Why did Olivia Newton-John make it in the US when so many others didn’t? | Michael Dwyer
Before TikTok, before MTV, before the Australian recording industry had found its feet as an international export operation, how did an English expat girl from the suburbs of Melbourne become one of the biggest pop stars on the planet?
In many ways, Newton-John’s unique, sustained victory can only be explained in the same terms John Lennon used at the height of Beatlemania: “If we knew, we’d form another group and be managers.” Gormley also managed pop king Cliff Richard and his band The Shadows. Soon enough, his Savile Artists stable would include“In pre-Beatles British pop, the bosses were Australians,” Walker says. “I don’t know how Gormley picked up on Olivia, but he took her in, and then of course, when Pat Carroll and John Farrar went over there, Farrar formed a band with those Shadows guys [Welch, Hank Marvin, and Farrar].