Movie Music Monday – Grease

Two Grease tie-in’s today – first, Jeff Conaway was born today in 1950. On TV he played struggling actor Bobby Wheeler in Taxi, Prince Erik Greystone in Wizards and Warriors, security officer Zack Allan on Babylon 5, and Howard Griffin on Murder, She Wrote. In Grease, he played Kenickie.

The second tie is is that on this day in 1974, I Honestly Love You by Olivia Newton-John hit #1.

From songfacts.com:

This was written by the leading American songwriter Jeff Barry and the Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen, who was working on his album Continental American. Allen brought Barry in to write and they came up with “I Honestly Love You.” They made a demo of the song for their own purposes, but somehow that demo made its way to Olivia Newton-John’s producer John Farrar, who played it for the singer.

Olivia loved the song, but Allen wanted to keep it for himself. Barry convinced him that letting Olivia record it was a good idea, since she was one of the most popular singers in the world and more likely to have a hit with it. Allen agreed, and it proved a shrewd move; the song became a huge hit and helped launch Allen’s career as a songwriter.

Olivia Newton-John recorded this in London. She said: “I remember in a little tiny rickety studio, it was so small. The control room was upstairs and John Farrar was up there with the engineer and I was underneath and they had to sit still because it would creak, and you’d hear it in the microphone.”

This won 1974 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance. It was Olivia Newton-John’s first ever #1 in the US and Canada, and it also topped the charts in Australia.

In her 2019 memoir, Don’t Stop Believin’, Newton-John recalled when she first heard the song: “My heart stopped when I heard the lyrics: ‘I love you… I honestly love you.’ It was so simple, with a meaning that was deeper than the ocean. Those words made me stop and think because they touched me. I could certainly relate, and I knew that everyone would be able to make those words fit their own personal story of love and perhaps even loss. Just putting the word ‘honestly’ into the mix made it even more poignant. No lies. No denying it. I honestly love you.”