<REPUTATION>

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
WOMAN of REPUTE

CHAPTER TWELVE

REPUTATION

With her confidence restored, Dusty returned to Britain and agreed to allow the Pet Shop Boys and producers Dan Hartman, Paul O'Duffy and Andy Richards to produce her first album in eight years. That album--1990's Reputation - has proved to be her biggest selling recording since the sixties, aside from compilation albums of her greatest hits.

In her biography of Dusty, Lucy O'Brien notes that "Reputation lightly plays on the themes of scandal and notoriety that have colored Dusty's career." Musically, the album displays a range of influences and styles. The single "Reputation" has a seventies-soul tinge, while "In Private" pulsates with a distinctly Motown-esque beat. On "Occupy Your Mind," a mesmerizing house anthem, Dusty embraces a post-acid rave-style. She even raps on "Daydreaming," producing a sensuous and worldly-wise discourse, permeated by a haunting quality of sadness and regret:

I want to catch a plane to an open space I want to feel the sun shining on my face But time is short, the waiting long My patience is exhausted -I'm just not that strong I want to see the parade You want to watch T.V. So we don't do either - it's insanity You say there's plenty of time and life is good So you never make your mind up Well you never could
I can't ask you when or why And you'll look up to the sky The parade is passing by So many times things pass you by Imagination running wild You've got to start choosing right from wrong Instead of daydreaming all day long

Reputation also contains a message of self-acceptance--one that is most resolutely expressed in the gospel-shout of "Born This Way":

Some people see what's gonna be But they hide in the corner from reality Sometimes you're up, and sometimes you're down You can't spend your whole life just foolin' around Break away And take the time and break the ties And leave it all behind you and say That's the way I am Yeah, I was born this way Can't you see it in my eyes?

In this world there's a love that's unspoken Letting go, reaching out Then it's time to search your heart And start anew Learn to love yourself Respect yourself and say That's the way I am I was born this way

The thematic undercurrents of Reputation reflect the reality that we are all called to be authentic to our truest self--a self that is all too often buried and trapped deep within by expectations, norms, personas, lies and fears generated and perpetuated by external realities--be they other individuals, society or religion.

"My relationships have been pretty mixed, and I'm fine with that. Who's to say what you are? Right now I'm not in any relationship by choice, not because I'm afraid I'd be that or that. Yet I don't feel celibate, either. So what am I? It's other people who want you to be something or other - this or that. I'm none of the above. I've never used my relationships . . . to be fashionable, and I don't intend to start now."

Upon its release, Reputation was referred to by one critic as "Dusty's songs of experience." At the core of this experience is Dusty's own struggle with her sexuality within the confines of both a society and a music industry that demands conformity to a heterosexual ideal. Such conformity forced the introverted Mary O'Brien to create early in her career, the outward persona of Dusty Springfield--a flamboyant figure in a blonde beehive, a persona that throughout the sixties she had increasingly embraced.

Yet Dusty paid a price for the creation of a persona which strived to appease the heterosexual world while ignoring the needs of the authentic self within. As Lucy O'Brien in Dusty notes, "the first inkling of this came out after a 1968 Talk of the Town appearance when [Dusty] said, 'I feel like two separate people. I was coming here tonight and I saw my name up in lights. People say 'It must give you a kick, seeing your name up there', but it doesn't. It doesn't give me a thrill. Not because I'm ungrateful . . . it's just that it seems like a separate person. When I hear my name announced, it also feels to me like it's someone else!' Later Dusty admitted, ". . . to this day when they announce me as Dusty Springfield I stand backstage and thing myself into her personality."

Typical of human experience, Dusty's coming to terms with who she is in relation to herself and others, has been an evolving process - one which not only can account for the hiatus in her recording career in the mid-seventies, but also for the degree and range of emotional intensity evident in her voice. It is a range that traverses from desperation to rapture, and one that reflects the lived experience of a human's outer forcement to the edges giving rise to an inner journey to a centre of authenticity and wholeness.

"I read something recently . . . and this one phrase leapt out at me from the book DAMAGE by Josephine Hart. It says, 'Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.' And that kind of sums me up."

The album Reputation was received well upon its release in Britain. The London Times suggested a comparison to Tina Turner's recent return, and referred to the album as "polished and sure-footed." Q magazine described Reputation as "a positively engrossing record," the Daily Telegraph, "an impressive return by a true original," while New Musical Express called it "a thing of dignity and great charm; the sound of two decades colliding and nobody getting hurt."

"The record is fairly eclectic in tempos. I would be somewhat distraught to have to go and make a dance record with somebody more frivolous than the Boys because it really wouldn't work. With them, there's always something slightly off-centre that I like. I'm a bit off-centre as well. We get along fine."

The success of Reputation impelled Dusty to move back to Britain after fifteen years of living in California. It was a move not without its difficulties - the primary one involving Dusty's beloved cats. Accordingly, the Dutch city of Amsterdam became Dusty's home for over a year as it was the closest she could live to England without subjecting her cats to the six months of quarantine necessary if she had brought them directly to England from the States. Eventually Dusty and her two cats settled in Buckinghamshire.

"[When I was living in Amsterdam] I used to put on the saddest music I could find and put my head between the speakers just so that it would make me weep . . . It was Enya, actually, or Tchaikovsky. Which'd really do it any day - overlooking the canals with the rain falling into them, my head between the speakers, just letting it out . . .[Laughs] I don't suggest that people do that with my records, but it's certainly a good thing to do with Tchaikovsky."

"I've only got one cat these days - Nikolai. He lives in Buckinghamshire with me. My other cat got flattened by a car. It's a shame because she came all the way from America just to get squashed! The whole thing was a black comedy. I brought her in and put her in a baking tin. I never realized how quickly animals stiffen when they die. Anyway, I thought of putting her in the freezer like they do in America but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I put her where she normally slept instead. Nikolai was sad for a couple of days but since then he's never been happier. He just wanted her out of the way. Cats have their own morality and it's not like ours."

"Sometimes I think I'm not adapting to England. Then I'll go for a drive and come across some particular stretch of river . . . a field of corn . . . and it makes me cry because it's so beautiful . . . I can't deal with abrasive people, it makes me jittery and when I get home I'm shaking . . . I think I've been very lucky. There have been a few real bum people in my life, but basically I attract nice people . . ."

"I feel trapped if I'm anywhere for more than a year, although as you get older, it becomes harder to be a gypsy . . . It definitely runs in the family. My brother and I are incapable of sitting still in one place for more than three months without being absolutely crushingly bored. But it does get harder--when you have responsibilities and mortgages and all of that stuff. I should never ever buy a house because I realise now what a trap it is. It is sort of a good idea at the time--it's what people do. It shows you're grown up. It shows you're mature. But, actually, I didn't know what a mortgage was and I went into shock when I discovered that I actually owned about three bricks of the house. I think I'd rather just pay rent--because at least there's a lease and you can get out of it . . . It's just, I'm a transient . . . I have always wanted to be somewhere else--which I've learnt isn't always the best idea--because the old grass is always greener . . . I know it's not, but it's just a restlessness in me and my neighbours find it very sad . . . I don't find it sad at all but I was beginning [to think it was sad] until [I had a] late night talk with my brother . . . and he said, 'Don't lose that'. And he put me straight. He said, 'That's what keeps you interested and if you don't have that you'd vegetate'. And it's true. I don't find it sad at all."

Dusty From The Soul by Sharon Davis, Blues & Soul, Vol. 564, 1990.

Lusty Springfield, The Guardian, June 7, 1990.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NASHVILLE