Dustyology - ‘Full Circle’ Transcript
FRENCH: I mean, is she likely to turn up soon
SAUNDERS: well, I hope so
S: she said she’d be here
F: well I have a colonic in half an hour
S: I know
S: just, you know, I said we’d do it; the interview, you know I had to say she was our favourite
F: Lulu’s our favourite
S: yeah I know but I was in a position so I couldn’t say that
DUSTY: here finally, sorry about….
F: yes?
D: hi. No, I’m actually here for…. [mouths “she’s in my chair”]
S: no she’s more.. beehive, [points to eyelashes], elbows.. elbows!
F: yes, yes she is
S: is that....keep her talking
F: hang on, give me a second [looks at Dusty]
S: [to Dusty] hello, hello, hello, I say, marvellous earrings
F: [quietly to Saunders] not completely sure
S: no
F: try the test
S: I’ll do the test
S: [to Dusty] hello, hello, how do you do
S: by the way, you don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand. You don’t have to….
D: stay forever, I will understand!
S: hello, yes!
S: it’s you!
D: hi
F: Dawn French
D: hello
S: she’ll be asking the questions then she’ll be putting everything through me
D: right
D: I can answer for myself
S: no, it’s far safer, I don’t want you answering any old questions
[musical introduction – Dusty’s first recording Midnight Choo Choo]
F: right, I’m kicking off with the questions now, erm, the first one is quite a personal one
S: doesn’t like personal questions
D: I always get those
S: [raises hand to silence Dusty] shush! I’m coping with this
F: what is your favourite colour?
D: [thinking]
S: [translates question into sign language]
D: vodka
S: [translates answer into sign language]
F: musician!
S: [nods]
[YDHTSYLM performance]
D: [sings YDHTSYLM in Italian] I’m too tired to sing, but it sounds much better in Italian
D: I heard that song at the San Remo Festival. Italians are so wonderfully emotional about their appreciation of things. They.. you know in the middle of those big Italian ballads, there’s a massive Puccini-like mass strings passage, and er, they all stand up and applaud! And they did this in the middle of YDHTSYLM.. when Pino Donaggio who wrote it along with Pallavicini and then, er, at that time there were two writers and I erm, I just fell on the floor.
F: when you were christened, did the vicar just say “I thee christen you Dusty? Did that not even..?”
D: no, no, honest to God, that came along later. My real name is Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien.
F: LIAR!
S: no-one’s gonna believe that!
F & S: stupid
[music playing….I Love a Piano]
D: my parents have really eclectic taste in music and that rubbed off on my brother and I, in that my father was a classical nut, I mean he worshipped Beethoven and Beethoven was it.. I never got into Beethoven. The only other things he listened to apart from classical music which I listened to on the radio all the time with him, erm, was jazz, a certain amount of jazz, but different kinds; he liked Jelly Roll Morton, erm, I was very.. but he also liked Peggy Lee, who you wouldn’t really think of as jazz. Then, she was considered a pop singer.
[Peggy Lee performance….Fever]
D: I know I could never sound like her, but I wanted to! She swung like crazy and to this day, swings more naturally, and it all sounds so effortless.
D: I also was very influenced by my brother, who was passionately in love with Carmen Miranda and kept drawing her shoes. He loved platform shoes, I don’t know whether he wears them still, but he really, really did good drawings of them!
F: I expect you’re very, very proud of your brother, Bruce Springsteen, aren’t you?
D: i.. what?
S: Bruce Springsteen, your brother.
[taken from old performance]
D: my own brother, Thomas, hasn’t been doing too badly on that particular line, either; he’s written a lot of songs as you may know, for the Seekers; one for Anita Harris; even one for me at one time! Anyway this song, that I’d like to sing you now, was in fact written when he was 9 years old, so it’s its world premiere folks! I hope you like it. Here we go, I’d like to sing it for you now…..
(sings It Ain’t All Honey).
[back to interview]
F: I believe, from researchers, that you actually went on tour with the Springbox.
D: I beg your pardon?
F: THE SPRINGBOX!
[the Springfields performance….Wimoweh]
D: We thought we were …. but we were pseudo-everything and we knew it, I mean, we just jumped up and down a lot and were cheerful, which was, there was a niche somewhere for cheerful people, and, and we were terribly out of tune; we sang very fast and very cheerfully, and they gave us a T.V. series! Would you believe?!. We didn’t have a record or anything, but that’s the BBC for you!
[from the Springfields’ performance]
D: hello everybody, we’d just like to say how very happy we are to be with you, on our own programme. Well our first song was a Zulu war tune, with Tom on the bongo drums, Tim on guitar, and I’m Dusty.
[American 60’s video playing Exciters Tell Him with Dusty’s voice over]
D: the Exciters sort of got you by the throat. We first heard it briefly in New York; we were stopping in New York for the first time ever, and, I was going past a record shop; a Colony record shop, open till at least 4, if not all night, and I just walked past, I mean it was the thrill of being in New York and it was night time; the buildings were so huge and it was like – who needed drugs? It was just incredible, and I…out of the blue comes blasting at you “I know something about love”, and that’s it. That’s what I wanna do.
D: it’s 3 o’clock in the morning, wherever it is – Broadway or something – that’s it! That’s what I wanna do. And we were going to Nashville to make a country album, so I, you know, took the scenic route to it
F: and then you went solo, did you?
D: yes, yes I did.
F: well done, Dusty.
D: thanks
F: we’re all very, very proud of you
D: thanks
F: you’re an icon
D: aw, you’ll make me cry, that’s really nice
S: you’re fabulous; we think you’re fabulous
[IOWTBWY performance]
F: [passing wig & false eyelashes to Saunders] come on, it’s worth a try, go on, ask!
S: come here, come here! It would just help the viewer at home if you put them on.
D: no. no, honestly I can’t, and first of all I never wore them that length
S: JUST PUT THEM ON
D: no! and it’s the wrong colour, and the wrong shape
S: please.. she doesn’t want to
D: not any more
S: stop trying to make Dusty put these on!
D: no, I won’t
S: stop it!
S: she doesn’t want to.. you don’t want to.. STOP IT!
S: Lulu would.
D: I don’t care
D: did she get it cleaned?
S: this was taken off your head in 1964!
[Nowhere To Run performance]
D: [looking at watch]
F: are you jealous of Cilla on Blind Date? Of her success?
D: no. not remotely. I can’t do that kind of thing. She has that great outward quality. No, I can’t do that kind of thing!
S: she can’t do that kind of thing.
F: is there possibly a game show for you in the pipeline?
S: that’s a good idea!
D: I hope not, no
S: that’s a good idea, though!
D: no.
F: what would we call it?
F&S: erm..
S: Dream.. Dusty Dates
F: no, I know. It needs to be something really, really plain, like erm.. Dusty! With an exclamation mark. You see..
S: Dusty dot dot dot exclamation mark question mark.
F: oh, absolutely, says it all
[performance with Woody Allen]
WOODY: you know, Dusty & I are such great friends. I’m only teasing, we just met.
D: news to me! Hahaha
W: I know we have a little thing going but we don’t wanna announce it immediately.
D: hahaha
W: it was wonderful, I’m still tasting it.
D: thanks Woody for coming on
W: a pleasure
D: bye bye
[back to interview]
D: erm, I did 2 years or 3 years for the BBC and 1 for ITV, I think. And they were fairly, fairly hectic cos I can’t see cue cards. In fact, I don’t think anyone had cue cards. You certainly didn’t have auto-prompters, so, I mean, I had to learn it all, and I spent half of the break; you know, the dinner break, when I was supposed to be putting my makeup on, running up and down to the sound booth, trying to get them to accept things like Jimi Hendrix, volume. There was this kind of ashen face when I went up there [laughs] and everything had gone, the meters had totally gone; but that’s the way it’s supposed to sound!
[performance with Jimi Hendrix]
D: one, one of the nice things about doing those shows was that I was just allowed to, to pick my own material, and as such because I had a fairly eclectic taste in music, well, VERY eclectic taste thanks to my upbringing; I was able to draw on that, and nobody thought it was odd – it was sort of like Dusty having a go!
[performance with guitar….My Lagan Love]
[Mothers Pride advert]
[ICMEACTT video]
D: I like a much more ambient sound, erm, wilder sound, and so I used to record in the corridors, mainly, there was some ambience to it, and the best was the ladies loo. That was great, much to the surprise of the cleaners one morning, about 6 - I was doing ICMEACTT I heard all this clanking down the end of the corridor and they were just standing there in their sort of print pinnys going “what’s she doing, then?” [laughs]
It really was the best sound in there. It was a little echo-ey, and there was no control over it, but it gave it that sound.
D: I never thought of myself as being a singer with an orchestra; I am part of the orchestra; part of the ensemble; I’m another instrument, and I like to be.. that’s why I like surround sound, I like to be part of it. So that’s why I like Some of Your Lovin’. Erm, and singing something off the wall, like.. Poor Wayfaring Stranger, which I did on the early BBC show.
[Poor Wayfaring Stranger performance]
D: [sings] I am a poor.. I can’t sing.. wayfaring stranger.. it’s an old folk song that came from the Appellations, it was probably originally Scottish, but I’m going home to see my father is so beautiful.. I’m only, I’m only going over Jordan; I’m only going over home. To me it’s a beautiful song.
[America video]
D: Murray the K did a show at the Brooklyn Fox, and most of it was the Motown acts, but he brought in a couple of English ones, and I did ten days or two weeks. Six shows a day! Luckily I only did 2 or 3 songs. I mean “Dancing In The Street” was the epitome of the best record of it’s type I ever heard. But they played that, they had an acetate of it, Martha & the Vandellas, in the dressing room at the Brooklyn Fox. Again, like at 9.30 in the morning, and it takes an awful lot to make me enthusiastic at that time in the morning, and they put it on and I just fell over. It was the opening drum solo.. everything about it was right – in your face!
[Dancing In The Street performance]
[Heatwave performance]
D: Just very good songs. And er, to be given songs by Burt Bacharach, was just such a joy. I mean, I flew over to New York to have dinner with him from the Liverpool Empire, where I was playing, and I had dinner with him on a Sunday, then flew back & did 2 shows in Liverpool that night, the Monday night, which was quite heavy going in those days, now, it’s nothing. I got IJDKWTDWM out of that.
[IJDKWTDWM performance at RAH]
[The Look Of Love performance]
D: I met Carole King in the Brill Building in New York which when she was probably about 18. And, er, I always remember, we both blushed furiously because I think we both very much wanted to meet each other out of respect. We met in a corridor and we weren’t expecting it, so we were off-guard, and, er, I just remember she was this little thing with lots of hair, and I thought “my God, all this music comes out of you” and she and her husband at that time, Jerry Goffin, they just wrote priceless songs. And the fact is that she made such good demos, I used to collect them, because you couldn’t better the demo, you absolutely could not better the demo. So I’d go for as close a sound as I could get.
[Some Of Your Lovin’ performance]
It’s the only record, “Some Of Your Lovin’”, I ever took home and played 14 times over and normally I don’t play them for at least a year, because I’m incapable of being objective. But that one got me to Atlantic Records, and it was Atlantics idea to try the Memphis thing.
[SOAPM performance]
D: yeah, I like Aretha’s version a lot better and she.. she did it the way that I wish I’d done it. That often happens when you hear somebody do it afterwards. She’ll phrase it [sings]”the only one WHO could ever reach me” where I went “the only one who could ever reach me”. I thought damn why didn’t I.. I didn’t do that. Now whenever I do it on stage I cop her phrasing, because that’s the way I should have done it.
[SOAPM performance at RAH]
[A House Is Not A Home performance]
D: god, it’s actually quite difficult to do that, because just singing with him with the piano at the beginning of it before the phantom orchestra appeared a la Hollywood thank God [!] er, that took some courage. But.. you know, you can rise to the occasion, when you think you can’t do something and then you’ve just gotta do it cos it’s just you & Burt Bacharach so you better hit the notes! And it indeed worked very well, I’m very proud of it. Hate the hair, love the song.
S: Must be great at Christmas, though, you get round the piano with Lulu and Helen Shapiro and people.
F: Dinah Washington
D: I don’t do that!
S: Sandie Shaw
F: and just sing along in soulful melodies
[Round Every Corner performance]
[I’m Gonna Make You Love Me performance]
[Sisters performance]
F: right, so, let me just get this right. You left England, our green and pleasant and satanic land in the year of..
D: ooh, 73? 73.
F: [writing] 73. And you came back in..
D: 89?
S: mm..
F: was it 89?
D: 89ish.
F: 89 or not 89?
D: 89ish, honestly.
S: well, what? I mean, you have to be specific about..
D: I don’t know, I went to Holland.
S: she went to Holland.
F: no-one’s interested in the Holland years, all right
S: no-one is
F: what we’re trying to get out of you is when you left this country and when you came back. Are you prepared to answer that question or not?
D: not really, no, I think it’s a bloody bore, actually.
S: no, hang on, if she left in 73 and came back in 89, that’s..
F: 40.. carry 2 down.. divide by 3..
S: I’ve got 49, that can’t be right.
F: no, no, that means she was abroad..
S: no, that’s not right, because.. no, that’s division.
F: no, that makes.. God, she was away for 82 years!
D: Los Angeles was just a place I wanted to be.. remember, I mean, I was a small child that was, that grew up in the 20th Century Fox musicals, and I always had this love affair with the dream of America. I still do, really! Er, it’s never what you think it’s gonna be. And it was very very good to me and very very bad to me. And it needed to be both for me to be here now.
S: shall I do it now?
F: yes!
S: it’s just.. we’re very big fans, and we need to get something signed.
D: that’s nice, at least.. no, no
S: just take this bit of paper. Could you ask the Pet Shop Boys to sign it for us?
D: of course.
S: cos you know them..
[WHIDTDT performance]
D: the Pet Shop Boys offered me a vehicle to, er.. I mean, it couldn’t have been more perfect, with me debating whether I could do it all again to not being expected to do it all again, to go through being a little bit, a part of their record, and having it be a huge hit in the States, and here, and everywhere. It was kind of a rehearsal for the next bit, which was the song from Scandal.
[Nothing Has Been Proved performance]
[clip from In Private video recording]
[D: we don’t have hair & make up until a certain hour.]
D: I’d never done a video before, I kept wondering what I was supposed to do. I think they assumed I knew, but actually I was terrified. I kept.. who do I ask what I’m supposed to do? [laughs] I had to ask somebody, they said “well you just look at the camera?”
[man: here we go, then! And, playback. Turn over.]
[In Private video recording]
[Dusty and Pat Rhodes & crew chatting]
[D: I’m a method singer.]
Neil Tennant: Dusty takes your song and makes it sound 10 times better.
Martha Reeves: And she’s into her music, it’s 100% of her life, anything else is secondary.
Dionne Warwick: tremendous voice, tremendous singer. And very emotional about what she does, and I think that’s probably not only her first love, but her only love.
Elvis Costello: the voice is, it’s one of the greatest voices in pop music, without doubt. And I don’t think she’s ever really got credit for that because people concentrate on the.. the icon aspect of it. You know, the hair and the eyelashes and [gesture] the hand movements.
D: Nashville. When I was there with The Springfields, they asked me to stay, and it.. I didn’t want to do that kind of music. I probably would have owned a whole town by now, “DustyLand”. I’d been thinking for about 3 years that I wanted to come back here, having been with The Springfields many many years ago. And, I didn’t quite know how I was going to achieve it, er, I just knew that it would probably be a good thing to do. Erm, and it just kind of dropped into my lap. It’s a pop album that’s being made in Nashville, because a lot of good players and erm, songwriters and everything have just sort of gravitated to Nashville. I mean, Nashville has changed, it isn’t what it was, I mean, it was very limited before. Now that all kinds of music comes out of Nashville, it actually suits me very well.
[Dusty recording Roll Away]
[CREDITS]
S: [in wig & fake eyelashes] yes, my name is Dusty Springfield, and I refuse to be filmed any more.
[Ragtime Selections playing in the background]
S: I won’t talk about the Holland years, no! Stop..
F: Dusty, can I just say thank you so much..
S: It’s not actually her, it’s me. It’s me.
F: oh!
S: it’s not actually Dusty, it’s me.
F: oh my God!
S: see, I told her if she wore this [points to hair] and this [points to eyelashes] people would know who she was!
F: that’s incredible.. the likeness is incredible.
F: would you do me a favour, would you do me a little medley of her favourite numbers?
S: has she gone home?
F; well, I think she hasn’t sung enough of the ones we want.
S: all right, all right.
F; could you do a medley if I feed you the actual..
S: yes, yes.
F; right. Start with Monsieur Dupont [?], the famous one.
D: [in American accent] y’all come back & see us real soon, y’hear?
