There was no hint of trouble on that marvelous April evening in Morristown five years ago.
“She still can sing. And she’s looking remarkably good, too,” I reported after Olivia Newton-John’s 90-minute romp at the Mayo Performing Arts Center.
Romp was no exaggeration: She led her seven-piece band through a gleeful round of jumping jacks for her suggestive 1981 hit, Physical.
“It’s hard to believe that song was banned,” mused the Australian icon, sounding more like the cheerful girl-next-door of her early career. “Compared to what’s on the radio now, it’s like a lullaby!”
One month after that 2017 show, news emerged that Newton-John’s breast cancer had returned, and was spreading.
Tributes have rolled in since her death Monday at age 73.
“My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better,” John Travolta, her Grease co-star (1978), posted on Instagram. “I love you so much.”
Fans showed lots of love, which Newton-John returned, at MPAC. Sporting a sequined cowboy hat, she reprised her “country” hits: Have You Never Been Mellow, Please Mister Please, and a boisterous Let Me Be There.
(Yes, she really did beat Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn as the Country Music Association’s top female singer of 1974.)
She performed original compositions, too, about dolphins, and the rain forest. One, hauntingly titled Not Gonna Give Into It, was inspired by her battles with breast cancer.
When Newton-John turned the Grease anthem Summer Nights into a boys-vs.-girls singalong, everyone believed in magic again.
Her encore, I Honestly Love You, made an adolescent heart beat faster once upon a time. This time, it left a lump in my throat.
We honestly love our icons, don’t we?
