Music is such a healing thing
Olivia Newton-John has overcome the dark times.
On the eve of performances with the Sydney Symphony, she tells Martin Buzacott how work, family, friends and nature are a constant source of solace and inspiration.
It was the feeling of the place that did it. From the highest point of the hinterland behind Byron Bay, Olivia Newton-John could see 100 kilometres of coast, and I a broad swath of the magnificent Pacific Ocean. It was September 2003, and she was grieving the death of her mother Irene. Driving through the hinterland with close friend Gregg Cave, she noticed a for sale sign. and serendipitously decided to take a look.
It was an abandoned resort. Sensing the Spirit of Mother Earth (Gaia) around them. and awed by one of the best views in Australia, they hatched a plan to go into the resort business. A few other friends bought in, and the Gaia Retreat and Spa was born. It would be a sanctuary, in honour of Irene.
Gaia, which caters for up to 40 guests at a time, has been open for more than a year now, and Cave is its resident director. Newton-John, the 57-year-old star of Grease and Xanadu, regularly returns from the United States to place her personal stamp on its 20 acres of landscaped gardens, meditation points and leisure facilities.
“Gaia is a little piece of heaven where I can be and not have to be ‘on’, if that makes sense,” she says. “It’s the kind of place where you can completely relax in comfort, wander, be alone if you choose, or simply be with nature.”
For Newton-John, that search for serenity has never been more necessary. With the death of her mother still on her mind, her anguish was intensified last July when her longstanding partner, cameraman Patrick McDermott, disappeared without trace after an overnight fishing expedition off San Pedro, California. The police investigation continues, but Newton-John’s challenge now is to overcome the horror of the unexplained loss by moving on with her life.
“When you go through anything difficult you have to have hope,” she says. “Hope keeps you going - otherwise we’d all give up. Everyone experiences pain and suffering in their lives and it’s how you cope with it that counts. Whatever gets you through is OK, whether it’s religion, faith in something, faith in your dog or nature - that’s what counts.” Her own faith is sustained through love and relationships, and it’s clear that 20-year-old daughter Chloe and friends like Cave have never been more important to her.
Yet, ironically, the songs of hope and strength that are included on her aptly titled new album, Stronger Than Before, and which seem to speak directly to her current situation, were actually written prior to the ill-fated fishing expedition when the boat returned with everything except her partner still aboard. Songs written in the context of a breast cancer survivor (“a spark of hope… a belief in miracles”) now apply equally in the context of personal loss. Newton-John agrees. “This album does that,” she says. She starts to elaborate, but then sighs and falls silent.
“When you’re having a hard time, work is a good thing because it keeps you focused on something else,” she says.
She was already committed to a US tour last year when McDermott disappeared, plunging her into darkness. She considered the unthinkable cancelling but decided against it. Cave travelled with her during the tour. “It was the best decision I could have made, because it was a positive move forward,” she says. “Life goes on and you have to live. You need to do the best that you can, and by singing I feel like I’m not only helping other people, but I’m also helping myself to heal. Music is such a healing thing.”
The ultimate therapy during troubled times, though, has been songwriting. While the bulk of her early success, from Eurovision Song Contests through the early-1970s hits like Let Me Be There, I Honestly Love You, Banks of the Ohio, Have You Never Been Mellow and Please Mr Please, was achieved with songs written by others, Newton-John now writes much of her own material. It began during her battle with breast cancer in the 1990s. The Gaia concept emerged at the same time.
While she had always been encouraged to write songs, and over the years had filled hundreds of tapes with ideas, she never had the confidence to record them. But the confrontation with her own mortality emboldened her, and the groundbreaking album, entitled Gaia, was released in 1994.
“Those songs on Gaia just came out of my soul. It was as if they were just there and I had to sing them!” she says. “I love the creative process of writing a song because it’s always a wonderful journey and you end up sharing a lot of very personal things, especially when you’re writing with someone else. It’s like a therapy session.”
Recording the 10 tracks that appear on Stronger Than Before, which she’s released in partnership with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, was also therapeutic. “It was a wonderful experience because it was 13 years on from my own illness and I was writing positive songs for women who were going through that experience that I’d been through.”
“In a way, Stronger Than Before is like a sequel to Gaia - here I am 13 years later. I’ve gotten through it and so can you! It was written with a real purpose of helping and healing.”
But of all the tracks on the upbeat celebration of hope and the belief in miracles, it’s the final song Serenity that means the most to her.
She refers to it several times in conversation, and an elaboration of it will provide much of the creative direction for her next recording project, although she says the pain is still too intense to envisage when that will be.
“At this time in my life, my challenge is living. I count my blessings every day, and work is something I enjoy now. I’m not going to do a lot of touring, though, because it’s hard now. I’m just enjoying being at home with my animals and friends, and just ‘being’, really.”
She’s also become the classic stage-mum, doting on the career of her rock-starlet daughter Chloe as she embarks upon her first album, Lonely Nights in Paradise. “I’m going to be her roadie and her groupie, following her around!” she says, having just returned from a final mixing session for the album. “That’s what I want to do!”
She’s also channelling her energies into her health and environmental concerns. For the past few years she’s been raising money for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre at Austin Hospital, Melbourne, which will be designed to include a sanctuary, not unlike a mini-Gaia, in the grounds. “It will be there if you want a foot massage, someone to talk to, or to go on the web and read about the latest treatments,” she says.
She’s looking forward to performing for the first time with the Sydney Symphony in March, but even those performances at the Sydney Opera House bring with them a certain sense of loss. Olivia’s father Brin was, for many years, a famous broadcaster of classical music on 2MBS-FM, and even today, she thinks of him when she hears the orchestral and chamber music repertoire.
“My parents separated when I was quite young,” she says, “and my fondest memories of my father when I used to stay with him in Newcastle were watching him walking around the apartment conducting. For many years I had difficulty listening to classical music because it made me very sad. I connected it to my dad and he wasn’t there. And when he passed away I couldn’t listen to it at all.”
Meanwhile, back at Gaia, the red-browed finches are playing in the bushes outside one of the luxury apartments, and Cave is watching out for the native pigeons that regularly feed in the retreat’s trees. It’s been a warm, wet summer up here, and there’s a sense of life-in-abundance that envelops you and sweeps you along with its spirit of growth. And like the migrating birds, Olivia too will return here soon, irresistibly drawn by the force of nature and the life-giving richness of this earth.
Olivia Newton-John with the Sydney Symphony, Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Tuesday, 14 March, Wednesday, 15 March & Friday 17 March, 2006 Sydney Opera House (02) 9250 7777 www.sydneyoperahouse.com
Stronger Than Before, available on Warner Music, from 3 March
More from Olivia’s 2006 Australian tour.