olivia Newton-John that has never waned.

Olivia’s first three-week low-key tour of universities and colleges took place around the time she registered her first massive US hit ‘I Honestly Love You’. But the warm reaction gave her a pleasing taster of what she might accomplish on American soil. With successful record releases at regular intervals, Olivia was gradually able to build up her live appearances in carefully chosen venues.

Fortunately The Oneness, the band of all-American musicians from Minneapolis and Minnesota she had recruited, proved to be a versatile bunch. They essentially favoured heavy jazz and wrote their own material in the Chick Corea vein, but they were talented enough to comfortably double up on different instruments to provide the appropriate backing for Olivia’s repertoire, which varied from country rock numbers to ballads.

Olivia travelled with the band in a customised air-conditioned bus fitted with stereo and television, and her only complaint about going on the road in America was that she never stopped long enough in any one town to see something of it.

Olivia progressed to the concert circuit of hotel venues where she performed in towns like Reno, Lake Tahoe, Miami and, for the first time, in Las Vegas, where she was the support act for Charlie Rich. Charlie was a country music star best known in the UK for his 1974 smash hit ‘The Most Beautiful Girl’, which also reached number one on the national pop charts in America. Unlike the more stuffy country music traditionalists, who were beginning to question Olivia’s authenticity as a country singer, Charlie was impressed enough by her to buy Olivia a beautiful heart-shaped pendant with an opal, Olivia’s birthstone, in the centre as a mark of his appreciation.

 

 

By the middle of 1975, Olivia had notched up five Top Ten hits in a row in the US. Her breakthrough came in December 1973 when ‘Let Me Be There’ peaked at number six in the singles chart, and six months later she went one better with ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know)’.

Two number ones followed with ‘I Honestly Love You’, and ‘Have You Never Been Mellow’, and her next single ‘Please Mister Please’ reached number three. She was enjoying a remarkable run of chart success.

While hit singles helped to establish Olivia, confirmation of her true popularity came with the warmth with which her albums were received in America. At a time when teenagers were leaning towards progessive rock, heavy metal, and long, drawn-out guitar solos, Olivia’s soft, clear vocal delivery proved most appealing to more mature American record-buyers, particularly when she put a new slant on hits by other established singers and songwriters.

Shrewdly guided first by Bruce Welch and then by John Farrar in her choice of melodic material, Olivia’s LPs included a varied selection of tuneful folk and country ballads - Tom Rush’s ‘No Regrets’, Chip Taylor’s ‘Angel Of The Morning’, Beatle George Harrison’s ‘Behind That Locked Door’ and ‘If’ by David Gates. Olivia was also not averse to throwing in the odd surprise - on her album
Clearly Love
she included her own distinctive version of ‘Summertime Blues’ by America’s fifties rocker Eddie Cochran. Another adventurous choice was her version of The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ on the LP
Long Live Love
.

As a hugely popular recording artiste, Olivia was now a solo star who warranted elevation to headline status. Lee Kramer was able to field a host of money-spinning offers for his girlfriend and eventually she was booked into the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas for a season.

Backed by an orchestra and her own six-piece rhythm section, Olivia played to packed houses and to critical acclaim for a show that featured a carefully balanced selection of numbers. Her set list included a Beatles song ‘Good Day Sunshine’, her version of the big Hollies hit ‘The Air That I Breathe’, and the nostalgic ‘As Time Goes By’, in addition to her own string of hits.

‘She’s well on her way to being the biggest hit of the year among first-time headliners,’ said Dennis Hunt in his review for the
Los Angeles Times
. The critic went on to note the response from male punters going wild for her in the front rows: ‘If the men in the audience get any more enthusiastic than they did towards the end of one of Newton-John’s midnight shows last week, the Riviera is going to have to place some security guards in front of the stage.’

In 1978 Olivia was to return to the Versailles Room at the Riviera Hotel, by which time she was even bigger star thanks to
Grease
. And there was pandemonium one night when, just as she was winding up her act, a man jumped up on stage and started jiving away. It was John Travolta, and the crowd went wild as Olivia and John boogied their way through their massive international hit ‘You’re The One That I Want’, and then followed this up by duetting on another
Grease
favourite, ‘Summer Nights’.

By his own admission, Lee Kramer found himself out of his depth when he first took charge of Olivia’s career in America. He was still just twenty-one, knew nothing of showbusiness and confessed he was in turmoil for the first year he was at the helm. But he was willing to learn fast - and he knew he had to if his relationship with Olivia, both on a professional and personal level, was to survive.

The opportunity to cash in on Olivia’s astonishing and largely unexpected chart success was wide open, and Lee had to plan a productive course that would be acceptable to them both. Inevitably American showbiz sharks were circling the hottest new female singer to emerge in years, hoping to grab a piece of the action. Some seemed to delight in trying to stir up trouble between the couple. Olivia’s record success was propelling her into the big money league and Lee had to endure jealousy, contempt and even ridicule - how could a shoe importer with no prior knowledge of showbusiness possibly successfully manage the career of a singer who was starting to sell millions of records and be in huge demand as a concert attraction?

Nevertheless, Olivia and Lee’s relationship flourished, with sporadic hiccups. It was not helped in its early stages by Lee Kramer’s family being unimpressed by his romancing a girl who was in showbusiness. It was unsettling for Olivia, and it was a long time before Lee was able to persuade his father even to meet his girlfriend, let alone get to know her.

In America, the couple were each in their own way under pressure to succeed. ‘It’s very difficult for a guy to get involved in my career,’ Olivia explained to one interviewer. ‘The guys in my life have had their own thing, but they can’t help but get involved in what I do because it consumes so much of my time.

‘It takes a strong man to take second place. It’s Mr Newton-John a lot of the time. They have to have a good sense of themselves to take it. A lot of men are frightened by me, by what I represent and my success. It’s very difficult for me to have a relationship. But it’s very important for me to know one person and to trust one person.’

Lee had enough business acumen and drive to succeed in what were initially unfamiliar surroundings. But his great strength was that nobody loved and cared for Olivia more than he did, and his duties in caring for her were many and varied, not least ensuring her safety. An intruder once managed to get into Lee’s office and, while maniacally shouting Olivia’s name, he proceeded to pour petrol all over the floor and prepared to set light to it.

On another occasion, just before one of Olivia’s concerts, Lee discovered a letter on her dressing table containing a threat to her life. Cranks and over-zealous fans are an occupational hazard for famous singers. Lee told
Crawdaddy
magazine that as a general rule he tried to stop mail reaching Olivia before a show, even if it meant having to open up personal letters. It was a necessary procedure for safety and peace of mind. ‘Yet one also doesn’t like keeping anything from artists - they have to deal with life and whatever goes on in their world,’ said Lee. In this instance, it was felt Olivia had to be informed of the danger. Fortunately the man who had written the menacing letter had also chosen to write down the number of the row he was sitting in, and Lee was able to locate him and have him taken out by security and dealt with.