I have never been able to understand why
Dusty Springfield is not a massive and enduring
gay icon. In my thirty-something crowd, the announcement of her
death from
breast cancer on 2 March 1999 was met with a combination of faint recognition and less faint disinterest. I ask you, why? Her
bleached
beehive,
panda eye makeup,
diner waitress,
trailer trash come-hither look on the cover of the must-have "
Dusty In Memphis" album is in line with gay sensibilities à la
John Waters, and the explicit
deflowering storyline in her trademark "
Son of a Preacher Man" (for those of you who arrived too late to catch the the Dusty wagon, it’s on the
Pulp Fiction soundtrack) is one of the most overlooked potential
drag standards. For
drama queens, there is the appeal of her fifteen-year stint in the
USA, troubled by
drugs and drink when she moved to
L.A. in 1972 (
Valley of the Dolls, anyone?).
Born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien in the cushy London neighbourhood of Hampstead, she was unable to shake her feelings of blandness entrenched by an English middle-class upbringing. She once told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that at sixteen, she looked in the mirror and said to herself, "Be miserable or become someone else." Armed with this attitude, Dusty Springfield was born and became second only to Janis Joplin among White Women With Soul. She spanned a career of hits starting with 1964’s "I only want to be with you", and was still crooning seductively in her 1987 duet with the Pet Shop Boys, "What have I done to deserve this." Dubbed Britain’s best pop singer by Rolling Stone, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and honoured with the Order of the British Empire in shortly before she expired. Perhaps it is her reluctance to talk about rumours of her bisexuality or her alleged relationship with Carole Pope which has caused some in the gay community to shun her. But for those of you who want to find out more, two books of interest came out in 2001: The Complete Dusty Springfield, and an authorized biography entitled Dancing With Demons.