“In pre-Beatles British pop, the bosses were Australians,” Walker says. “I do n’t know how Gormley picked up on Olivia, but he took her in de ella, 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].”
As a duo, Carroll and Newton-John made small waves on the UK TV and cabaret circuit but after Carroll returned to Australia, her husband Farrar became the key songwriter and producer in Newton-John’s story. It was he and Welch who arranged the traditional murder ballad Banks of the Ohioand produced her debut studio album in 1971.
Olivia Newton-John at the G’Day USA gala in Los Angeles in 2018. Credit:AP
“Farrar was guitar player and singer in the Melbourne band the Strangers,” explains Melbourne music historian Ian McFarlane, author of The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop. “They were massive in the ’60s and they were the house band for The Go!! Show ” – the Channel 10 pop show hosted by Ian Turpie, a former boyfriend of Newton-John’s.
Bizarrely, it was a British shoe salesman named Lee Kramer – “he made millions of pounds importing cowboy boots into England,” Walker says – who managed her crucial leap to Los Angeles to capitalize on her deal with MCA Records in the early ’70s.
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But the gumnut mafia connections would continue. Farrar was Newton-John’s producer until 1989, teaming with Stigwood’s RSO to produce the grease phenomenon, and writing a string of No. 1 hits including Have You Never Been Mellow, You’re the One That I Want, Hopelessly Devoted to You and magic. It was Steve Kipner, a Bee Gees associate from way back, who co-wrote Physical in 1981. By that time, Newton-John was managed by Australian powerhouse Roger Davies, in the midst of his epic journey from Sherbet to Pink.
Still, great business connections can only explain so much in the rise of a fair dinkum global superstar. “I don’t know,” says Walker. “I don’t know how they marketed her, how they made it all work. I guess they had some good songs. I suppose it’s just that incredible breath of fresh air that she was.”
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