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Arts & Entertainment
Safe and sound
Jane Olivor is a diva with a huge heart
Published Thursday, 29-Apr-2004 in issue 853
Safe Return (PS Classics) is the right name for Jane Olivor’s new live CD and DVD, just released this week. Returning to the site of her last live CD, released 22 years ago, Olivor and the audience at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston embark on an evening of mutual admiration. The excitement is palatable in both the singer’s delivery and in the audience’s reaction. A long-time favorite of the gay community, Olivor remains one of the great divas of her generation and, with her latest release, has the opportunity to reach a whole new generation of listeners.
The Gay & Lesbian Times: When I interviewed you a few years ago, as you were about to embark on a holiday concert tour with dates in Chicago, Minneapolis and Boston, you talked about your special connection to Boston and the area. Was Safe Return recorded at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston as a way to say thank you to those fans?
Jane Olivor: In a way. And I just feel at home in Boston. Maybe because it’s so English and my last name is Olivor and I love England (laughs) and want to return there. I feel very at home in Boston. It’s the old world, so to speak. And my fans are great there and they always come to the concerts. It was just perfect in every way.
GLT: I love the way you slightly altered the lyrics to “You” to reflect your affection for your audience. You sing, “You are the crowd that sits quiet/Listening to me/And all the mad sense I make.” I can’t imagine Madonna doing something like that. You have this great connection to [the audience].
JO: They’re there in front of me and they’re real and always have been and always will. They’re not a thing. They’re individual human beings. It’s very important for me to make – the cliché is to make a connection – but I thought of that 30 years ago without putting a word to it. When you have the compulsion to connect to another human being and touch them or help them or tap them in some way, it goes without words. I don’t ever walk on a stage [and say], “I think I’ll connect to them.” It sounds ridiculous to me. A conviction and a compulsion is in your heart. I love to do that and they hear it.
GLT: You tell a wonderful story on Safe Return about the mystery surrounding your background when you first made your debut. How did it feel to be such an enigma?
JO: I never thought of myself as an enigma. I felt myself a person starting out on a curious journey. It’s like sex symbols don’t think they are sexy.
GLT: You perform a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Brooklyn Roads”. Is he someone that you admire?
JO: I admire his writing a great deal. I think he took a lot of chances as a male performer. He’s out there. He’s not crazy, he’s not dirty. He’s just Neil. He took a great chance, just by being Neil Diamond. He’s quite versatile. The person who can write “Cherry Cherry” and “Brooklyn Roads” has a lot to say. He goes from one extreme to the other, and that’s very hard. Neil has a lot of depth. He doesn’t affect me in that way, I’m sorry to say, but women love him! They just adore him.
GLT: He’s kind of like a Jewish Tom Jones. … There is audible joy on both the part of the audience and you, the performer, when you sing trademark songs such as “Carousel Of Love”, “Some Enchanted Evening”, “The Big Parade” and “One More Ride On The Merry-Go-Round”, to name a few.
JO: I know, I know. And I’m telling you, what a gift. It overwhelms me, and I can’t stop, I have to keep going. Part of me wants to stop and say, “Holy cow!”
GLT: That’s right, because you never have a chance to stop and take it all in because you have to keep moving.
JO: That’s right! It’s like I want to stop the song and say, “This is fabulous!”
GLT: You could do a Sally Field, “You like me, you really like me!”
JO: Or something like that. I’m not a superstar here. But we all get really involved with each other. It’s like a big party sometimes.
GLT: “Sippin’ Wine” is a country number by Stephen Schwartz – have you ever considered doing an entire album in that style?
JO: Country? Not really. But I do like a lot of country. I love rhythm. I love Irish jigs. I love bluegrass. I’m going to see [bluegrass band] Blue Highway in a few weeks. I have loved bluegrass since I was 14. The Greenbriar Boys and Earl Scruggs. I love that twangy four-note interval. And I love that. Those are my roots.
GLT: You reprise two songs, John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” and Dan Fogelberg’s “Run For The Roses”, which also originally appeared on your 1982 In Concert CD. Why did you choose to include those two songs?
JO: I simply like them. I just love them. They’re colorful songs. “Annie’s Song” – musically I can riff on that and go round and round, like vine grows around a gate. I think they’re just beautiful. I love horses, and that’s no joke.
GLT: You tell a story about that in your introduction to “Run For The Roses”, regarding the movie and the book Seabiscuit.
JO: In the middle of summer I got the chills when [writer Laura] Hillenbrand described the races. Having watched the races when I was a child, from the stable area and on television, she’s pretty accurate. I can look at a picture, Gregg, of horses running down the stretch and I can hear the ground being kicked up, I can hear the breathing, I can hear the whip, I can hear the hooves.
GLT: I’ve never been to the races, but now you are making me want to go.
JO: It’s spontaneous and it’s real and it’s beautiful. I just don’t like to see the horses whipped that much.
GLT: In your introduction to “The Last Time I Felt Like This”, you spoke of your experience singing the duet with Johnny Mathis. On your 2000 studio album, you sang a duet with Gene Pitney. Are there any other performers with whom you would like to sing and record a duet?
JO: Yeah, Johnny Depp [laughs].
GLT: I didn’t know he could sing.
JO: Neither did I [laughs]. But he’s so gorgeous and he’s such a great actor, I just hope he can. [Calls out] Johnny! That’ll be my second Johnny.
GLT: It’s wonderful to see that you also included co-compositions, such as “The Right Garden”, “Pretty Girl”, “Where There Is Love” and the title track. Please tell me something about these songs.
JO: I start a song with the chorus, melodically. I can’t write lyrics, Gregg, and I wish I could. I have great, huge respect for people who are wonderful lyricists. Lyrics are not conversation and when they are, they are not lyrics and they don’t belong in a song. Lyrics are the essence of conversation, the essence of communication. It is the honest cream of the milk. I have been really blessed to have written with great lyricists: Molly-Ann Leikin, Kathy Wakefield and Russell Walden. I’m so grateful for them because they say what I would write if I were a lyricist. I guess it’s a spiritual thing, a meeting of the heart and mind, when people take over on the same plane and make it better than you could have.
GLT: It’s true collaboration.
JO: That’s the truth. They put it through them and make it better.
GLT: The title track, “Safe Return”, takes on an extra special meaning at this time with our troops overseas and the threat of terrorism hovering over the country.
JO: We were thinking about 9/11. It could be about anybody coming home safely from a trip or from the war. None of us can go to be these days without thinking of those poor people, those poor troops over there who are risking their lives. We should all pray for their safe return, and some kind of intelligent, new peace over there.
Jane Olivor’s new live CD is Safe Return, released April 27. 
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