Fan Wall

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  Oct 12, 11:46 AM

  «DUSTY GETS A FINAL STANDING OVATION» ::: Funeral Tears: Lulu leads tributes as thousands pay respects to dead singer Her voice was as soulful as ever. Pure Dusty - reaching out to her fans just as it had done for decades. a singing legend gone but, to those who mourned her yesterday, one that will never be forgotten. One hit after another blared out through the streets as thousands of mourners came to say goodbye to Dusty Springfield. As the coffin was finally carried out to her song "... More... «DUSTY GETS A FINAL STANDING OVATION» ::: Funeral Tears: Lulu leads tributes as thousands pay respects to dead singer Her voice was as soulful as ever. Pure Dusty - reaching out to her fans just as it had done for decades. a singing legend gone but, to those who mourned her yesterday, one that will never be forgotten. One hit after another blared out through the streets as thousands of mourners came to say goodbye to Dusty Springfield. As the coffin was finally carried out to her song "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," the mourners broke into applause. This was Dusty's last standing ovation. And she more than deserved it. Her funeral was just as it should have been - a celebration of her life. A life marked by spectacular highs, fame and adulation - followed by troughs of despair. And, finally, the courage with which she fought breast cancer, to which she finally succumbed at the age of 59. She had, said her friend Lulu at the service, "a great gift from heaven and now it has returned to heaven". Singing star Lulu was joined by Elvis costello, Kiki Dee, Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, and Lionel Blair at Sy Mary the Virgin Methodist Church in Henley, Oxfordshire. Those who couldn't be at the service senr wreaths - Elton John, Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and PJ Harvey. At 12:10 her coffin, adorned with her name spelled out in pink and cream flowers, arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. As the coffin was carried down the aisle, the words of "Dont Forget About Me" rang out. Her older brother and former singing partner Tom Springfield led the mourners as the Reverend David Pritchard paid tribute to "one of our most gifted singers". He said: "We are here to rejoice in the joy and inspiration she gave to her own and successive generations." Fighting back tears, Lulu said: "Dusty was the first one to demonstrate girl power when she left the Springfields to go solo. She was shy, she was very vulnerable, but that vulnerability gave her voice a special quality. She bared her soul to the whole world through her singing and that kind of passion, emotion and willingness to bare her soul takes tremendous courage." A fax sent by American singer Dionne Warwick read: "It seems strange to think of Dusty in the past. She was vibrant, funny, honest and so very talented. I will miss her." Born Mary O'Brien in Hampstead, north-west London, Dusty formed her first group, The Springfields, with her brother Tom. But in 1963 she went solo and her first release, "I Only Want To Be With You," was an instant success in Britain and America. With her blonde beehive hair and panda-shadowed eyes, she was one of pop's most instantly- recognisable stars. But it was Dusty's voice that set her apart, and she was among the first British singers to champion the sound of black America. American singer Nona Hendrix, who was a close friend of Dusty, told the congregation: "When I first heard Dusty's voice it was a bitter-sweet sound, a sound that touched my heart. When I met the person later I came to know and love her for a completely different reason. She was fun and a real prankster. We had a lot of laughs." The Dusty that Neil Tennant met in 1987 was a woman whose career seemed over. With the arrival of rock, her career had run aground in the late sixties and she fled to America. Despite her hit "Son-Of-A Preacherman," her self-confidence drained away and she turned to drink. But her hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" with the Pet Shop Boys won her a new generation of fans. Neil said: "Dusty was fab. When I was growing up in the sixties, Dusty was the very essence of fabness - her hair, the eyes. It gave me a funny feeling listening to her voice. When she agreed to do the record our company wasn't very keen. They said to us, 'can't you find someone a bit more up to date?' But we stuck to our guns. When we met she turned up in black leather looking like a mid-eighties diva. She said, 'What do you want me to sound like?', and she seemed rather surprised when we said, 'you'. "A lot of people thought that Dusty's life would end in some kind of tragedy, but in the end she proved everyone wrong. She was fab and, because of her music, she always will be." Dusty, who moved back to Britain in 1994 after being told she had breast cancer [NOTE: Dusty moved back in 1989 prior to the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1994], was awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours List this year. She was fprced to undergo surgery and months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London. Her attitude was typically wry. She said: "I never expected to live this long anyway." Her secretary, Pat Rhodes, 64, who'd worked for her since 1963, said yesterday: "I still can't believe that she has gone. My life will be empty without her. The last thing I said to her was the same thing she always said to me: 'Hang in there kiddo'." Helen Weathers Daily Record (Scotland), March 13, 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:44 AM

  «DUSTY IN HEAVEN»::: Dusty Springfield was a pop singer. She liked rich orchestrations, grand melodies, lost-love lyrics. She did not aim to be radical, but her artistic sensitivities and temperament were undeniable. She insisted on picking her own songs and involving herself in the production of her records and in how her musicians played them. This was subversive, particularly for a girlie-girl in the mid '60s. Legend has it that Buddy Rich called her a bitch, and that she clocked him. S... More... «DUSTY IN HEAVEN»::: Dusty Springfield was a pop singer. She liked rich orchestrations, grand melodies, lost-love lyrics. She did not aim to be radical, but her artistic sensitivities and temperament were undeniable. She insisted on picking her own songs and involving herself in the production of her records and in how her musicians played them. This was subversive, particularly for a girlie-girl in the mid '60s. Legend has it that Buddy Rich called her a bitch, and that she clocked him. She initially rejected nearly every song brough to her for 1969's illustrious Dusty in Memphis. Borm Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in London 59 years ago, Dusty Springfield died March 2, 1999, in her home in Henley-on-Thames, after a protracted battle with breast cancer. Intensely private, Dusty didn't discuss her illness much in interviews, but she also didn't keep it a secret - she once said that she walked away from her 1994 diagnosis resigned to thinking, "Oh well . . .", until she realized no one would be around to take care of her cat. Columbia delayed the release of her final album, '95's A Very Fine Love, so she would be well enough to promote it. The overdue honors thrown at her on the eve of her passing came a little too late: She was recently named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire but couldn't attend the ceremony, and on March 15 she'll be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As usual, the industry prepared itself for inevitable posthumous consumer curiosity. Mercury's 1998 The Very Best of Dusty Springfield collects 20 flawless '60s single sides, while the label's three-disc 1997 The Dusty Springfield Anthology presents a 77-cut chronological trip through 34 years of hits and misses recorded for over a half-dozen different companies - classics, some substandard album tracks, and frequently fanciful obscurities reflecting her range. Rhino's latest incarnation of the oft reissued Dusty in Memphis adds worthy outtakes, but also adds an entire rightly aborted 1971 album with girl-group Svengali Jeff Barry. And Rhino's Dusty in London gathers previously unreleased-in-America tracks recorded shortly before the singer's 1970 move to L.A. But put all that aside for now; just listen to "The Look of Love." It's probably Burt Bacharach's least complicated melody, the arrangement minimal, Hal David's lyric simplicity itself. Dusty sings the first word alone, the orchestra joins her on the second, but the track is essentially Dusty sighing, yearning, caressing desire's elusive face with one of her many voices - her hushed, husky croon. She seems hypnotized, spaced-out, stoned on love, and the more she holds back, the more she conveys. Check the phrasing: "The look," pause, "of love," pause, "is in," pause, "your eyes," pause, "the look," pause, "your heart," pause, "can'y disguise." You can picture her locked into a two-way, across-a-candlelit restaurant-table stare, pacing herself as if to elongate that sweet gaze, as if she can't believe it isn't a dream or doesn't want to wake up or snap out of it. The spell won't last forever, so she might as well soak it up with every softly exhilarated cell of her body. Or check out a Northern Soul dance number on the same '67 album. "What's It Gonna Be?" is a 131-second model of compression and drama, tension and release. A swingin' discotheque bass bumps, stabbing strings like something out of Psycho start sawing away, and Dusty enters the atmosphere of dread with her heart in her hands, ready to rip it in two lest her lover beat her to it. Her delivery is tough, cool, cutting, yet unguarded and bordering on hysterical, capable of lashing out or imploding at any moment. The background singers echo her despair, and the word "hurtin'" is repeated seven times in a few seconds. Yet she's not ready to go out without a fight, and she aims for a make-it-or-break-it plea that would have been implausible only a moment ago. Several registers higher than where she started, her entreaty shoots out from an entirely different part of her body, one that doesn't seem to belong to a white Englishwoman in a beehive, in mascara worn as proto-goth eye shadow, in a flowery maxi dress. "Baby believe me!" she cries. You do. British singer Cliff Richard called her "the White Negress." During onr of her first American tours with Martha and the Vandellas, Dusty would occasionally step in for a missing Vandella, supplying vocals from backstage. When she toured South Africa in '64, Dusty refused to sing in segregated theaters. After a few shows, she was deported. A few months later, she hosted a special edition of the Mod-identified TV program Ready, Steady, Go!, introducing Motown to England. Her own British TV show, Dusty, championed her soul-music soul mates. Footage of her romping through Charles and Inez Foxx's "Mockingbird" with Jimi Hendrix proves just how far she would go for what she believed: Jimi's guitar nearly drowns out both of their voices, because Dusty had insisted to her horrified BBC engineers that this was how it was supposed to sound. Carole King considered this "difficult" singer her ultimate interpreter, and what Dusty does to "Some of Your Lovin'" alone proves the point. Aretha Franklin had rejected "Son-Of-A Preacher Man" until Dusty did it. And although Dusty preferred Aretha's interpretation, it's Dusty's original that overflows with understated genius. Dusty: "All Aretha ever said to me - and I died - we were in a lift, and she just put her hand on my arm and went, 'Girrlll!'" Through much of her life, sadly, Dusty did not like herself. Memphis coproducer Jerry Wexler has said she insisted on doing her vocals with the instrumental backing in her headphones as loud as possible because she didn't want to hear her own voice. Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant recalls how his heroine insisted on recording her vocals one syllable at a time for their 1987 number-two hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?," her highest-charting American record ever. Soon after Dusty blurted out in a 1970 interview that "I'm as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy," she retreated to L.A., where she developed drinking and drug problems, and even attempted suicide. She cleaned up, but her career never recovered, and her music fell from near-continual brillance to mere sporadic transcendence. That shift is obvious after the first few cuts on the final disc of her '97 Anthology. The material suddenly gets schlocky and bloated, and her voice often feels thin, labored, and lost until the Pets bring Dusty back to her refined pop-soul roots. Everything clicks on '89's "In Private," a haunting, veiled allusion to forbidden love that's completely understood by its intended audience - in England, Dusty is both mourned publicaly by the queen (the real one) and revered by lesbians and gays as the quintessential pop icon whose mix of public exuberance and personal anguish not only mirrors their own but also is their own. In America, "In Private" remains one of the only noncurrent early-morning anthems of a gay circuit party scene that ordinarily (and fearfully) refuses to look back. Her lung power here is diminished, but her urgency lives on. Although it's rarely acknowledged, Dusty's legacy is everywhere. There's a direct line between Dusty determination and Girl Power, the Dusty Springfield created by former folksinger and aspiring nun Mary O'Brien and the Ziggy Stardust forged by David Bowie. Look harder and you'll see the link between Dusty and k.d. lang, Boy George, Sleater-Kinney, Annie Lennox, Labelle, Teena Marie, Missy Elliott, Bonnie Raitt, X-Ray Spex, K.T. Oslin, George Michael, Living Colour, Elton John, Alanis, Eminem, Janis - any performer who insists on stepping over a line they're warned never to cross. Dusty in Memphis delivers the emotional and musical masterstroke that every critic suggests, but the exhilaration doesn't begin and end there. Most of Anthology would sound timely today sandwiched between Britney Spears and Air, lowbrow and high, pop commerciality and avant-garde art, because Dusty was all those things. She was the original riot grrrl, a White Panther in a wig, a femme dyke who would be a drag queen, a nice Catholic girl your grandmother would and probably did like. She's my all-time favourite. I hope I hear Dusty in heaven. Barry Walters The Village Voice, March 6, 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:43 AM

  «QUEEN PAYS TRIBUTE TO DUSTY SPRINGFIELD» (PRESS ASSOCIATION NEWSFILE MARCH 3, 1999):: Dusty Springfield's death touched Royalty as well as fans around the world. The Queen was "saddened" by the singer's death so soon after she was awarded an OBE. Dusty had been too unwell to travel to London to collect the honour in person from the Queen at a Buckingham Palace investiture. A Palace spokesman said: "The Queen was saddened to hear of her death so soo... More... «QUEEN PAYS TRIBUTE TO DUSTY SPRINGFIELD» (PRESS ASSOCIATION NEWSFILE MARCH 3, 1999):: Dusty Springfield's death touched Royalty as well as fans around the world. The Queen was "saddened" by the singer's death so soon after she was awarded an OBE. Dusty had been too unwell to travel to London to collect the honour in person from the Queen at a Buckingham Palace investiture. A Palace spokesman said: "The Queen was saddened to hear of her death so soon after she was awarded an OBE in the New Year's Honours List." Mike Gill, who worked with the singer for nearly 32 years, first as her press agent and then looking after her back catalogue, said: "We're all terrifically sad this morning. She was very warm and great fun to be with. Her's was the greatest voice ever produced by a female in this country and she could never be impersonated. She was a total and utter perfectionist, which on occasions gave her a bad reputation, but 99% of the time she got it absolutely right. She championed a new type of music in the early Sixties when she brought Tamla Motown to Britain, which is something that has always been seriously overlooked." After she found out she had cancer when she was in Nashville [in 1994 recording her album A Very Fine Love], she came back and became almost a recluse. But she was a great fighter. "Even before the illness she was one of the most stubborn people I have met in my life, but her attitude to the cancer was 'I'm going to beat this'." The doctors were amazed by her resilience to the disease. Mr Gill has been working on a tribute four-CD box set during her final months, which is set to be released towards the end of the year. "It was done with Dusty's full knowledge and her blessing when she knew she was dying. She said 'Tell Mike to get things organised. I want to go out with a bit of style'. She was a real one-off. There are no Dusty clones. Nobody could sing the way she could. She was like Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holliday. Dusty ranks alongside all those people. It was an intimate voice with wonderful pathos. Carole King once said that when she heard Dusty's version of her song "Goin' Back" she wept when she heard it. Nobody could better it. She did another King song "Some of Your Lovin'" and Dusty perceived that as her finest vocal performance ever." A spokeswoman for fellow 1960s pop star Lulu, who was a friend of Dusty for some 30 years, said she was "very sad" at the news. She said: "I have just spoken to Lulu, and she just said that she is obviously very sad, but at the same time, relieved that she is no longer suffering." The spokeswoman added that Lulu had remained in contact with Miss Springfield in the months up to her death. Three long-serving BBC Radio 2 presenters paid tribute to her as one of the best singers the country has ever produced. Ken Bruce called her "possibly the finest female soul voice to come out of Britain". He added: "She was much underrated in this country but highly appreciated in the US where she was right up there with the Motown greats." Fellow DJ Johnnie Walker said: "She really was one of the great British singers. She could do anything from a beautiful ballad to making a really good soul record like Dusty In Memphis. It is very sad that we have lost her. She will be greatly missed." Brian Matthew said of the singer: "She was always as demanding of herself as of those around her that she worked with. She will be very sadly missed, I know." Singer Jane McDonald, who came to prominence in fly-on-the-wall documentart The Cruise, said she was "really gutted" to hear the news. She called the singer, many of whose numbers she performs in her show, "one of the great". Miss McDonald added: "Dusty was just a unique performer. I have all her records and love performing her songs." Chat show host and singer Des O'Connor said: "Dusty was unique. She had an absolutely distinctive voice and was one of the best singers Britain has ever produced. It is a sad, sad loss to the music world. She appeared on the show many times over the years and was always fun and totally professional." Fellow Sixties recording star Cilla Black, a friend for many years, said from her home today: "She was an incredible artist. I'm very sad and deeply shocked." The Blind Date host worked with Dusty in 1993 for the single "Heart and Soul" from Cilla's Through the Years album. Nightclub boss Peter Stringfellow, who once signed Dusty to his Hippodrome label, said he was very sad to hear of her death. Their relationship was not a long one and she released just one single, "Sometimes Like Butterflies," for him in 1985. "In my opinion, hers was the original Girl Power. She was a very strong character throughout her career and no-one pushed her around," he said. "If you were ever to give out a crown for the Queen of Pop in Great Britain, it would be to her." Chart duo The Pet Shop Boys, whose collaborations with Dusty gave the star her last taste of singles chart success, said they had been proud to work with Britain's "greatest female singer". In a statement Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe said: "It was a dream come true for us when Dusty Springfield agreed to sing with us on the song "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" She hadn't recorded for several years but as soon as she arrived in the studio and began to sing, we knew that the greatest female singer Britain has ever produced was still on brilliant form. Quite honestly, we were in awe of her. Dusty was a tender, exhilarating and soulful singer, incredibly intelligent at phrasing a song, painstakingly building it up to a thrilling climax. She was also a warm and funny person. 'What do you want me to sing like?,' she asked on that first day we met. 'You', we replied, and she seemed quite surprised. We are proud to have been a small part of her fabulous career," added Lowe and Tennant, who also penned the singles "In Private" and "Nothing Has Been Proved" for her - the latter used on the soundtrack to the film Scandal. Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the research charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "Dusty was the pop icon of her generation and brought pleasure to millions of music lovers around the world. She will be sadly missed. She said it was a tragedy that her last years were spent receiving treatment which left her exhausted. This highlights the very great need for research to find less debilitating and more effective treatments for breast cancer. We owe it to Dusty and all those other thousands of women who are battling this devastating disease to continue to raise money for this vital research so that one day breast cancer can be eradicated." Sir Elton John heard the news in America, where he is on tour. "I thought that Dusty was the best white British female singer to come along at the time. To me, she was as good a singer as Aretha Franklin in her own way, and completely timeless," Sir Elton said. Fellow Sixties singer Sandie Shaw said: "I am deeply upset to hear of Dusty's death." she added: "In the Sixties we were both rivals and friends, sharing a really unique experience." Sandie went on: "We were the first pop divas and the first emergence of Girl Power. I feel privileged to have been a contemporary of this feisty and talented woman." Dusty's manager Vicki Wickham said she remembers her as: "A lively, silly person, always good for a giggle and the best source of reference. She knew every bit player in every film. You could call up and say 'Who the hell was that person?' and she would know. On music she was the same. She always knew who wrote, who produced or who sang everything. Her geography was brilliant too. If a country had been renamed for a fifth time she knew all about it. She could read a map well too, and she was a good person to be lost with. There are too many things I'll miss about her, like all those little chats." They met in 1963 when Ms Wickham was the producer of Sixties pop show Ready, Steady, GO! and had been friends ever since. She became her manager when her career was revived by the Pet Shop Boys. Ms Wickham paid tribute to Dusty's will to live and also the efforts of doctors to make her comfortable. "It seems strange that someone who was so ill was in good spirits, but she really was. She was not bed-ridden until the very last few days. She was able to do things for herself. She was a fighter and fought right up until the end. The legacy of her music is a magnificent collection and will live on. She was very proud of it, worked very hard and the results speak for themselves." Gennaro Castaldo, of music retailer HMV, said "Dusty's death is a tragedy and music fans around the world will mourn her passing. "However, as the outstanding female performer of her generation, she has left a rich legacy of classic songs that will ensure our memory of her will never fade. Dusty was unique - a true heroine of British soul music." Mr Castaldo said he expected the sad news to boost sales of her back catalogue. "All of a sudden people will find they miss her - particularly when there are TV and radio tributes - and the only way they can relate to it is by owning a part of her through her music. In the past when stars have died we found it was the greatest hits collections which seem to sum people up best, and it is the compilations which will go back into the charts." BB2 is preparing a half-hour tribute show Dusty at the BBC which is to be screened at 7:30 pm tomorrow featuring archive footage of her performances. Press Association Newsfile, March 4, 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:42 AM

  «DUSTY DIES ON HER ROYAL DAY» (EVENING STANDARD MARCH 3, 1999):: Queen "saddened" as cancer kills singer due to collect OBE Dusty Springfield has died from breast cancer on the day she should have collected her OBE [Order of the British Empire] from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The 59-year-old singer died at 10:40 last night at her home in Henley-on-Thames, her agent Paul Fenn said today. Dusty was awarded an OBE in the New Year Hono... More... «DUSTY DIES ON HER ROYAL DAY» (EVENING STANDARD MARCH 3, 1999):: Queen "saddened" as cancer kills singer due to collect OBE Dusty Springfield has died from breast cancer on the day she should have collected her OBE [Order of the British Empire] from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The 59-year-old singer died at 10:40 last night at her home in Henley-on-Thames, her agent Paul Fenn said today. Dusty was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours and her investiture had been due to be held yesterday. But, because she was too ill to go to the palace, she was allowed to have her medal collected for her ahead of the official date. A palace spokeswoman said today: "The Queen was saddened to hear of her death." Dusty had also been due to receive a second major accolade - her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York - in two weeks' time. Despite the reclusive life she led at her Henley mansion, she had been eager to meet the Queen, and also to join the traditional jam session at the Hall of Fame with fellow inductees, including Bruce Springsteen and Sir Paul McCartney. Her place in pop's hall of fame had already been assured, however. Born Mary O'Brien in Hampstead in 1939, she became one of the top female singers of the Sixties. Her string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic included "I Only Want To Be With You," "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself," and "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me." Lulu, who knew Dusty for more than 30 years and was a close friend, said today: "I'm terribly, terribly sad at her loss but also at the same time relieved that she is no longer suffering." Dusty was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994. She thought she had beaten it but learned in the summer of 1996 that it had returned. She spent the next 18 months fighting the disease but a year ago she was too ill to attend the Brit Awards, where she had been due to be a guest of honour. Just before Christmas she moved out of her converted granary in Oxfordshire to seek more seclusion in the larger house in Henley, with more picturesque views. Last May, shortly after the death of Linda McCartney from the same disease Dusty, whose mother Kay died of lung cancer, sold the rights to her 275 songs to Prudential Insurance for 6.25 million pounds. She never married and in the mid-Seventies consolidated her long-held status as a gay icon by finally admitting in the Evening Standard that she was bisexual. With her sensuous, smokey voice, and an ability to sing anything from ballads to soul stompers, Dusty Springfield was one of the few white singers who could match the black Motown stars of the era and thus enjoyed greater musical credibility than her female rivals like Sandie Shaw and Cilla Black. In the early Seventies, after recording her landmark album Dusty In Memphis, she moved to America but her record sales waned and in the mid-Seventies she took a break from music. As she battled against drink and drug problems and depression, she became increasingly involved in animal welfare. Various attempts at a musical comeback in the late Seventies and early Eighties were unsuccessful, as was another backed by London nightclub king Peter Stringfellow. However, she came back into the public eye - and won over a new generation of fans - when she was invited by chart-toppers The Pet Shop Boys to join them on their 1987 hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Her songs have been covered by stars including Bruce Springsteen, The Byrds, The Tourists and Nils Lofgren. As she fought her lonely battle against what she knew had become untreatable breast cancer, close friends said she was desperate to return to the anonymity of being Mary O'Brien. Today friends and celebrity colleagues paid tribute to Dusty. In a joint statement Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of The Pet Shop Boys said: "It was a dream come true for us when Dusty agreed to sing with us. as soon as she arrived in the studio and began to sing we knew that the greatest singer Britain has ever produced was still in brilliant form. We are proud to have been a small part of her fabulous career." Former Ready, Steady, Go! presenter Cathy McGowan described her as a "lovely, lovely person". Ms McGowan's friendship with Dusty dated back to the Sixties. Record producer Mickie Most said: "I would say that she was one of the best pop artists this country has ever produced. Her album Dusty In Memphis was one of the best albums by a British artist ever." Dave Stewart, whose cover version of "I Only Want To Be With You" was a huge hit when he was in The Tourists with Annie Lennox, said today: "She was one of Britain's most unbelievable voices." Nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow said he was saddened. "She was a super lady and an icon for a lot of people," A spokesman for Cilla Black said the star was too upset to comment. He said: "I called her home and she was devastated. They were friends for more than 30 years." Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the research charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said Dusty's death highlighted the "very great need for research to find less debilitating and more effective treatments for breast cancer. "We owe it to Dusty, and to all those thousands of women who are battling this devastating disease, to continue to raise money for this vital research, so that one day breast cancer can be eradicated." Tim Cooper Evening Standard, March 3, 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:40 AM

  Dying Dusty Springfield Received OBE In Hospital : Music legend Dusty Springfield did receive her OBE while she was in the final stages of her battle with breast cancer. The singer, who died Tuesday night, was given the honour in a private gathering at her bedside in the Royal Marsden Hospital in west London four weeks ago. Her manager Vicki Wickham said she was given special permission by Buckingham Palace to collect it on her behalf because Dusty was too ill. Ms Wickham, who has known... More... Dying Dusty Springfield Received OBE In Hospital : Music legend Dusty Springfield did receive her OBE while she was in the final stages of her battle with breast cancer. The singer, who died Tuesday night, was given the honour in a private gathering at her bedside in the Royal Marsden Hospital in west London four weeks ago. Her manager Vicki Wickham said she was given special permission by Buckingham Palace to collect it on her behalf because Dusty was too ill. Ms Wickham, who has known the singer since they met at the pilot programme of TV's Ready Steady Go in 1963, said: "I called the Palace and they were magnificent. I went over to St James Palace and they gave me the OBE." Ms Springfield, 59, died at her home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, after a long fight against cancer. The singer, whose breast cancer was diagnosed in 1994, was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours. Ms Wickham said: "We had a few people in to watch her get it - nurses , doctors and people she knew. She was in great spirits and thrilled to bits." Ms Springfield is regarded as the finest female singer of her generation and had a string of hits in the 1960s. Born Mary O'Brien in north London in 1939, she began her musical career in The Springfields but left to chalk up huge chart success with her debut solo single I Only Want to Be With You. She had hits throughout the decade as well as a series of acclaimed albums. The artist became known for her glitzy gowns, peroxide-blonde beehive and smudgy made-up eyes. Tim Cooper
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  Oct 12, 11:39 AM

  «DEVOTED FAN WHO NURSED DUSTY TO THE VERY END» : For millions, Dusty Springfield was an icon, a woman whose powerful voice made her one of the greatest ever white soul singers. Her death from cancer earlier this year seemed like the end of an era. To Simon Bell, however, she was simply a friend, one whom he had nursed through the final years of her illness, witnessing at close hand her courageous battle against the disease. Their relati... More... «DEVOTED FAN WHO NURSED DUSTY TO THE VERY END» : For millions, Dusty Springfield was an icon, a woman whose powerful voice made her one of the greatest ever white soul singers. Her death from cancer earlier this year seemed like the end of an era. To Simon Bell, however, she was simply a friend, one whom he had nursed through the final years of her illness, witnessing at close hand her courageous battle against the disease. Their relationship is all the more poignant because Simon started off as just another devoted fan. Over the years however, he became a close friend of Dusty's, eventually moving in with her at her Henley mansion. He became her carer after doctors confirmed they were unable to beat the cancer first diagnosed four years earlier. Simon gave up his own career as a backing singer to spend every day with Dusty, coping with her needs and providing support as she fought her illness. He is able to relate at first hand how her indomitable spirit kept her going. "She put up such a great fight, at one stage I began to wonder if the doctors had got it all wrong. Sadly, they hadn't--we kept being told not to get false hope," Simon recalls. He had first become a Dusty Springfield fan at the age of 14, when he would shut himself away in his bedroom at his parents' Glasgow home and listen to all her recordings. Now 48, he says: "I loved the voice. There was something about her personality as well--the zaniness that was apparent at that time. I learned to sing myself by singing along to her songs." When Dusty embarked on her first solo tour during the Sixties, Simon was to be found cheering from the front row of his local theatre. Afterwards, he chased her taxi to a nearby hotel where, in the lobby, she signed her autograph on his wrist. He didn't wash that spot for weeks. By the time he was 20 Simon had decided to quit his job as a housing officer with Glasgow Council and try his luck as a singer in London. He married young, but it didn't work out and he found himself single again. By chance, his London flatmate hired out sound systems to performers, including singer Doris Troy. She was so impressed with Simon's voice that she encouraged him to become a backing singer. She soon had him singing behind her at Caesar's Palace in Luton, along with Madeleine Bell, one of Dusty's closest friends. "I remember coming home from the show one night to Madeleine's place and Dusty was on the answering machine saying she was coming home to promote her latest album. She needed some backing singers and could Madeleine help. Madeleine looked at me; it was just one of those moments where I was in the right place at the right time." "Dusty and I got on instantly and became really good friends," Simon says. From that moment on, every time she came over to Britain she called on Simon to work with her. So began a professional relationship and friendship that was to last 20 years. Thinking she was clear of cancer after its initial treatment, Dusty was horrified to discover the disease had reappeared a second time. She was advised to put her personal affairs in order. Remembering that bleak day, Simon continues: "I don't think she knew quite what to do when she was told that she had a limited time to live. I prayed that she would say, 'I'm going round the world, going to see the Pyramids or going to see friends in the States.' Maybe it was because she still wanted to fight the illness, but she just stayed at home." Simon moved in with Dusty and ended up staying for 15 months until she finally passed away in March. "Her way of coping was to fight it," he says. "She would have the latest information sent to her by the Cancer Institute in America and go to the doctors armed with it." A constant flow of get-well messages arrived at the singer's house from her showbiz friends--Bette Midler, Angie Dickinson and Carole King all supported her--but few were encouraged to visit. "She was very private. In many ways a loner," Simon explains. "She wanted to remain private in dealing with her illness." Paul and Linda McCartney tried to help Dusty, with Linda putting her in touch with her own American specialist who checked the kind of treatment Dusty was receiving from the Royal Marsden Hospital and supported everything that was being done. "Linda was a great support. She called all the time. Every week she would send flowers or plants or little trinkets. Dusty was devastated when she died. None of us had realised how ill Linda was. Dusty may have known, but if she had a secret she kept it a secret. After Linda's death, Paul continued to call and send her flowers and plants, which meant a lot to her." Although he says she was "wonderful" to him, Simon admits Dusty, like many artistes, could be "stormy and temperamental". She would throw crockery at walls to relieve her frustrations and once threw the telephone at him. Simon admits he made allowances for her. "I wasn't in love with her. She was my hero. She became one of my best friends. When you start living with somebody, your relationship changes. I had to bite my tongue because it's not natural for me to be passive. "She would have been very difficult to have a romantic relationship with because of her temperament. I think she knew she functioned better as a human being without the complications of a relationship. Nicholas, her cat, became the centre of her life. But she had a lot of loyalty from people who had been around her. Nobody betrayed her. "For Dusty's last Christmas, there was just her and myself and I cooked Christmas dinner. We had the whole thing, with crackers, just for the two of us. She loved it." Earlier this year, Dusty was too ill to attend the investiture of her OBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace, so it was delivered to her at the Royal Marsden Hospital. Her brother, Tom Springfield, and a few of her best friends had gathered in a private room as she was handed the award. Says Simon: "It arrived in a Fortnum and Mason carrier bag. We thought that someone would have brought it from the royal household knowing she was so ill. But Dusty was so thrilled about the award. She immediately thought she ought to go shopping because she hadn't anything to match the red ribbon on it. "She never gave up the urge to shop. As ill as she was, she was always reading fashion magazines and wanted the latest things. One day, she had been in for chemotherapy and on the way home she persuaded the paramedics to stop the ambulance so that she could go into a shop and buy a beautiful stainless-steel draining board."A few months before she died, Dusty told Simon how she was worried about what was going to happen to him. "You're going to be a cranky old man," she teased. "We were sitting with our arms around each other. She's always been there for me. Sometimes it felt like we were husband and wife."Dusty liked to have her bed in the centre of one sitting-room at home rather than shut off in a bedroom. She was up every day except the last, when she was given morphine.Simon says: "She looked incredible, right to the end. Although she lost weight she still had wonderful skin. Her hair had gone silver, but she had it coloured a month before she died. Dusty told me: 'I'm going out blonde.'" There was one sensitive moment that brought tears to his eyes. Dusty always knew that Simon had been booked to tour with James Last later this year and, during her illness, she referred to it. "One day she said, 'Let's see, you've got that James Last tour coming up. I'd better be gone by then.'" Sadly, she had no other choice. Months later, Simon found himself singing at her funeral, a powerful rendition of "The Wind Beneath My Wings," as Dusty had requested in her will. It was typical of her way of facing up to things. "She was very brave," says Simon. "She never once asked 'Why me?' She fought her illness with all she had and won for a lot of the time. If she hadn't been like that she'd have been gone much earlier." David Wigg Daily Express (London), 14 June 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:38 AM

  «YOU STARTED SOMETHING . . .»: Dusty Springfield, now battling with cancer, is finally being recognized as the first queen of Britpop after 40 years in the business. "It's marvellous to be popular, but foolish to think it will last," Dusty Springfield said in 1963, shortly after her debut solo single, "I Only Want To Be With You," shot into the Top 10. Since then, her career has fluctuated between wild success, tentative "comebacks... More... «YOU STARTED SOMETHING . . .»: Dusty Springfield, now battling with cancer, is finally being recognized as the first queen of Britpop after 40 years in the business. "It's marvellous to be popular, but foolish to think it will last," Dusty Springfield said in 1963, shortly after her debut solo single, "I Only Want To Be With You," shot into the Top 10. Since then, her career has fluctuated between wild success, tentative "comebacks" and years in the doldrums. But it is only this year that Dusty is finally getting the recognition she deserves. In January, she was awarded an OBE; next month she will join Sir Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York; April sees her sixtieth birthday, along with her fortieth anniversary in the business. Overshadowing these events, however, is the bitter fact that Dusty is now fighting what seems to be a losing battle against breast cancer. She was first diagnosed in 1994, shortly after recording her most recent album, A Very Fine Love. Promotion of the record was put off for a year while she underwent extensive chemotherapy, and in mid-1995 she was clear. "I've had so much junk put in my body, wonderful junk, that it's beaten for now," she said at the time. But the following year, the cancer returned. Since then, she has given up recording, moved to a secluded house on the Thames, and been struggling quietly with her illness. Doctors have now declared the cancer untreatable, but friends say her Irish spirit is still very much intact. It was that earthy warmth that struck me when I first interviewed her for a biography in 1988. She responded carefully to my questions and gave me her singular personal slant on life, one that combines a flip, Goonish humour with a pragmatic appraisal of the pop world. Then she was in the process of moving back to England, and described LA (her base for more than 15 years) as "part naff, part glamorous". She went on to say that "musically, Americans get frightened if you fling a lot of stuff at them. Playing different styles makes them nervous. Besides, I've been homesick for a long time. I've been waiting for the groundswell of movement in Britain, and now seems the right time to come back." Dusty left Britain in 1970, frustrated with a business that channelled its pop artists, once they turned 30, into the cabaret bracket. To her, panto seasons and the Talk of the Town were a living death. She was excited by newly-emerging funk and soul, and entranced by US labels such as Motown and Atlantic. "I was struggling to establish something in England that hadn't been done before, to use those musical influences I could hear in my head," she told me. "If I could do the record business all over again, I would have mixed funky R&B with something Scottish, melodic, a real Britishness. In the Sixties, no one could quite get those sounds." When I first started work on my book more than 11 years ago, Dusty was a cult artist, a former Sixties idol appreciated by a few diehard fans, musicians in the business and the Pet Shop Boys, who coaxed her out of LA obscurity to come and sing on their 1987 hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"Since then, her Nineties albums, plus a feast of Sixties reissues on CD, and her song "Son-Of-A Preacher Man", featured on the soundtrack to Tarantino's movie Pulp Fiction, have introduced her to a new generation, leading to her re-emergence as a pop cultural force.Distinct from the other British beat girls, Dusty always had a raw soul quality and she offered a sense of living on an edge of emotion. "She was the soul singer," Sixties singer P.P. Arnold told me. "Out of all the girls - Cilla, Lulu, etc. - it was Dusty doin' it for me. She made me feel it." From the moment Dusty went solo, leaving the Springfields, she fashioned a new style, forging a bridge between soul and the pop mainstream. An astute entertainer, she attracted a family audience as well as a cult following. And as mod culture surfaced in the Sixties with its stringent attention to fashion, Motown and television pop shows such as Ready, Steady, Go!, Dusty, panda-eyed and urbane, became Queen Bee.Though her ascent seemed effortless, Dusty had been an understudy for a long time. Borm Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in north London on 16 April, 1939, Dusty was an inquisitive, sensitive child, troubled by her parents' unhappy marriage. Her mother Kay was a quick-witted Irishwoman who felt hemmed in by the social expectations of being a good Catholic mother, while her father Gerard (better known as OB), a tax consultant, nursed a desire to be a concert pianist. It was as though Dusty had decided early on to escape the cramping influence of English suburbia.At the age of 12, she was listening to Bessie Smith, reading Hollywood writer Budd Schulberg and annoying her convent-school teachers by announcing her intention to be a blues singer. Once, Dusty sang a gravelly-voiced version of "St. Louis Blues" at the school feast day. "The headmistress and five other teachers walked out in disgust," recalls a fellow classmate. "They thought it too raunchy!" But although she achieved huge chart success, with 17 hits in Britain throughout the Sixties, and a series of acclaimed albums such as Dusty . . . Definitely and Dusty In Memphis, she never quite got rid of her gawky alter ego, "the librarian" Mary O'Brien. Inside, she says she felt like "an awful, fat, ugly, middle-class kid" with National Health specs, an apparition she chased away with the invention of Dusty Springfield, adopting a look modelled on drag queens. With her glitzy gowns, peroxide-blonde beehive and smudgy, made-up eyes, she became a larger-than-life parody of stereotyped femininity. "My body was wrong, my face was wrong," she once said, a discomfort detected by many who have met her.Frankie Culling, a singer with Granada TV's house band, the Granadeers, remembers rehearsing with the Springfields one night in the early Sixties: "Dusty came in with lots of Liberty bags, because she loved going shopping. She was wild, bouffant hair and thick, black, eye make-up, and she sang "Lizzie Borden, You Can't Cut Your Mother Up In Massachusetts". She seemed nervous, very jerky, and a bit distant. Having said that, there was definitely an aura about her. Highly tuned. She gave the impression she was never going to stay long." Dusty has never slotted easily into the anodyne mores of light entertainment. Never a supplicant female, she was slung out of South Africa in 1964 for refusing to play segregated venues and in so doing provoked questions in Parliament and a crisis among Equity members. She went speeding in her sunglasses after dark, spent most of the Seventies in a haze of drugs and alcohol and was dogged by constant rumours about her sexuality. "Without question, the lesbian issue was the icing on the cake of her 'difficult reputation'", says her friend, American songwriter Allee Willis. "It would have been fabulously scandalous if she'd been having hits, but it came at a time when she was tumbling down. She had a bum rap."By the mid-Eighties, Dusty had become a figure of fun in the tabloids, ridiculed for her age, weight and sexual choices. After the release of her aptly-named 1990 album Reputation, she lay low for a while. By the time she re-emerged in 1995 with A Very Fine Love, the climate had changed. People were ready for a woman who was older, who embraced alternatives, who had been living a full life. "Now the music industry is 2,000 times better for female singers," she told me - but that's partly because of her persistence in rewriting the rules. Lucy O'Brien, The Observer, February 21, 1999
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  Oct 12, 11:37 AM

  «I JUST WANT TO DIE AS MARY O'BRIEN»: The house is her hope of the comfort and protection she so dearly needs, a secret mansion on the Thames in which sixties icon Dusty Springfield has chosen to end her days. As she fights her lonely battle with terminal breast cancer, the singing star is desperate to return to the anonymity of being plain Mary O'Brien, the ordinary London girl who reinvented herself physically and emotionally as a pop diva. According to a close friend "She wants to d... More... «I JUST WANT TO DIE AS MARY O'BRIEN»: The house is her hope of the comfort and protection she so dearly needs, a secret mansion on the Thames in which sixties icon Dusty Springfield has chosen to end her days. As she fights her lonely battle with terminal breast cancer, the singing star is desperate to return to the anonymity of being plain Mary O'Brien, the ordinary London girl who reinvented herself physically and emotionally as a pop diva. According to a close friend "She wants to die Mary O'Brien, that's who she was and it is who she is becoming again, it's as if she wants to go back to the beginning." The singer leads an increasingly reclusive life behind her new home's turn-of-the-century walls and, as the disease tightens its grip, friends say it is unlikely she will be well enough even to enjoy personally the two greatest accolades of her career - her investiture at Buckingham Palace on March 2 and her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York's Waldorf Astoria a fortnight later. She has told them that she is keen to meet the Queen and be presented with the OBE she was awarded in the New Years Honours List and is equally eager to join the traditional jam session by Hall of Fame Inductees, who this year include Sir Paul MaCartney and Bruce Springsteen. But even though 10 Downing Street has made her investiture a top priority - "We'll do it sooner rather than later" said a source - it seems she will be confined to her house, coping with a cancer declared untreatable by doctors on both sides of the Atlantic. The perilious state of her health has forced a woman always noted for her privacy to seek even further seclusion. She left the cosy converted granary in Oxfordshire that she had made her home in 1994 after the initial diagnosis, to move into this sprawling family house shortly before Christmas. Here she is shielded from the outside world by dense evergreen holly and a tall electric fence. The anonymous double gates at the foot of the drive are padlocked from the inside and a rustic wooden gate barring the muddy track leading to the back door is bolted shut. Her friend said bluntly: "The truth is that Dusty wants to die in a room with a view - it's that simple." And her new home does indeed have a view. From her elegant, tall-windowed lounge and master bedroom she can see not just the sloping gardens with their towering fir trees and hedges dotted with the nests of songbirds, but a wooded valley where deer roam. Last May, shortly after breast cancer had claimed the life of Linda McCartney, Dusty sold the rights to her 275 songs to Prudential Insurance for 6.25 million pounds after protracted negotiations. The delighted company announced that the deal was a one-off and said: "Dusty just felt the time was right." It smacked of putting her affairs in order because, sadly, the singer already has first hand knowledge of the fate which awaits her. For her mother Kay, from whom she inherited her musical talent was killed by lung cancer. Describing their final meeting, Dusty said: "She looked like one of those horror masks, all sunken. Her eyes were glassy from the drugs, but suddenly she reached up this claw and tweaked my nose. I don't remember her ever doing that to me before. And then, suddenly she passed out again. The next day I had to return to the States but I called and said 'How is Mrs O'Brien?' And they said, 'Oh, she passed away.' It was such a shock because it was so matter-of-fact. So the tweak was important. And it was horrific too. I did come unglued then. I handled it very badly. Partly guilt. I wasn't there . . ." But when she confronted her own cancer there was no such emotional weakness, just a pragmatic and philosphical response to the female doctor who told her: "I'm afraid it's a tumour and it's one we just don't want." Dusty had discovered the lump in 1994 after a diet - part of a lifelong battle with her weight - revealed a vast indentation in her breast. She was referred within 48 hours to London's premier cancer clinic, the Royal Marsden, and given the shattering news. She said "The shock was enormous, but I was blessed that it all happened so fast. In the space of three days I knew what I had to deal with. I was enraged - that this was happening to Miss Springfield and it was highly inconvenient because she had this new album to promote, for God's sake. I shed about three tears in the hallway and then said, 'Let's have lunch'. My brother came, the neighbours who brought me to town, my secretary, my accountant. I had a really good time, I don't know why. That's the spirit of my family, as if to say, 'Oh, to Hell with it'. It was only when I came home one night and saw my cat lying asleep that I thought, 'Who's going to look after you?' It was as if somebody had run a train through me. I wept and wept and wept because then I realised: it is you. It's you. Yes, it might kill you." Despite surgery to remove the lump and six months of gruelling chemotherapy, which finished shortly before Cristmas 1994, followed by radiotherapy, Dusty maintained an attitude she describes as "positive denial". "Most of the time I felt really good. They make you part of the cure, not part of the problem. I always knew that once they give you the all clear that's the hard part, because you've been so much help and the only demands are to find some courage, keep faith and show up. Then its about returning to life and its demands. And the demands of the music business are extraordinary at the best of times. I do believe there's a mindset in dealing with it which helps. My family was from Ireland, and I believe the Irish fighter is better than the person who feels victimised. Why me? Why not?" Brave words from a brave woman, one who believed she could keep the cancer in remission through sheer force of willpower. But then it was willpower alone which transformed Mary Isobel Catherine O'Brien, daughter of a tax accountant and a housewife, from a dumpy, plain bespectacled convent schoolgirl into Dusty Springfield, Diva. Her personal and musical epiphany came in the bedroom of her North London home when she was 16. "Be miserable, or become someone else" she told her reflection in a mirror. Obsessed with the glamour of the Hollywood blondes of the fifties - this was 1955 - she ripped off her National Health glasses, gymslip and sensible lace-ups. In their place she put a sophisticated pleated frock, high heels, lashings of black eye make-up and a stiff blonde beehive wig. The image which looked back at her, the one she is still known today, secured her a successful audition with the all-girl trio The Lana Sisters whose advertisment Dusty had spotted in The Stage. From there she joined her brother Tom and his friend Tim Feild to form The Springfields, the band which was to ignite her solo career, launched in 1963. Her biographer Lucy O'Brien puts it succintly in her book Dusty, which will be published [reissued] to mark the singer's 60th birthday in April: "As youth mod culture came to a head in the Sixties - with its stringent attention to fashion, Motown and television pop programs - Dusty Springfield, panda-eyed and urbane, emerged as Queen Bee." She was to ensure her place in the history of modern music with a treasure trove of classics - "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself," "I Only Want To Be With You," "I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten," "Son-Of-A Preacher Man" - but the heights of her personal success were to be matched by personal lows. She professed herself "bored with Britain" in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles, where she embarked on drink and drug binges, suffered depression and finally admitted she was bisexual. Although many might consider sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll behaviour appropriate for such a star, it did Dusty no favours and she floundered musically for more than a decade. Then came the renaissance. In 1987 The Pet Shop Boys asked her to sing on their worldwide hit "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" and as they paid homage to her they instructed a new generation of fans in her unique talents. She collaborated further with them, singing the theme tune to the film Scandal, "Nothing Has Been Proved," and then in 1994 Quentin Tarantino included "Son-Of-A Preacher Man on the cult soundtrack to his cinematic masterpiece Pulp Fiction. Dusty was back. But even as she savoured her renewed success, the cancer in her breast was growing, and in the summer of 1996, a year-and-a-half after she hoped she had beaten it, she learnt that the lump had returned. For a further 18 months she fought it with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but by February last year she was so sick that she could not attend the music industry Oscars, the Brit Awards, at which she was to be a guest of honour. It was a key indicator to her failing strength. Friends say she is now savouring her days at home. "I'm happy being on my own," she admits. "Genuinely, I don't want a close relationship. But there is a free-floating loneliness, not attached to a person or a place. I'm smart enough to know I can't put it right by making a geographic move, because I've done that and it didn't work. It's an inside job." And that, of course, must be the ultimate challenge before she dies, to marry who she was with what she became so that she can finally be at peace with the world. Sarah Oliver, Mail on Sunday, January 24, 1999