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Interviews - DUSTY THEY KNEW

MIKE GILL AND VICKI WICKLIAM MET DUSTY SPRINGFIELD IN THE SIXTIES. MIKE STARTED OUT AS HER PR. VICKI ENDED UP AS HER
Manager MIKE JUST PUT TOGETHER THE DUSTY BOXED SET AND VICKI'S WRITTEN A BIOGRAPHY RICHARD SMITH SPOKE TO BOTH OF THEM ABOUT THE DUSTY THEY KNEW

H DEAR. VICKI WICKHAM SOUNDS A LITTLE BIT

Put out. Ever since The Daily Mail serialised her book, Dancing With Demons, last month, the letters have been flooding in to Dusty Springfield fan sites. They called it "Dusty - The Hatchet Job!" and "One of the most appalling acts of betrayal of modern times!" What had she, what had she, what had she done to deserve this?

"They hate me, don't they?" Vicki wonders aloud, sounding genuinely hurt. "When you read the book, did you think that we liked Dusty?" she asks earnestly. "I'm very sorry that people don't under-stand that. The intention was to write this book about this terrific person who had problems. But the fans have made me wonder if that's come across. Oh dear. Vicki says she was horrified by the serialisation, which, with its litany of drink, drugs, self-harm, suicide attempts and violent lesbian lovers, was more warts-and-warts, than warts-and-all. "I absolutely had a heart attack! The headlines were just horrendous. I thought it was really tasteless... all the things I hate about the English tabloids." I'm not sure if Vicki's being disingenuous here or just astonishingly naive. I mean, how did she expect The Daily Mail to handle the story? Vicki says she hopes the fans will read the book, and that they'll see "that Dusty was a really decent, funny, intelligent person who, like a lot of artists, strove for perfection, and didn't always use the best methods to get it, but tried damn hard, and at the end of the day did a damn good job. And yes, she had battles with drink and drugs, but the good news was she overcame them."

Vicki's just flown in from New York. We're sitting in the Churchill Hotel. Fans will know that, because of its legendary room service, this was Dusty's favourite place to stay in London. Vicki's just had lunch with Penny Valentine, who's sitting way over there. Penny actually wrote the book. Vicki sketched

out its shape and told her who to talk to. Few people knew Dusty as well as Vicki did - which is why some fans are calling her "Judas". Vicki Wickham was Dusty's manager from the days of her Pet Shop Boys-engineered revival, in 1987, until her death last year. They'd been friends since 1963, when Vicki was working on the pilot for Ready Steady Go! And Dusty was still in The Springfields. "I knew her as a friend, not as Dusty Springfield. We hung out a lot" They came from similar, Home Counties backgrounds. They shared the same goofy sense of humour they used to talk about the music they loved, which was mostly black music, and about the women they fancied. "Dusty liked marvellous people, like Monica Vitti or Angie Dickinson. We liked totally different people, so it was always fun." Vicki's never really been in the closet, but she only really came out in an interview with The Guardian last year. The journalist asked if she'd ever fancied Brian Jones. "I said 'No, not remotely. I'm gay, I'd hardly be interested in him. It wasn't a big deal or anything." She's been going out with singer Nona Hendrix for thirty years. "And I hope I live with her for another thirty years - I'm potty about her'

And, of course, Vicki did like Dusty. Adored her. Who wouldn't? Why? Vicki can reel off a list. "She was the most witty, funny, entertaining, woman you could ever hope to meet. And she was bright - you could have a conversation with her about politics, about music, about artistry, about airports. She was well read, she was really up-to-date on things. She was entertaining. She was kind - actually kind beyond the call of duty. I mean, she was just magnificent. And, because she was vulnerable, we all wanted the best for her. Even when she was at her most infuriating, or most stoned, or most whatever, you wanted to put your arms around her, pick her up and say: 'It will all be okay, but you've got to try and do something about it.' She was very like a child in a way - you wanted things t be right for her."

Vicki's book isn't the only Dusty artefact t be released this month. There's also a 4-CD boxed set, Simply... Dusty, a fine reminder her life wasn't just about Dancing With Demo first, he felt totally in awe of her. But she soon put him at his ease. They got on so well, and Mike did such a good job on the Talk of the Town dates, she made him her pet PR. "She Surrounded herself with gay people: managers, male and female, press agents, mol. She was

Very good at choosing people." Although she could be rather demanding, Mike Gill, like many who got close to her, adored Dusty, the person. "She was very hard work, but you'd forgive her. She sacked me so many times! The longest we didn't speak was two weeks.

Suddenly, the phone rang and she said, 'Are you coming round tonight?' As if nothing had happened. That was very Dusty. She found it lovely hard to hurt people and, when she did, She was grief-stricken." From a distance, Dusty Springfield was a Perfect creation. She looked so fabulous and trounced so sensual, and yet made it all seem 5so effortless. But Dusty's striving for perfumed the physical presence to match the voice -cause she knew that voice was so special." Revealingly, Mike Gill calls Dusty's trademark wigs and make-up, her drag. "That was her mask. And when the baggage was off, she loathed Dusty Springfield." Mike remembers how she'd tell him how much she wanted to drop the orchestras, the gowns, the wigs, and the make-up. "But I can't do it," Dusty would say. "I'm trapped, I don't have the courage to walk away." "I think it weighed on her," Vicki Wickham confirms. "As she got older, she didn't look like Dusty Springfield, with the beehives of the Sixties, and it really bothered her that people expected her to look the same and still come out singing I Only Want to be with you. She had very eclectic musical tastes, and would have liked to have grown into another skin, so she could have sung those sort of songs."

She tried, of course. In 1968, she walked She was also singing with angels. The annihilation led to her "difficult" reputation. "You've away from the big ballads and recorded a soul orgy’s executive producer, Mike Gill, is some got to bear in mind this is the Sixties," says album, Dusty In Memphis. "In that period, you one else who'd known Dusty well since the Mike, "women were told 'you will do as you're stuck to a formula," Mike recalls. "When it came Sixties. In 1968, Gill was working for the pub told. We're going to give you a song and you'll out, it confused the public. The reviews were licit Keith Goodwin. Just before Dusty was record it.' Dusty used to rail against that. She absolutely stunning, but the album bombed. Due to start a prestigious ruin at The Talk of used to kick ass in a big way, and it made her She was incredibly upset about it."

The Town, Goodwin pissed off to the south of very unpopular." A chronic lack of self-team here began her sad decline. Soon alter, Dusty France on holiday, and left Mike handling the was behind her quest for perfection. It helped moved to LA. One biographer, Lucy O'Brien, Great White Lady. "I was just coming up to my her make some unsurpassable recordings has suggested that Dusty fled Britain because 18th birthday and I'd been working there less latter songs were often recorded word by of press speculation over her sexuality. Mike than nine weeks. I said 'Dusty's opening at the word. Whenever Mike would show Dusty new Gill, her press officer at the time, is It’s so sure. Talk of The Town!' He said 'She's a difficult, photos of herself, out would come the skips- An Observer profile in 1968, which mentioned Impossible cow to work with - and I don't give sorts and the pen. "Dusty Springfield was a total that she shared a house with Norma Tanager, a shit"' and utter creation... everything about the seemed quite innocent at the time (though, Mike had adored the star from altar, so, at alter go had to be total perfection. She want- when Dusty saw the article, she phoned Gill

"Absolutely screaming"). She told The Evening Standard, in 1970, how she felt she was "as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl, as a boy." But added the disclaimer, "I could never probably get mixed up in a gay scene, because it would be bound to undermine my sense of being a woman. But Mike Gill remembers that the press impact of this at the time was practically zero. "If you read the piece very carefully, she doesn't say anything about being gay. She was very good at that."

Dusty could also be pretty bold. It was her refusal to play to segregated audiences in South Africa in 1964 that cemented her reputation as a "troublemaker". She was far more upfront than any other major female artist was, but preferred to talk around her sexuality, rather than about it. Keith Howe’s interviewed Dusty for Gay News in 1978. Today, Keith remembers how, when he plucked up the courage to pop the big question, She burst into tears, sobbing that she couldn't talk about being gay, it was impossible." They reached a compromise Dusty would talk indirectly about her sexuality and about homophobia in Hollywood. The article appeared - minus their altercation. After Keith left her hotel room, he too started to cry. "It had been like talking to someone awaiting the assassin's bullet in some police state... as she said to me, 'It's ALL absurd - the whole thing!"'

The late Seventies were Dusty's darkest days. The move to the States had proved disastrous. "She thought she was going to have a huge career there," Vicki believes, "probably meet somebody she'd settle down with, and everything would be terrific." It wasn't. In one of pop's most incongruous tragedies, someone who strove so hard for perfection saw her life turn into an absolute mess. There were slogs round the cabaret circuit. The hits dried up. There were catastrophic attempts at comebacks. And Dusty developed the sort of appetite for drink and drugs that they give male rock stars medals times.
October 2000

For acquiring. "Like every addict, she 'had it under control'," Vicki says. "And, like every addiction, it becomes a reason for not doing things. 'I can't get on with my career at the moment 'cause I'm too busy doing what I'm doing."'

It wasn't until 1987 that she managed to pull herself back from the abyss. Vicki simply states the reason why "Basically, the Pet Shop Boys." An old friend of Vicki's, Alee Willis, had written a song with Neil and Chris - What Have 1 Done To Deserve This? The Boys were just gagging for Dusty to sing it with them. But where was she? "I called Dusty up and she responded very, very quickly," says Vicki. "And then she said, 'Christ, I haven't done this in a long time, I don't really know what to do, will you help me?' I said, 'of

Course.' And really, from

Then on, something clicked. I think it was confidence. She realised she could sing, that Chris and Neil thought she was wonderful... And she realised she could have a career again, there was a place for her, that she wasn't an old has-been."

It began again. In ten years, Dusty went from

Rehab to total rehabilitate- Zion. By 1999, the woman

Who’d been told to write a letter of apology to the Queen after quipping at a

Royal charity show, "It’s 10 nice to see the royalty

Isn’t confined to the box!", was awarded an OBE. Dusty became again the star she always was. It was fitting that her renaissance was down to Neil Tennant, one of so many gay men who had never forgotten that voice. "We were in awe of her," Neil Tennant said, in a statement issued after Dusty died in March last year. "Dusty was a tender, exhilarating and soulful singer; incredibly intelligent at phrasing a song, painstakingly building it up to a class 4 max. She was also warm

And funny... the very essence of Fabens.

Mike Gill, another gay

Man who went from being a Dusty fan to being Dusty's friend, can only talk about Dusty in similarly glowing terms. "She had huge powers of seduction - she could seduce people just like she could seduce an audience. I was absolutely besotted with her - and I was gay! There was nothing I wouldn't do for her. You could not resist her. She had this ability to just walk into a room, even when you felt she was at her most emotionally fragile, and she could draw the love out of you. That's exactly what she did. Dusty just drew love out of people."

·Simply... Dusty is out now on Mercury Records.

· Dancing With Demons: The authorised biography. is published by Hodder & Stoughton, £17.9

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