<PET SHOP BOYS>

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
WOMAN of REPUTE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PET SHOP BOYS

After the "Hippodrome fiasco" Dusty returned to California, no doubt concluding that her time in the music world had passed. Salvation, however, came in 1987 when her manager Vicki Wickham phoned with the "silly idea" of sixties legend Dusty Springfield dueting with eighties techno-pop kings, the Pet Shop Boys.

Initially skeptical ("Who are the Pet Shop Boys?" she recalls asking), Dusty eventually accepted their invitation. The Pet Shop Boys - Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe - had as the vehicle for their proposed duet, the Allee Willis penned "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"

". . . That was a watershed in my life . . . It just sort of plopped into my life and changed it. I'd gone through a very down time. Nothing was happening. I wasn't well and . . . I was gradually pulling myself together. I was sitting in someone's garden in California under one of the few trees that were there and a feeling came over me that it was all going to be all right, everything was going to be all right. I don't know where the feeling came from. What came back into me was either the innate conceit or the stupidity of the first time around, starting up without any connections, without any knowledge, with being as naive as I was. I just knew that everything was going to be all right. I knew that I was going to have hits. I just knew it. But I didn't know how. I just knew it was going to happen and that happened to me under that tree and it was either the same afternoon or the next day that I got a phone call from Vicki about the song . . . I knew who [the Pet Shop Boys] were because I nearly had an accident on the freeway listening to WEST END GIRLS and I thought, 'Who's that? What is that? Who are they? I've got to know!' And gradually I got tuned into them. . . I knew it wasn't American but I didn't know who the Pet Shop Boys were . .. They've always had a . . . Well, there's a symphonic quality to it, a larger than life quality to it. Fullness and . . . I don't know . . . They struck me in that way, that kind of off- handness, not really trying very hard . . . There's a lot going on but essentially . . . It's hard to pick out what was going on but it was full. There was a pulse to it and I just loved that sound. No one had done that sound. So, I suppose, it struck me[like] the first time I heard Phil Spector . . . 'Funny how potent cheap music can be'. Never in a million years thought about working with them . . ."

"We'd heard she was difficult to work with," recalls Neil Tennant, "but she was just very professional." The track was cut in England in the autumn of 1987. "It was eerie," recalled Dusty, "Vicki and I were giggling away because the Pet Shop Boys are so different. Thank God I'm so versatile. I couldn't work out what they wanted until we'd finished the session in London. Then I realized: it was the sound of my voice. It was that simple." Commenting on Dusty's vocal style, Tennant says: "She's very husky and breathy, with an intensity and desperation to her voice that's fantastically sensual. She sort of floats off on another plane."

"I came to London to do it with them, still not knowing what they wanted me to do. But then I never knew what they wanted me to do and they didn't really know until we sort of worked it out. I remember going into the studio and really mucking the song up because it didn't occur to me that Neil was too polite to tell me. They were being very polite and very quiet and I said, 'What is it you want?' and they said, 'The sound of your voice'. . . And that was when my life began to get simpler . . . I thought they wanted much more from me, much more decorative, much more wild, much more involved. Basically, they just wanted me to sing . . . 'Since you went away, I've been hanging around . . .' That's what they wanted and they were right."

"What Have I Done To Deserve This?" was a worldwide hit, peaking at Number Two on both the American and British charts. Dusty's subsequent recording of "Nothing Has Been Proved," the Pet Shop Boys' penned theme to the film Scandal, consolidated her return to the critical mainstream. In a T.V. interview with reporter Cathy McGowan, Dusty remarked that the recording of "Nothing Has Been Proved" completed a "cyclical movement"--the song's subject matter (the Profumo sex scandal of 1963), which had coincided with her initial solo success, was now twenty-four years later contributing to the continuation of that success.

"Nothing Has Been Proved" also provided Dusty with her first video clip in which she was the primary focus. Set in a ballroom littered with the refuse of an election party, the video sees Dusty portraying an elegant nightclub singer, resplendent in black and purple, who quietly relates the dense text of the song while behind her a chic Christine Keeler look-alike is interviewed and photographed by two reporters (played by the Pet Shop Boys). The video is interjected with original newsreel footage of the Profumo scandal and with extracts from the film Scandal.

Mandy's in the papers 'cause she tried to go to Spain
She'll soon be in the dock and in the papers once again
Vicki's got her story about the mirror and the cane
It may be false, it may be true
But nothing has been proved

Stephen's in his dressing-gown now, breakfasting alone
Too sick to eat, he's on his feet and to the telephone
The police inspector soothes him with his sympathetic tone
It may be false, it may be true
But nothing has been proved

In the house a resignation
Guilty faces, every one
Christine's fallen out with Lucky
Johnny's got a gun
"Please Please Me"'s number one

(It's a scandal! It's a scandal! Such a scandal!)

Now, Stephen's in the dock for spending money that was earned
By Christine, and the prosecution says that money burned
A hole in Stephen's pocket, for expensive sins he yearned
It may be false, it may be true
But nothing has been proved

In the news the suicide note
In the court an empty space
Even Mandy's looking worried
Christine's pale and drawn
"Please Please Me"'s number one

(It's a scandal! It's a scandal! Such a scandal!)

Last night he wrote these words to his friend:
"Sorry about the mess
I'm guilty 'til proved innocent
In the public eye and press"
The funeral's very quiet because all his friends have fled
They may be false, they may be true
They've all got better things to do
They may be false, they may be true
But nothing has been proved
Oh, nothing
Nothing

Overall, the video is an exceedingly well-crafted piece of film-making, although at times, Dusty appears somewhat camera-shy - to the extent of diverting her eyes quickly from contact with the camera at one point. However such lapses in confidence are more than compensated for by the haunting closing shots of her knowing and world-weary expression staring unflinchingly into the camera as she quietly and repetitiously sings the single word "nothing."

"WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? was my first video and I had no idea what to do and they had no idea that I had no idea . . . I had to keep asking somebody. I hadn't a clue what you were supposed to do on videos. I didn't know about looking cameras and stuff like that. With all my television stuff, I never bothered about cameras. I just sort if went floundering around and if they followed me fast enough that was all right. It never occurred to me that shots were worked out."

"[In the video for NOTHING HAS BEEN PROVED] I looked very strange. I was not, er . .. I didn't like the way I looked in that but you know in hindsight, I see [that] actually it's very well done. I didn't really know what they were doing but by then, you know, I sort of knew what the cameras were doing, you know - not a clue on the other one."

"It's always with hindsight that I realize things blindingly clearly, but WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? was a great rehearsal for the next one, NOTHING HAS BEEN PROVED. It's as if I'm being weaned in some ways and allowed to rehearse little by little. I want to work with them [the Pet Shop Boys] again, but I'm sure neither side wants to ALWAYS work together . . . I'm being given things to do that gradually build up the confidence and allow me a little more freedom."

Scandal In The Wind by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 1989.

CHAPTER TWELVE

REPUTATION