Juice Newton, Las Vegas Sun, Feb, 13, 2001

Queen of Hearts Lisa Ferguson Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001 | 9:05 a.m. So, where has Juice Newton been for the past 19 years? According to the one-time pop and country music star, who scored with such hit singles as "Angel of the Morning" (1981), "Queen of Hearts" (also '81) and "Love's Been a Little Bit Hard on Me" ('82), she's been busy doing a little bit of this 'n' that. Actually, she enjoyed a handful of country-western hits through 1987. But then she seemingly fell from music's radar screen. For starters, Newton, who performs Wednesday and Thursday at the Stratosphere, was raising her two children, daughter Jessica, 13, and son Tyler, 10. Joining millions of women nationwide, she's a soccer mom who rises at 5:30 most mornings to see the youngsters to their school bus stop. Also, "I was working," Newton says in a telephone interview from her San Diego home. She did voice-overs and narrated audio books. She also played polo (her husband, Tom Goodspeed, is a nationally ranked player) and competed in other equestrian events, claiming prizes with some of her eight horses in jumping competitions along the way. "It's a team sport, and yet you perform individually," she says of polo. "You're part of a team. That's a fun thing, but it does take a lot of time." The one thing Newton, who turns 49 on Sunday, didn't do was tour nearly as much as she had earlier in her career. Mostly she performed at casinos, fairs and festivals. "I just decided to spend more time at home," she explains. But music came calling again, and in 1999 she headed into the recording studio to compile the "American Girl" CD, which featured her trademark blend of pop and country tunes. "I just try to do great music," she says of her career, which she credits for helping "set some of the stuff up that's happening today with Shania (Twain) and Faith Hill. So I feel good about that as far as a legacy." So does Neil Pond, editor of Country Weekly magazine. "I would say any country music female today that enjoys crossover success has to look back in some form of tribute to Juice Newton," he says. "She doesn't get as much credit as she is really due for being a sort of trailblazer in that regard." Newton, he says, "was one of the first women to really show that you could have one foot planted with equal firmness in both country music and pop music, and she did both of them well." Also, she "almost made the whole thing a sort of seamless transition, where you never got the sense that this was a pop artist trying to be country or a country artist trying to be pop. She truly was an amalgam of both of these, and she carried it off beautifully." It makes sense, then, that rather than limit herself to being of only one musical genre, Newton calls herself a "crossover" artist. "I think I have fans on both sides, but I think I really just fall somewhere in between. I'm only radical in the sense that I like to do songs that I like. And I no longer feel pressured to be pushed into doing any material that means nothing to me." "American Girl," for example, includes the track "I've Been Mistreated," an unreleased tune originally meant for rocker Tom Petty. "We changed it around a bit ... because it was very, very short, so we had to do some slicing and dicing as far as rearranging it, so we lengthened the second verse, and it turned out," Newton says. She also covers Queen's "Crazy Little Thing," and "There Goes My Love" by Buck Owens. "That's what I mean, though," she says. "You just have to try to do some tunes that you like. Otherwise, it just comes back to bite you." "She's always has a lot of musical integrity," Pond says of Newton. "She chose great songs; she had a very distinctive, very pleasing voice that indeed really beautified the ears of both country and pop fans." Maybe that's why Newton is so critical of the current pop and country music scenes. "Some of the stuff I hear in pop, I don't enjoy it," she says, "because it's too ... electronic, and we know for a fact that unrelenting electronic blitzes like that are not conducive to humans." Meanwhile country music, Newton says, "is lagging, and I think that (the industry) became so stilted that they're having a problem ... Some companies are much more interested in following instead of leading, so they make copycats, and one type of (music) or style of person or group or duo makes a major impact, and then there's 10 of them. And I think that's kind of unfortunate." So where does Newton fit into that scene? That is, beyond the occasional spin of "Queen of Hearts" on all-'80s-music-formatted radio stations? Even she's not certain. Still, she plans to record another CD and put out a DVD, featuring a live show and some previously unrecorded songs, later this year. "Radio changes, you know. It's getting pretty closed-mouthed again about who it lets in and who it doesn't. Radio is a money game. So is the music business," she says. "To me, it's a delight to hear myself on the radio. I had a CD out a couple of years ago that I heard (playing) in a grocery store. So that is interesting. It's not the paramount thing, though, as to why you should do music. "Music is a gift," Newton says. "It's a lifetime and (a) reoccurring adventure, creativity ... I really enjoy live performance to this day, because each time you do it, you have to really meet the challenge. Hearing yourself on the radio is a kick in the pants, but it's not the only one." archive