Have You Never Been Mellow?

 It's a fair question, one asked in mild exasperation. Probably with the emphasis on the "never." Have you never been mellow? Chill out, my friend. Unless they were sung ever-so-sweetly by the one and only Olivia Newton-John. Olivia passed away this week after a lengthy bout with cancer. For those of us who grew up in the seventies, it was her voice that let us know that we would be safe from the harsh realities of life. She sang sad songs. She sang happy songs. She kept it poppy and sweet. Like so much of the seventies were. 

Or maybe that's how I choose to remember it. My older brother went to school with a guy who insisted that he met Olivia Newton-John and they went skinny-dipping in Gross Reservoir. Even though he maintained that the signature on his denim bucket hat was that of the Australian songstress, we all knew that Olivia would never be caught dead in a body of water called "gross." 

It was some time after that when I was given the hottest selling album of the summer of 1978, the soundtrack to the movie Grease. Try as I might, I could not escape the music that the rest of the planet was embracing. I had tried to insulate myself from this double-record set by collecting rock and roll, even some of that punk stuff we were hearing so much about. My parents had unwittingly cut through the veneer of cool that I had been so carefully maintaining. When my friends came over and started flipping through my record collection, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Costello. Grease? 

Have you never been mellow? Have you ever tried?

To test my resolve, my friends put on "Hopelessly Devoted To You" during a party at my house. In a fit of pique and in the interest of maintaining my punk rock attitudes, I came down the stairs in three giant steps, stormed into my room and proceeded to tear the vinyl disc from my turntable and folded it in half. Shards of the result were shared among those who witnessed it for months after. 

Two years later, I was swept up in a romance that took me to the opening weekend of Ms. Newton-John's Greek-muse inspired roller disco opus, Xanadu. Perhaps it was intended as a way to introduce a new generation to the dancing impresario Gene Kelly. Or maybe it hoped to cash in on those last remaining disco dollars. But it was with repeat viewings with my high school girlfriend that I learned to appreciate once again the sonorous sweetness of Olivia Newton-John. Her mashup duet with The Tubes stood out for me as the decade of New Wave swept over our nation. It was the following year that Olivia found herself on MTV heavy rotation with her sweaty anthem, Physical. 

Then, decades passed. Every so often, Grease would show up on cable. One of those seventies ballads would show up on my Spotify. And now she's gone. She will be missed every time I ponder that musical question. She may not have stomped so much as fluttered over the Terra, leaving a song in our hearts and minds. Aloha, Olivia.