Olivia Newton-John (1948 – 2022)

 

By Null

I fell in love with Olivia Newton-John in 1978. I was six years old. I’m fifty years old now. I don't believe I ever truly fell out of love with her. I had the cover of her Greatest Hits Vol. 2 on my wall when I was in elementary school. I still love that album, no kidding.

I guess it all started with Jessica Lange. I was four years old when I saw John Guillermin’s version of King Kong in the theater in 1976. I didn’t know what these feelings meant. I only knew I wanted to pet her like a cat, or a newborn calf; I grew up on a farm. 

Then, of course, there was The Bionic Woman, Lindsey Wagner. I was very attracted to her too. The Bionic Woman was on TV from 1976 to 1978. Something about her seemed more mature and serious.

There is nothing particularly interesting about a rural farm kid with only three channels on his television having “funny feelings” about the “blonde California type” women in the 1970s that he would see on TV shows or in magazines when bras were pretty unfashionable. I always liked to keep it casual. It is a predictable and easily foreseeable tale, even cliché. 

What is particularly fascinating is how young I was when I was having these feelings and attractions. It is like what Woody Allen states in Annie Hall when speaking of Freud’s latency period: “I never had a latency period.”

But I digress; in 1978, I saw the movie Grease at the drive-in theater while lying in the back of a pick-up truck. This is when I first witnessed the implausible existence of an otherworldly actor by the name of Olivia Newton-John. Though the 1970s were filled with blonde-haired, blue eyed nymphs, Olivia Newton-John could sing like a bird, and if I have ever been the helot to any master, it has been music. In my pre-pubescent confusion, I was overwhelmed. I was not only attracted to her. I was in love with her. I was in awe.

Back in the day, we had the Grease Soundtrack on 8-track and I would listen to it endlessly. I even started a “gang” in my “one hallway” elementary school full of farm kids with manure on their boots. We were called The Eagles and I perfected John Travolta’s “Grease Lightning” routine to best of my ability. Our claim to fame was swinging sideways on the swing set during recess, strictly forbidden, and getting caught with Red Man Chewing Tobacco in fifth grade. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

At one point following my obsession with Grease and Olivia Newton-John, there appeared both a cassette and vinyl copy of Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which came out in 1982. I don’t know where they came from. At this point, I was ten years old.  I was living in a world in which all I wanted to do was escape. There were moments when my family had very little money, but my mother was never short of giving us love and affection. The work on the farm was difficult, and often dark, in the freezing winters of Michigan. Often there was a sense of foreboding fear from my stepfather’s hot temper and hard fists, coupled with the harsh realities of the fragility of life. 

I remember when a diseased cow lay gasping for breath at the edge of the barn unable to get up. A single tear fell from its huge and beautiful eye. The cosmos seemed to be hiding in its giant, black pupil. I could do nothing to ease its pain. My stepfather put his hand on my shoulder, and I could see the shot gun appear in the periphery of my sight. He did not have to tell me to leave. By the time I reached the other end of the barn, the rifle went off.

In my room, the foldout gatefold of Olivia’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 was hanging next to my bed on the wall, held in place by thumbtacks. I listened to the album often and escaped into the lush instrumentation and magic that seemed inherent in music. Her voice was often high and crystalline clear, covering my mind with a comforting warmth and sensuality that seemed so foreign to my immediate world. 

Only a year later, Reagonomics would decimate the farming community, and we, like so many others, would lose our farm and escape into the night. 

I left Olivia Newton-John on the farm.

I did not buy her albums or follow her career. I was on the road to growing up in a land far away from the alfalfa and corn fields, and the very small elementary school.

Over the years, I would hear an Olivia Newton-John song on the radio and I would still be mesmerized, as if she were a siren luring me back to the comfort and sleep of my childhood bed. Those songs never lost their magic and her voice seemed ageless. The music made her timeless, as do any fond and distinct childhood memories.

Upon hearing of Olivia’s death I felt a shudder. In real life, I knew almost nothing about her. Yet, I felt something very powerful. A tear fell from my eye, which was both unexpected and weird. Was it the recollection of my childhood room? Was it the culmination of loss over the years since I had been there taking shelter in songs? Was it saying goodbye to an old friend that time forgot who never really existed? It was not me that shed a tear. It was the six year old in me who just learned that she was always only human, which somehow makes the memories more prominent and sweet.

Sometimes childhood gets dark. Kids need angels. “Angels” is not a word I use often, if ever, but I can think of no other word to describe my childhood recollections of her.