WORDS MATTHEW BARTON
A singer, decked in a floor-length gown, takes the microphone as dramatic horns bellow behind her. It is 1967, inside the BBC TV studios, and a 28-year-old Dusty Springfield is singing her number one hit single You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me. Her eyes are enigmatic; her hair subsumed beneath a coiffured blonde wig. She opens her mouth as the orchestral pomp recedes and sings, “When I said, I needed you…” It’s a heart-stopping moment, a velvety voice of soulful clarity and precision. As the performance unfolds, Dusty is the picture of elegant majesty. But behold the way in which she takes the audience’s applause: her Mona Lisa smile, an almost bashful grace. For this was a complex woman, one who used a vivacious stage name, stylish outfits and the glamour of her 60s hair and makeup as a masquerade for the churning insecurities beneath. Dusty was a mass of contradictions, dogged by doubts about her voice, her appearance, and, fundamentally, her sexuality.
The inner conflict started from a young age. Born Mary Catherine Isobel O’Brien, Dusty – nicknamed “Pudge” by her family – grew up in a tense Scottish-Irish household in suburban High Wycombe, an atmosphere she likened to the sitcom Father Ted. “I have no recollection of warmness or affection,” Dusty said. “Our house was full of raging ambivalence – none of us wanted to be there.” She played second fiddle to her brother Dion, and in a harbinger of things to come tried to burn her hands on the radiator for attention. A convent education bred a “terror” of boys in Mary; biographer Penny Valentine described how she was “plump, mousy-haired, had a square face and wore glasses – her sense of humour seemed her only saving grace” – but it was also music that provided an escape. Preternaturally gifted with a soulful voice, Mary grew up on the sophistication of jazz and classical music. It was this, and the films she would watch with her mother on dull afternoons, that proved the catalyst for change. Following stints performing in Butlins camps and the group The Lana Sisters, Mary formed the folk trio The Springfields with brother Dion and Tom Feild in 1960. Mary became Dusty, and the O’Briens, by virtue of an Americanised moniker, transformed into The Springfields; in her pursuit of music, Dusty was escaping what she felt was a stultifying suburban life.