While I was in High School, a pal of mine was on the Olivia Newton John Physical tour. They were doing an HBO Special in Salt Lake City and Olivia had this vision that she wanted to disappear in an explosion at the end of her song Xanadu. My friend knew I knew a lot about Stage Pyrotechnics and asked me if I wanted to come out and do the explosion. What kid wouldn’t want to do that. First of all, I got to blow stuff up and secondly, it was for Olivia Newton John who every High School boy had a crush on. This was way before you needed licenses to do this sort of thing.
When it came time for rehearsals, I was introduced to Olivia and I told her what the effect will look like, where she needed to stand, where I was standing, etc. Where I was positioned was right behind the drummer on stage and she was on a platform above me. We ran through the first song and she was off her mark and I did not fire the explosions. The song ended and she commented to me “Are you enjoying the show?” Now I knew exactly what she was thinking since I was below her and she was wearing a dress, but what she thought couldn’t have been further from the truth. This shy High School kid stepped up on the platform where she was and I quietly told her that she needed to stand further upstage so that “accidents” didn’t happen and she would not get blown up by the fireworks.
She quickly realized that I had no ill intentions (I was a million shades of red as you can imagine), and I had her best interests in mind, and was totally being professional (and really embarrassed that she would think that of me). She thanked me and gave me a kiss on the cheek and we remained friends until her death.
For those interested, here is the video. At 1:10 you can see her asking me if I am ready (in the middle of the song), because the next time she comes to that part of the stage, the explosions go off. I gave her the thumbs up, she gave me a wink and a big smile which gave this High School kid all the confidence in the world!
Also, during this video shoot, I got to meet Dennis Tufano, the lead singer for The Buckinghams, who I listened to a lot as a kid because my Mom always played their music. He was the male backup singer for Olivia for this tour.