Born in London in 1939, she may have been Mary O’Brien to her parents, but to the rest of the world she was Dusty Springfield. Famous for her blonde beehive, black eye make-up and amazing soul voice, she was also one of the first pop stars to admit to messing around in the bedroom with the same sex.
Having survived a convent school education, Mary O’Brien was working in a department store when she joined the all-female trio the Lana Sisters. In 1960 she and her brother Dion assumed the names Dusty and Tom Springfield, and began three years of chart success as The Springfields.
In 1962, their parents Catherine and Gerard O’Brien, moved to 11 Wilbury Road in Hove. The following year Dusty launched her solo career, and released I Only Wanna Be With You. Not only did it reach number 4 in the charts, but it was the first record to be played on Top of the Pops! Anyone into pop trivia will be fascinated to learn that the melody was written by song-writer Ivor Raymonde whilst on holiday at West Witterings near Bognor Regis. Wow!
So… was Dusty Springfield gay?
Dusty visited her parents in Hove as often as she could. We have an eyewitness account from Brighton Ourstory friend ‘Grant’, of Dusty arriving in Wilbury Road in a pink Thunderbird with a black girlfriend. In 1964 she told the Argus that her mum was still fussing over her: “Mum doesn’t think I get enough sleep. I don’t but I live.”
Photo from facebook.com/DustySpringfieldOfficial
If Grant had seen Dusty around 1967, then the black girlfriend in question is likely to have been singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (Wikipedia). Apparently they met on the set of ITV’s weekly pop programme Ready Steady Go! in 1966. They were together for about five years, living in London’s Kensington district, during which time Dusty recorded many of Tanega’s songs, often appearing as the b-sides to her singles. When the relationship fell apart Norma returned home to the USA.
And Tom Springfield too?
In February 1970 Tom and Dusty Springfield released a single together, written by Tom: Morning Please Don’t Come. The b-side Charley written by Norma and Tom together.
There had been a third member of the Springfields 1962–63: Mike Hurst. In an interview in 2016 he revealed “I had no idea back then that Tom and Dusty were both gay. They were naïve times… I just wasn’t really aware of such things.”
Tom had had some success of his own after The Springfields, penning hits The Carnival Is Over in 1965 and Georgy Girl in 1966, both for Australian folk / pop group The Seekers. He also continued to write songs for his sister, including Losing You in 1964.
Dusty became a huge star in America as well as at home, and throughout her life was hounded by the media about her personal life. In 1970 she told the London Evening Standard:
“I’m as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy. More and more people feel that way and I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”
I don’t give a damn
Her career floundered in the 70s, but the interest in her private life didn’t. She told Keith Howes of Gay News in 1978: “People can draw their own conclusions and I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to commit myself to being homosexual or heterosexual, because people are going to write what they want about me – they always have. Actually you can print this, I’m having a three-way with Princess Anne and one of her horses”.
The transcript of the interview of Dusty Springfield by Keith Howes is available on William Brougham’s blog.
However tragedy was just around the corner in Hove. In 1979, her mother died of lung cancer in a nursing home, and her father had a fatal heart attack in Rottingdean.
Her career was revived in 1987 with the Pet Shop Boys single What Have I Done To Deserve This. Here they are performing the song together live at The Brits the following year.
Yet again this sparked questions about her sexuality. If you’ll forgive the pun, she put the record straight the following year in the News of the World:
“I have tried sex with both men and women – I found I liked it”.
In 1994 she began a long struggle with breast cancer, and it was this that finally took her from us on 2 March 1999, aged only 59. There isn’t a plaque on the Wilbury Road property, but she is commemorated locally in the form of a Brighton & Hove bus – the Dusty Springfield.
This originally appeared in Brighton Ourstory newsletter 8, Summer 2000.
