Dusty Springfield

This interview was taken for Bitz magazine

Her name of course is Dusty Springfield and not content with warbling her way through one Pet Shop Boys tune 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?' she has now roped Neil and Chris in to write her new single. It's called 'Nothing Has Been Proved' and it's for the soundtrack of some new film called Scandal. "I love working with them" she tells Bitz.

So how did it all come about then Dusty?
I did the single with Neil and Chris, but it's basically them. Neil's on it for a couple of lines, he and Chris wrote and produced it and they're in the video. I was sort of a guest in the last one, and on this one I've got a bit more responsibility, which is a bit nerve-racking! You start to realise that you're singing the whole song! Neil has a particular way of approaching a song, which is very personal, his own style. It's funny, because in the back of my mind I can always hear Neil singing it, so it takes me a few hours to get it right. But they wait patiently, and they don't say very much and it's sort of like, 'Lets let Dusty flail around until she gets it right'!

Has Neil ever taken you to Southend for a bag of chips?
Hahahahahaaa! Not Yet! I shall tell him that and insist that he takes me there! Once though, when one of the machines in the studio broke down, he and Chris and I went out to check the quality of the sign over the HMV record store for their 'Introspective' LP. It was pouring with rain, so we got out of the car into the rain and we decided that it was.... okay, just.

What's your favourite Chris Lowe clothing "creation"?
I particularly liked the thing he wore at the BPI awards. It had a vaguely fisherman quality to it. Some of it was see-through, but he was wearing it over clothes. I rather hoped he wouldn't(??)!

What actually happens in the Scandal film?
Well basically it's about the Profumo affair which happened in Britain in about 1963. It centred on a man called Steven Ward who was an osteopath (snoot doctor who manipulates people's bones and muscles) who was 'in' with the uppersociety. Basically, the allegation was that he provided call-girls for MPs, and John Profumo was one of those MPs who got together with a girl called Christine Keeler.

The papers found out about it and it was going to be an enormous embarrassment to the Tory government at the time so they started to pin things on Stephen Ward, including connection with a Russian agent, to discredit him. At the end of it all Profumo resigned and Stephen Ward committed suicide. It was very sad.

Why did they choose you to do the song?
Well having worked with the Pet Shop Boys before, I think there were probably discussions about who was going to sing it and Neil came up with me. Neil actually wrote this song long before the film was even brought to light. I don't know whether it was altered when the project came up, but certainly he had written a song about Christine Keeler and he sort of had it on the back burner. Actually, until last week I though he'd written it specially for the film.

Have you ever actually been in a film?
Aw, that's a major ambition. What role? Mmmm... I think I'd like to be a tart.

Oh! Urm ha ha (cough).... Um, ah, well.... Where, ahem, do you live?
I don't really have a home at the moment. I had a home in Los Angeles, actually I had lots of houses there - not all at the same time, you understand. But I decided to base myself in Europe somewhere and I got rid of most of my worldly good except for my two cats. One's called Nicholas Alexis, named after the last Russian tsar's son because he's constantly ill (??) and he's very Russian looking. My other cat's called Malaysia, and I don't know why because she looks like a Fresian cow(??).

Bitz hears you have a large collection of wigs.
Eh? Wigs? No, I haven't got one, I wish I did! It would make life so much easier. I could send my head out to be done, get it dry cleaned. I used to have quite a collection in the '60s, who didn't? But I don't have any now. I could borrow one of Tina Turner's maybe...

What's it like being a living legend?
A living legend? I suspect I am to some people but, um, frankly it's nothing special.

I would like to thank Simon Tyne from London for finding this interview, typing it out and emailing it to me.