Olivia Newton-John - Olivia in Concert, Weber State University, Ogden, UT, 10-13-1982

Over the past week or two, I've posted all the Olivia Newton-John albums I have worthy posting. This if the fifth album I'm posting from her, and the last. (Unless I find things I'd previously missed, of course.) In my opinion, this is the ideal live album of her in her musical prime. So if you had to get just one of the five albums from her I've posted, I'd suggest this one.

Newton-John became a superstar in 1978, thanks to her lead role in the movie "Grease." But in 1981 she took her superstardom to an even higher level, mostly thanks to the title song of her 1981 album, "Physical." That song spent 10 weeks at Number One in the U.S., tying the record for the longest, and was the best-selling song of the 1980s. 

However, it turned out that her early 1980s peak didn't last that long. She had a few more big hits through 1983 (like "Make a Move on Me," "Heart Attack," and "Twist of Fate"), but only minor hits after that. I suspect some of that commercial decline was that she essentially stopped touring for many years. She did a big tour in 1982 to promote the "Physical" album. But after that, she didn't tour again until 1998! (She started a tour in 1992, but quickly canceled it after she was diagnosed with cancer, and had to seek treatment.) She has put out four live albums, but all of them date from after her resumption of touring in 1998, long after her commercial peak. 

She did document her 1982, but only on video format. This concert was released as the video "Olivia in Concert." I simply took that video and converted it to audio, then chopped it into mp3s. I also cut out a video presentation of the highlights of her career at the start of the video, since one has to see that to appreciate it. The sound quality is excellent, with no problems. 

In this concert, Newton-John played just about all her biggest hits, from the early 1970s until "Heart Attack," which had been released earlier in 1982. So this also doubles as an effective "best of" collection.  

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 Deeper than the Night (Olivia Newton-John)
02 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Let Me Be There (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Please Mr. Please (Olivia Newton-John)
05 If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John)
06 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Jolene (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
09 Xanadu (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Magic (Olivia Newton-John)
11 Suddenly (Olivia Newton-John)
12 A Little More Love (Olivia Newton-John)
13 Silvery Rain (Olivia Newton-John)
14 Falling (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Heart Attack (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Make a Move on Me (Olivia Newton-John)
17 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
18 Hopelessly Devoted to You (Olivia Newton-John)
19 You're the One that I Want (Olivia Newton-John)
20 Physical (Olivia Newton-John)
21 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/STrbk7mg

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/gkavzBxQvQk6spu/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, I think. It's from promotional material for the DVD of it, at least.

Olivia Newton-John - Hollywood Nights (1980)

Here's a really interesting, entirely unreleased album by Olivia Newton-John. It's an American TV special she did in 1980 called "Hollywood Nights." It features some songs she never recorded on any album, as well as duets with an impressive bunch of guest stars: Cliff Richard, Elton John, Andy Gibb, Gene Kelly, Tina Turner, Peaches (of Peaches and Herb), Toni Tennille (of Captain and Tennille) & Karen Carpenter.

By 1980, Newton-John had become a worldwide superstar, mainly thanks due to her starring role in the 1978 movie "Grease." In 1980, she was due to have her second big starring movie role, in the movie "Xanadu." That movie would get released in August 1980, and it would turn out to be a flop, although the soundtrack by Newton-John and E.L.O. would be a big hit. This hour-long TV special was broadcast in April 1980, and seems to have served as kind of a warm-up for the movie. It featured one song that would be in the movie, "Suddenly," and also featured Newton-John duetting with Gene Kelly, as would happen in the movie, but with a different song. (Kelly, a star from a much earlier era, was 68 years old at the time.) They sang the classic song "Makin' Whoopee," but with totally different lyrics, an update called "Makin' Movies," which was all about the movie business.

But while there were those teasers about the upcoming movie, mostly the special was just a showcase for Newton-John's talent, and especially to sing duets with many musicians she liked. Probably the highlight is a version of Elton John's classic song "Candle in the Wind," mostly sung by Newton-John but with Elton playing piano and singing some towards the end. He also got to promote his new single at the time, "Little Jeannie," the only song here without Newton-John's involvement.

There were some even more unexpected songs. She started the show with a cover of "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger, which is a song she otherwise never performed or recorded. She also did "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles probably for the only time ever, with Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille and Karen Carpenter all taking lead vocals at various point as well. And "Oh Boy" by Buddy Holly was another song she otherwise never did, done here with Cliff Richard, Elton John and Andy Gibb also taking turns with the lead vocals.

I cut out about five minutes from the special. That was all non-musical stuff, mostly jokey segments with actors Dick Clark and/or Ted Knight. Trust me, that's not the kind of thing with high replay value. But if you feel you're missing out, you can find the entire video of this special on YouTube. 

The special was a mixture of songs performed in front of an audience and songs done earlier in some studio without any audience. I have no idea when or where each part of it was recorded, only that it was broadcast in April 1980. I found out that tidbit from this nice fan website, which includes lots of screenshots from the special, as well as a link to the YouTube video of the whole thing:

Hollywood Nights Special 

This special is unreleased and it is very likely to stay that way, due to the difficulty of getting the legal rights to all the guest performances. But now, here, at least it's available as an audio album for the first time. 

This album is 42 minutes long 

01 Hollywood Nights (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Deeper than the Night (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Hopelessly Devoted to You (Olivia Newton-John)
04 A Little More Love (Olivia Newton-John)
05 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
06 I Can't Help It (Olivia Newton-John & Andy Gibb)
07 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Oh Boy (Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard, Elton John & Andy Gibb)
09 Suddenly (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 talk (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
11 Makin' Movies [Makin' Whoopee] (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
12 Gimme Some Lovin' (Olivia Newton-John)
13 Candle in the Wind (Olivia Newton-John & Elton John)
14 Little Jeannie (Elton John)
15 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Heartache Tonight (Olivia Newton-John, Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille & Karen Carpenter)
17 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
18 Hollywood Nights [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7Mv22RSn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fdqwk48Vi5S9n15/file 

I made the cover art out of two screenshots from this TV special. I took one screenshot for the words at the top, which were apparently neon signs in front of the building. But at the point in time, Newton-John was relatively small in the overall image, standing on the street. So I went to slightly earlier in the same scene, when her head took up most of the screen, and imposed that on top, using Photoshop. 

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Only Olivia, BBC TV Theatre, London, Britain, 6-8-1977

Here's another BBC album by Olivia Newton-John. It's the third and last one I could find. This one makes up a single short concert, taken from a 1977 BBC TV special called "Only Olivia."

At the time of the concert, Newton-John wasn't nearly as popular in Britain as one might have suspected. She'd had some hits there in the early 1970s. But from 1974 to 1977, she only had two Top 40 hits in Britain, while she'd had 10 in the U.S. Some songs that were big in the U.S, such as "Have You Never Been Mellow," which reached Number Three, didn't chart in Britain at all. The one recent hit she'd had in Britain at the time of this special was "Sam," which made the Top Ten there in early 1977. So it's understandable why she would have wanted to do this BBC special to increase her profile there.

It seems not to have made much of a difference though, because the single she was promoting at the time, "Making a Good Thing Better," was another one that completely failed to even make the charts in Britain. But ultimately it didn't matter, because in 1978 she became a superstar worldwide with the release of the movie "Grease." Her next three singles in Britain, all from that movie, would be two Number Ones and one Number Two!

In the 1970s, there were lots of musical specials of TV, typically variety shows or one with a main star and lots of guest stars. But as the title says, this one was "only Olivia." Generally speaking, she sung her biggest hits until that time. However, one song, "Love Is Alive," is a cover of the 1976 hit single by Gary Wright, and she didn't put it on any of her studio albums. "Slow Dancing" was a song that she put on the album she was just releasing at the time ("Making a Good Thing Better"), but a version by Johnny Rivers also was becoming a big hit in the U.S. around the same time.

By the way, although I'm done posting BBC material by Newton-John, I found two more interesting unreleased albums from her in the course of finding these. I plan on posting them soon. 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Let Me Be There - If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John)
02 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Have You Never Been Mellow (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)
05 Pony Ride (Olivia Newton-John)
06 Let It Shine (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Slow Dancing (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Love Is Alive (Olivia Newton-John)
09 Please Mr. Please (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Nevertheless - As Time Goes By (Olivia Newton-John)
11 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
12 Making a Good Thing Better (Olivia Newton-John)
13 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
14 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WB7bydAp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/r3InxPp8BnTPH9j/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. The font also was the one used for title of the TV show. 

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1974-1981

Here's the second album of singer Olivia Newton-John performing for the BBC. Like the first one, it consists of various sessions, although this one happens to be entirely made of TV show appearances, not radio shows.

Newton-John's fame grew bigger and bigger as the 1970s went on. However, most of the music here comes before 1978, when she became a superstar due to her leading role in the hit movie "Grease." 

The first ten songs all come from 1974. It seems she spent most of the year in Britain, staying there long enough to have her own short-lived BBC TV show called "Moods of Love." It only consisted of four half-hour episodes, but each one was chockablock with songs she sang that she never put on record. Unfortunately, it seems the BBC wiped the recordings (as they so often did back then). Only a few songs from it could still be found on YouTube, and I couldn't use all of those due to sound quality issues. Tracks 5, 6, and 7 here come from her show, which include duets with Cliff Richard and Neil Sedaka.

Here's a link to a fan's webpage about the show, if you want to get frustrated seeing the names of all the song performances that apparently got lost:

Moods Of Love - UK show 

The first two songs are from a show called "Clunk Click." The next two are from "Presenting Nana Mouskouri." One of those, "Sing," features a duet of Newton-John with Mouskouri. Furthermore, she made some appearances on Cliff Richard's BBC TV show that year, "It's Cliff Richard." Those are tracks 8 through 10, and include two more duets with Richard.

Tracks 11 and 12 are from a 1977 appearance on "The Val Doonican Show." If You Love Me (Let Me Know)" was a hit for Newton-John with her being the only one singing lead. But she did a duet version of it with Val Doonican here. Track 13 is from another 1977 show. Track 14 is from the "Top of the Pops" TV show (not to be confused with the radio show of the same name). Normally, performances on this show were lip-synced. However, in this case, Newton-John sang live lead vocals over a prerecorded backing track, so I included it. 

The last song is "Physical" from 1981. By this time, she was such a big star that she probably didn't feel the need to appear on BBC TV or radio much anymore. So we don't get versions of many of her big hits from the late 1970s and 1980s. But luckily we do get this one, which was the biggest hit of her career, thanks to an appearance on the TV show "Stars."

Note that some of the songs here were never recorded for any of her albums or singles, especially most of the duets.

There is one more BBC album coming from her, a 1977 concert. It comes third since this one chronologically starts earlier.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them, except there already are other versions of those songs. ("Sam" from this volume and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" from Volume 1.)

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Someday (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Hands Across the Sea (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Amoureuse (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Sing (Olivia Newton-John & Nana Mouskori)
05 Tea Cosy (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
06 Sing Me (Olivia Newton-John & Neil Sedaka)
07 Nevertheless (Olivia Newton-John)
08 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
09 I’m Leaving It All Up to You (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
11 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
12 If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John & Val Doonican)
13 Let It Shine (Olivia Newton-John)
14 A Little More Love [Live Lead Vocals Only] (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Physical (Olivia Newton-John)

Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BxmDJZwW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y0O1cVwP00MbQ6x/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from a video of her 1978 performance of "A Little More Love" on the "Top of the Pops" TV show.

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1971-1974

As I've mentioned previously, I have a musical associate who has kindly passed on to me some recordings from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops" that are otherwise extremely rare and often unbootlegged until now. He gave me some of those featuring Australian singer Olivia Newton-John from the early 1970s. So I tried to see if I could find enough material to make an entire BBC album out of it. To my surprise, I found enough for three volumes. Here's the first one.

I doubt Olivia Newton-John needs much in the way of an introduction, considering she's one of the best selling singers of all time, with over 100 million records sold. She first became a star in Britain in 1971 with the songs "If Not for You" and "Banks of the Ohio" both reaching the Top Ten there. So it's not surprising that's when she first starting performing for the BBC. The ultra-rare "Top of the Pops" I previously mentioned are tracks 1 through 5, plus 8 and 13. Some other songs appeared on that radio show, but I checked and they were the same as the record versions. Just playing the record versions became the general trend on that show around 1973, so there are no other performances from her after that year. 

Note that four of these seven had BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over the music at times. So I did my usual thing and used the UVR5 audio editing program to get rid of the talking. That's why four songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Those seven songs by themselves wouldn't be enough to make up an album. So I went digging to see what else I could come up with. I got lucky and found a fan site called "Only Olivia." Here's the URL:

https://www.onlyolivia.com/

It has information of probably every BBC TV show appearance she did, so I was easily able to find most of those on YouTube. That's why I found enough for two albums made up of radio and TV sessions, plus another one consisting of a concert. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is from the Harry Secombe Show in 1972. "Close to You" is from a BBC TV movie called "The Case." Tracks 9 through 12 are from another BBC TV movie, "The New Fangled Wandering Minstrel Show." That one co-starred Newton-John with singer Georgie Fame, so that includes two duets by them. Note that for some of these songs, including all the ones from the BBC TV movies, were never released in any form on record.

The last three songs are from another BBC TV show, "Clunk Click," in 1974. Like everything else on this album, these performances are officially unreleased. For most of the songs other than the Top of the Pops and TV movie ones, there was audience applause. I used the MVSEP audio editing program to get rid of most of that, so those songs would fit in with the ones without applause.

The bonus track, "It Must Be Love," is a duet with singer Labi Siffre of a hit song he wrote. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't as good as the rest, so that's why that one is a bonus track. That comes from a short-lived BBC TV show hosted by Newton-John called "Moods of Love," in 1974. There will be more about that show in the next volume.

This album is 44 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Don't Move Away (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
02 Help Me Make It through the Night [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Banks of the Ohio [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Love Song [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
05 What Is Life [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
06 Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Close to You (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
08 Just a Little Too Much (Olivia Newton John)
09 All I Ever Need Is You (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Olivia Newton-John & Georgie Fame)
11 Scarborough Fair (Olivia Newton-John)
12 Yeh Yeh (Olivia Newton-John & Georgie Fame)
13 Let Me Be There (Olivia Newton-John)
14 Long Live Love (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Have Love Will Travel (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Angel Eyes (Olivia Newton-John)

It Must Be Love (Olivia Newton-John & Labi Siffre) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qQ11Yavo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/rgMCXfje6zrNTeU/file

The cover photo shows Olivia Newton-John while on the BBC TV show "Presenting Nana Mouskori," in 1974. A couple of performances from that show are on Volume 2 in this series.