One night after a show in London, we had dinner with a group of friends. One of the guys offhandedly said to me, ‘Olivia, you are very ambitious.’ Right on the spot, I burst into tears. Back then, ‘ambitious’ was a dirty word to call someone, especially a woman.
‘I’m not ambitious!’ I cried.
I was really hurt because I associated ambition with clawing your way to the top – as if you would do anything or sleep with someone to make it big in the world of show business. That was the insinuation behind the word. Right or wrong, that was my impression when I was that young and someone saying it to my face really stung. Only later would I realise that it’s a compliment to be called ambitious and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. Early on, however, I would see how certain men didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a woman being in charge of her own destiny or striving for something big.
One of my friends helped me read between the lines: ‘A lot of men don’t feel comfortable with women being in charge or knowing what they want in life and working towards it.’
My fortitude was actually a blessing I would need down the line, although I preferred the word ‘strong’.
I know I got that strength from Mum and watching what she went through surviving divorce and moving to another country to help her daughter fly. She was feminist before the word came into fashion, and she was so strong, smart and selfless. And that was something to be admired.
She taught me that you don’t know how strong you are until you’re really tested.
Over the next couple of years, Pat and I hit the road whenever the agent booked us gigs, and we even returned to Australia where she re-met her husband-to-be, the amazingly talented songwriter and producer John Farrar. We had all been friends for years. Of course, later he would write and produce some of my biggest hits and become a trusted friend for life alongside Pat.
From first meeting, John Farrar remembers, ‘I was playing in this band called The Strangers and we were on a TV show. Liv and I met on the set. I remember thinking, “She’s a very cute little girl.” Then I watched as everybody in the studio fell in love with her almost immediately.
‘I knew she had a lovely sound that was different and unique.’
When I turned twenty-one, Bruce and I got engaged, which created a stir since he was separated at the time but not quite divorced. He followed us to Australia when Pat and I went back to do a TV special, but this provoked a scandal when Bruce declared his love for me openly. I was abruptly fired from the TV show because of my boyfriend’s ‘entanglements’. I was mortified and felt so badly for Pat.
The bad news continued to roll in. After performing for the troops once more, we came back to England on a military plane. The immigration officer at the airport noticed that Pat’s visa had expired and refused to extend it. He even stamped it void. She was terribly upset because she wouldn’t be allowed back into England. I always had an English and Australian passport thanks to my mother, so I could return to England to be with Bruce. Pat was the one who told me to go back to London and be with my fiancé. I felt so guilty because I was allowed to return and she couldn’t be with me.
‘You’re ready to do this on your own,’ she generously insisted.
I decided to return to London to be with Bruce and pursue a solo career. But my heart was hurting. Pat and I had been joined at the hip for so long I wasn’t even sure if I could sing without her.
Back in London, I moved in with Bruce, and soon I heard that Pat was to marry John Farrar. I was so excited and we remembered how long ago I told her, ‘You should go back to Australia and marry that lovely John Farrar.’ Meanwhile, I was happily nesting with Bruce and our Irish setters, Geordie and Murphy. There wasn’t much time for hanging out in our flat because my fiancé’s band, The Shadows, were very famous in Europe, Japan and England.
Sadly, one member of their group, an incredibly talented bass player named John Rostill, had died. John wrote ‘Let Me Be There’, ‘If You Love Me, Let Me Know’ and ‘Please Mr Please’, and tragically never lived to see the success of his songs. After his passing, Hank Marvin and Bruce decided to start fresh and create a trio. They were looking for someone and I suggested John Farrar – Pat’s new husband – because he was such an amazing singer, guitarist and songwriter. It wasn’t long before it was settled. They knew of John and his talent and quickly offered him the position.
The next thing I knew Pat was back in England with John and they moved into the house I shared with Bruce. It felt great to have everyone under the one roof and it was lovely to have Pat around again. With everyone together, John and Bruce began to produce my first album, which was a happy time but also a guilty one. It must have been very hard for Pat to watch her husband produce me without her. I felt my fair share of pangs, but Pat supported me and John. I’ve always respected her grace and maturity.
We cut the album at the legendary Abbey Road Studios where I spent my days with dog Geordie at my feet. There was a moment when he actually knocked the mic stand during a guitar solo in ‘If Not For You’. We left the sound on the album and it still makes me smile when I hear it.
It also makes me smile when I remember that The Beatles were in the next studio with George Martin recording their new album. I was lucky enough to meet them all as Bruce was good friends with the most famous band of all time. In fact, he told me that Paul offered him his publishing on a song, but first he would want to give it a listen. Paul pulled his guitar out of his car boot and played a few bars of the song to Bruce, who turned it down. It had a different working title then, but it was ‘Yesterday’!
One day I walked in and found John and Yoko sitting around with their arms and legs entwined, young and in love. It’s a beautiful memory. I wouldn’t see Yoko again until many years later when I was on my honeymoon. By then, John was gone. So tragic.
In November of 1971, at the age of twenty-one, I released my debut studio album, If Not For You. The single of that name was written by Bob Dylan and was a major hit. George Harrison had also done a version of it. London disc jockeys, along with romantics everywhere, embraced it. It was an excellent song for lovers of any age.
Decades later, I would find out that it’s my husband John’s favourite song.
It was exciting to have an album out and the next months went by in a blur of getting-to-know-you promotional appearances on television shows across Europe, the UK and Australia, along with a stage tour. Perhaps I was too young to handle it all, but I went down a path that I would later regret, which led to Bruce and me breaking off our engagement.
I always had the utmost respect for Bruce who helped to create my sound, and I will be forever grateful to him. He was a very funny man with an amazing creative sensibility, and he also knew how to nurture me. Bruce came up with the idea of the bass voice for my first country records. He helped me develop my taste in clothing and opened my eyes to different types of music and food. I owe him a great deal.
After our break-up, I went to the South of France on holiday. I was sitting on the white sandy beach in Monte Carlo and my friend Chantal from Australia, who I was now sharing a flat with in London, invited me to meet her fiancé’s cousin. Out of the water swam a very tall, very blond, very handsome man who was introduced to me as Lee Kramer. We went out that night as a group, and he leaned over and told me, ‘You sure look better at night than in the daytime.’
Well, he certainly had my attention!
We ended the evening at a club, and I was sure I’d never see him again. The next day I was going back to England. Who was sitting next to me on the flight? Answer: Lee Kramer. He would tell me many years later that he actually paid someone off to get that seat by my side. I ended up dating Lee for a few years and he even became my manager.
My career was continuing to do well, including a gig on Eurovision in 1974. I was asked to represent England and sang a different song each week on The Cliff Richard Show, with the public voting for their favourite. Ultimately, I came in third at Eurovision tha
t year, with those incredibly talented people in ABBA taking it out with their song ‘Waterloo’. (I loved ABBA and we became fast friends.)
It was a great career moment, but the same couldn’t be said for my personal life. After a break-up with Lee, it was a shambles. For a short time, Bruce and I got back together, but that didn’t work out either.
Single again, I had a few diversions. One day, Russ Regan, head of the record company UNI called me on the phone about my song ‘If Not For You’. Russ would encourage me later to move to the US and I will forever be grateful. He passed away recently, but sadly before I was able to thank him for his early words of encouragement.
‘Honey, you got a hit,’ he said. ‘Your song is number twenty-five on the Billboard charts. You gotta get over here!’
That settled it, then. Next stop: America.
The offer to travel to America came at a time when I was settling down in London, despite my recent break-up. I had to say goodbye to a little dream house, my first that I bought with my own money. It was an old English cottage with a garden in the back and I was so excited about fixing it up. The hardest part was having to re-home my precious dogs who went to live with a family in the country. Then I had to say goodbye to Mum and move across the world, where I didn’t know a single person.
A few tears and hugs later and I was on that plane.
Singing on television was the best way to get your song into the minds of the public, and one of my first performances was on a very popular show hosted by a legend. It was exciting to sing ‘If’ on The Dean Martin Show and later on the same episode to do a medley featuring ‘Just a Little Lovin”/‘True Love’ with the Rat Pack legend, which became my first performance in the United States.
Dean was very sweet to me and even a bit shy. I was so young and fearful, but he immediately put me at ease. He treated me like a peer and even knew a few of my songs. All of a sudden, the fear slipped away and we began to sing together. His kindness got me through the moment, and I smiled as he drank what would probably look like whisky to the audience. It was really dark iced tea and he was perfectly sober.
In a blink, I was in another studio a few weeks later singing for Andy Williams on his television program. He was also incredibly supportive, as was Bob Hope, another one of my American idols. Later in my life when Chloe was born, Bob Hope kindly sent her a baby gift!
I couldn’t believe I was singing with these legends, lovely men who I always admired.
I started my American journey in New York, but my heart soon belonged to California. It was so different from Manhattan where I had been so shocked by the way people in the shops were so abrupt. ‘Whadda you want?’ they would ask. I burst into tears the first time someone said that to me. I guess I still had some adapting to do.
Eventually I moved to Los Angeles, which reminded me of Australia with its beautiful weather, endless sand, surf and beaches. I’ll never forget my first drive down Pacific Coast Highway, my hair doing a little dance out the window. In my little green Volkswagen bug (my first car in the USA), I flipped around the radio dial. Oh my gosh! I was on the radio in America! The thrill shot right through me.
When I first arrived, I stayed at the Hilton in Universal City. As it turned out, one of the biggest movie stars in the business was staying in the hotel. One day, I went downstairs to the coffee shop and was paged on the intercom system. Who knew that I was here?
It was him – he was looking for that blonde Aussie girl he saw wandering through the hotel lobby. Tall, dark and oh-so-handsome, the movie star came over to my table and introduced himself.
‘Hi, I’m ——’
That much I knew!
Basically, he said, in so many words, that he had affairs with most of the girl singers in town and I was next on his list. My reaction? I was terrified! I wasn’t going to be the next anything! I don’t remember exactly what I said to send him on his way, but I laughed (with him) and mentioned that I was very work-focused (true, and safe!). Inside, my mind was roaring: you are not going to be that girl! Then it came to me. There was only one thing to say to him. ‘I have a boyfriend,’ I stammered. Not exactly true, but it did the job in the moment.
He was a Hollywood bad-boy legend with a long list of girlfriends. Not too long after our coffee shop encounter, he ended up dating a friend of mine, actress Susan George. By then I was staying with her and my sister Rona at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He called up one night when Susan wasn’t there and asked me out again. It was easier this time and I firmly said, ‘You can’t do that! You’re dating my friend!’
But he could and did ask. He was my first major movie star encounter, after all!
His name?
I’ll never tell.
My decision to move to America can also be credited to Australian singing legend Helen Reddy. One evening I was in Florida and went to see my fellow Aussie in concert. I knew Helen’s sister, Toni Lamond, quite well and she brought me backstage to meet Helen and her husband Jeff, a wild, fun and crazy guy. After what was a spectacular show, I walked into her dressing room where Helen was so warm and charming. She knew the music business and was so helpful to a new songbird finding her wings in the USA.
‘Look, darling,’ she said to me. ‘If you want to make it in America, you must live here. You have to be available to do things when they ask you. You need to be here, so you must move.’
Helen planted a seed in me. This trip to America wasn’t just a visit; I was actually relocating. It proved to be a good call.
After my first big hit, ‘If Not For You’, debuted on the American charts at number 25 in 1971, I had an even bigger hit in 1974 with the song ‘If You Love Me, Let Me Know’ written by John Rostill and produced by Bruce Welch and John Farrar
America was letting me know that the welcome mat was out. I made the big move.
Still unsure of where to settle, I stayed at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, a place a lot of people in the music industry used as their home base. My new home wasn’t much more than one of those little boxy rooms with a miniscule kitchenette. I remember lying in my bed the first night at the Sunset Marquis and hearing gunshots coming from the streets. Oh my! Can I go home now? Everything terrible I’d heard about America seemed to be true: it was the wild, wild west. I lay there wondering if I’d made the right decision.
The morning I arrived at the hotel, I ran into Glenn Frey from The Eagles who also considered the hotel his Los Angeles ‘home’. He had that great long rocker hair and carried his guitar case like it was the most important thing in his world – and it probably was. Glenn introduced himself and we talked about our touring lives for a few minutes.
The next day, I received a dozen red roses with a note that read: Welcome to America. Glenn Frey. It was so touching to me that someone really famous from a band I loved would go out of his way to make me feel that I was indeed welcome in this new and sometimes scary place. His lovely gesture would never be forgotten, although I didn’t have a chance to thank him. I never really saw him again.
Were there more homesickness pangs to come? Of course. There were times when I felt the walls were closing in and thought, What am I doing here? But they passed quickly as my career took the next step, and soon Lee followed me to America and we made up. I was back with my boyfriend and he was acting as my manager again.
My life on the road was about to launch as I embarked on my first major American tour, starting in the heartland of Minneapolis, Minnesota. There was just one problem: I didn’t have a band. Thankfully John Farrar came over to play lead guitar and be my musical director, and my agency arranged some musicians for me.
That first band didn’t gel and they couldn’t play my music. By the end of our first eight-hour rehearsal, they hadn’t learned it at all.
To put it mildly, it was a disaster of epic proportions.
‘Livvy, this isn’t working,’ John warned me.
‘We have to get some good musicians,’ I replied in a worried voice. I couldn�
�t blow this – it would be the first time an American audience would hear my entire set, not just a few songs on different TV shows.
John jumped on the phone. We found a band called This Oneness and a few hours later, the room was flooded with new faces strumming guitars and playing keyboard and the drums. We rehearsed all night long before getting on the bus at the crack of dawn (where we practised more), as we set our sights on that first Minnesota date.
Our backstage was a locker room. John came over to me before we went on and sat on one of those low benches, and I waited for him to give me one of those heart-warming ‘we can do it’ speeches. But he didn’t.
‘Liv, I’m terrified,’ he confided. ‘I’ve never played in America.’ This was being said by one of the most brilliant musicians on the planet and the most talented one I would ever know.
‘We’re going to be okay . . . I think,’ I said in a shaking voice.
‘We’re going to be okay?’ he asked with twelve more question marks.
‘Yes,’ I said, although I wasn’t really sure.
For once, I ended up comforting him!
‘Olivia is the one who usually gets really nervous before the show. On this first night, she had to calm me down,’ John Farrar remembers. John is someone who always wants everything to be perfect, and we share that trait.
I was still a bundle of nerves and wondered if the lyrics in my head would be able to actually leave my mouth in song form. This was in the days before musicians had autocue to remind us of the lyrics. I was so frantic that I would forget a line or mess one up that I ran the words of the songs in my head the entire day. In the bus. In the bathroom. In the quiet moments when I tried to calm my terror. Would it be enough?
Something happens in the moment when prep time is over and I take that first step onto the stage. It’s the same now as it was on those first nights in England, Australia and America.
Don't Stop Believin' Page 5