The music of the 1960s has now been pirated, plagiarised and publicised to such an extent that it bears no resemblance to the reality I remember.
Back then, no one would make any claim for that music's greatness. Certainly, nobody imagined its permanence. Songs were wonderfully disposable. There was a gorgeous embarrassment of riches. The Supremes were quite simply the greatest woman group of all time. In those same months in 1964, Marianne Faithfull broke your heart with As Tears Go By. Sandie Shaw trod barefoot through city streets as lonely as the Arctic, knowing "There is Always Something There to Remind Me". And then in December Petula Clarke went Downtown, the first record I ever spent my own money buying. You see what I mean? An embarrassment of riches.
Boys at that time were ashamed to admit their interest in female singers. Can you believe it now, looking at the list of records I've just mentioned? Well yes, I'd say you can, if you remember the reality of the times. I've always detected the first assertions of feminism in those songs. Here were women troubling the certainties, doubting the securities of courtship. Marianne would take off with Jagger.
She would write his greatest song, Sister Morphine and take years to get her due credit. Sandie would win the Eurovision and be the Puppet on a String. Cilla Black would forget the savage, unforgiving voice that turned Anyone Who Had a Heart into a hymn of precise, public hatred and would be forgiven for doing so, because there was no one to tell her what she had just created. Lulu married one of the Bee Gees. The mighty rage of Shout was transformed into the sweetness of To Sir with Love.
It is fair to say they lost their bearings. And then there was Dusty Springfield.
Who was she? Mary O'Brien, (pretty Irish), born in Hampstead, London. Sang the Lana Sisters, left them, joined The Springfields with her brother Dion. Like all good exiles she changed her name to Dusty, he changed his name to Tom. Silver Threads and Golden Needles, Island of Dreams, Bambino, the greatest hits of that group. Marvellous harmonies, controlled by the woman herself. Silver Threads and Golden Needles will still tear the longest marriage apart, it knows about money, the need for it, the despair success brings, the necessity to confront successful despair. Dusty was 23 when she sang that song. How did she know about money? I remember their last performance at the London Palladium on television.
They were given a present, and Dusty asked was it money? I link that memory to my constant mishearing of the title on Island of Dreams. I always thought it was Ireland of Dreams. They followed it up with Say I Won't Be There and Come on Home. I'd never thought of Ireland as a place of exile, as a place to go into exile from, I was 10, I didn't know her name was Mary O'Brien, I didn't know how much money and exile went together. The song made sense of my grandmother and her daughters, weeping over my great, brave Uncle Tommy leaving every summer to sail back to Glasgow where he, like so many Donegal men and women, went to find work:
I wander the streets and the gay crowded places,
Trying to forget you but somehow it seems,
My mind always wanders. . .
Dusty's beautiful voice first gave me the instinctive sense of loss, the shocking truth of home, far far away on the Island of Dreams.
I now recognise I've loved that woman's voice since that mishearing. All creativity is based on mistakes. When you're learning a language what you get wrong is consistent. What you get right is erratic, fanciful, pure chance. Why did Dusty leave that most successful group? She was taking a chance, she was learning a new language, she was becoming an artist.
And she would dismiss all of this as shite. The best artists do. But I would defy any actor to listen to her singing I Only Want to Be with You and not hear the magnificent surge of happiness, the wildness of her excitement, the fear of her disillusionment. And if you were to ask me what great comedy in the theatre does, I'd give you the same answer. Never forget when you listen to Dusty Springfield what an actor you're listening to. We have been spoilt by Ella Fitzgerald's justice singing They Can't Take That Away From Me, Peggy Lee's honesty when she diagnoses her Fever, and Mabel Mercer letting loose her ghosts when she confesses that These Foolish Things dictate the truths about her life. The voice of this century is female, and it most definitely is not comforting. There was no comfort in the unified voices of the Derry factory girls singing Stay Awhile, Dusty's second hit, walking, arms linked, outside Woolworth's in March, 1994. They were demanding recognition. "I Just Don't Know What To Do with Myself", and Dusty's hands, hair, black dress, conformed to the rituals of a woman in mourning for her past self. She gave us Wishing and Hoping,
You gotta wear your hair, just for him,
Show him that you care, just for him,
- a sound piece of advice, much more useful nowadays for gay boys out to get rugby queens than for girls hell-bent on husbands, and she knew what she was doing.
She certainly knew what she was doing when she went to South Africa in 1964. Before it was fashionable or serious, she insisted on performing before a non-segregated audience. They asked her to leave. Well, no, they threw the woman out. Brownie points for political correctness? All right, but I've always thought the Brownies were a fair organisation, and I wish to Christ there was such a thing as political correctness.
The woman who could let Madeline Bell and Boris Troy do her backing vocals and still sound as good as those singers might have had a reason for stating her politics in South Africa. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, but it goes without saying we will be close at hand. The song is such a tentative declaration of friendship that its pleading becomes a statement of solidarity. And she didn't let her mates down. Her secrets increased with her sorrows, and the songs from then on were all about sorrow. Of course she didn't let on. Her make-up was a very effective disguise. I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten, and it was as if she had suffered some amputation of the soul, unflinchingly letting a lover go. But she was never a victim. When she sang The Look of Love, you knew for certain she was not looking into a mirror. And she gave no quarter to whoever chose to listen to her either. There never was A Son of a Preacherman.
He was someone your imagination conceived, a babe, a wound, a child that shouldn't have been, and never was. He was a dream, and we can all dream. She carried a heavy burden. I sometimes wonder when she washed the mask of her face did she recognise the skin beneath the singer? I'd love to think she did, but then I'm biased, I love Dusty Springfield. It's pretty clear I'm not alone. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe gave her the superb What Have I Done to Deserve This? in 1988. It sold well. I wonder did she enjoy it? Dusty always does that to me. Makes me question. There are nights when I listen to her singing
Where did our love lie?
In the middle of nowhere
Where did we say goodbye?
In the middle of nowhere
I identify that song with love that has gone or is going well. Confusion. She gives me no solutions. She's far, far away on the Island of Dreams. That's where she's chosen to be. I think that's why I absolutely respect her. She wouldn't want that. Would she want to be known as the woman who first sang on Top of the Pops? Would she want to be thought of as the voice of revolution? What revolution? What confusion?
Does she know how great she is? Does she know how much she is respected? Does she ever think of the way she challenged her audience? Does she realise that when the Bay City Rollers and Annie Lennox singing with the Tourists had top 10 hits with I Only Want to be with You, they created a first - three different artists, same song, three top 10 hits. Would she think it ridiculous that this reflects well on her? (The others can be safely dismissed, the difference is chalk and diamond). Would she think her album Dusty in Memphis is an extraordinary reconciliation between Irish and American music? Would she care that her version of My Lagan Love, sung on her television show, sets standards of interpretation that are still to be surpassed? When she hears herself singing The Windmills of Your Mind does she listen to a generation deliberately not taking the right path to any understanding of itself? She might, but she's not saying. So I'll make a claim for her music's greatness. I can imagine its permanence. I could not dispose of these songs. They are wonderful and gorgeous. And so is Dusty Springfield.
The woman herself.
From the current issue of Graph magazine