Sandy was a sap, Danny a bad bet and everyone was too old to be at high school, but we all loved this cultural touchstone. | OPINION by Kate Halfpenny
Future generations had the Wiggles as their pre-school musical love. We had Liv. I’m not sure if I knew what she looked like then.wasn’t on yet but from her voice and lyrics about love I rightly suspected she was stupendously chocolate box pretty.
Then she was replaced in my consciousness and record collection by the Bay City Rollers. Until August 1978, when suddenly Olivia was not only back but the leading lady in what was the cultural touchstone, the rite of passage, for anyone growing up at the time,Based on a stage musical – the brainchild of an art teacher and an advertising copywriter – which debuted in an old Chicago tram factory,was a game changer.
Olivia’s death at the age of 73 from the breast cancer she lived with for three decades made Margie tear up watching the TV tributes, packed with old clips of ONJ in her Xanadu roller-skating pomp, wide-eyed doingin 2020.That last one undid me – two grand old stagers of Australian music getting such a kick out of each other – and Margie says it did her too: “I felt sadness about Olivia but also thought of my own mortality. About friends who have breast cancer.
Sandy is a sap. Danny is a bad bet. Rizzo seemed abrasive then, the emotional crux now. Everyone seemed too old to be at high school.Much of it went over our heads: the pregnancy scare, macho posturing, sexual double standards, the fact Sandy had to transform into what director Randal Kleiser called “this slut” to keep her man happy. And the lyrics to, which had teenagers belting out pussy wagons, chicks creaming and getting lots of tit.
That last song should never be played again at junior cheerleading concerts. The rest of it, enduring magic, just like Olivia Newton-John. Sleep tight, our Liv.
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