Angela Mollard: Yesteryear’s of kindness never goes out of style

The death of two Aussie songstresses has thrown us back to yesteryear. But there’s more to those memories than talcum powder, blouses and sideburns, writes Angela Mollard.

It won’t be long now before the jasmine blooms. Not the white one, the old-fashioned pink one which winds and wafts through suburbia and takes me back to an era of talcum powder and blouses and sideburns.

Am I the only one nostalgic for my childhood right now? I find myself touching the fine hairline scar on my arm, a reminder from a mishap on my Raleigh 20 more than 40 years ago, and it all floods back.

The scrapes, the simplicity, my brothers straddling each other’s chests to play “typewriters”, slapping a cheek in an approximation of the carriage return.

On the phone mum tells me she’s been asked to “bring a plate” to a ladies’ lunch and I’m catapulted back to the pre “wellness” world of custard slices, scones and crustless white bread wrapped around tinned asparagus and sealed with a dab of butter.

The death of two songstresses in the same week, two remarkable women whose voices were the soundtrack to our childhoods, will make anyone wistful.

The Seekers’ Judith Durham.

I might’ve groaned when The Seekers was on constant rotation on the record player, my mum in questionable harmony with Judith Durham as she sung Georgy Girl.

But those tunes bury in your psyche, anchor you to people and places and suddenly music performs its mutable magic and it’s you, not Judith or Georgy, swinging down the street so fancy free.

Olivia Newton-John.

Olivia Newton John was the same. She made you believe. That you could be Sandy. That a little more love could make it right, that leotards were sexy and that the one that you wanted could be found even if the gallop of time and feminism has taught us that hopeless devotion shouldn’t be anyone’s life goal.

So affecting was the loss of these two sweet-voiced storytellers that I found myself Googling Barry Manilow lest he, too, might succumb.

But at 79 he appears to still be going strong and by happy coincidence concludes his summer arena tour in Philadelphia tonight.

But it wasn’t Mandy or Sandy that I had streaming through the speakers this week. Rather, the day before we learned of the loss of “our Livvy” came the news that Elton John has recorded a rendition of Tiny Dancer with none other than Britney Spears.

The track is called Hold Me Closer which is precisely what Elton has done, taking Britney under his arm and sharing with her his 1971 classic as she tentatively steps back into music after being released from her conservatorship.

British singer Sir Elton John.

Through that beautiful act of collaboration and generosity I realised that it wasn’t so much a former life I yearned for but that old-school goodness that in childhoods past was a given.

In this brittle post-pandemic world where Hollywood stars punch their colleagues at the Oscars, Kanye West makes a career out of denigrating the mother of his children and former Blur front man Damon Albarn claims Taylor Swift doesn’t write her own songs, we need to believe in goodness and grace. But more than that, as social media masquerades as both megaphone and weapon, it’s the likes of Elton, Olivia and Judith who remind us that peace and happiness is not achieved through dogged pursuit of fame or influence but the difference you can make to another’s life.

“Congratulations,” Newton John was told by a friend when she learned she had cancer. “Now you will grow.”

Musical guest Olivia Newton-John during an interview with host Johnny Carson on March 14, 1975.

And so she did, using the superstardom afforded by Grease and parlaying it into the cancer research which became her life’s cause. “It gave me purpose and intention and taught me a lot about compassion,” she said.

Durham, who was injured in a car accident in 1990 and lost her husband to motor neurone disease four years later was the same. “Generosity of spirit is worthwhile,” she said. “The easiest thing is to say you can’t manage it, but often it’s more rewarding to agree to do something for someone.”

By all accounts – even his own – Elton was a monster who spectacularly burned the fuses of stardom. Yet he ultimately rejected the well-worn narrative that to be famous was to be flawed and dysfunctional and instead did the hard work necessary to bring himself back down to earth. Britney is among his many benefactors.

Britney Spears and Sir Elton John. Picture: Jamie McCarthy

But what of those too young to be steeped in neighbourliness and hanky spit and the sharing philosophy inherent in “bringing a plate”? Is it any wonder we don’t have enough nurses or aged care workers when fame and followers are the new metric and entitlement the prevailing doctrine.

A relative struggling with her mental health confessed to me recently that she had phoned Lifeline in a particularly bad moment. Mostly the counsellor just listened but before the call ended she had a suggestion: when she was up to it she might consider some voluntary work.

Judith, Olivia and Elton’s lyrics may twine like jasmine through our childhoods, but their true legacy is the realisation that in helping others, you also help yourself.