Springfield, who died in March, aged 59, from breast cancer, was a Sixties icon, one of the few who maintained her aura and mystique beyond her peak. While Cilla became a schmaltzy television star and Lulu a pocket caricature, Dusty kept her dignity and her credibility in the face of lean times.

This updated and revised version of O'Brien's 1988 biography, originally intended to coincide with the singer's 60th birthday, is now, sadly, a eulogy. A sympathetic portrait of an artist who spent much of her life at odds with herself over her work and her sexuality, it tells how at the dawn of the Sixties, Mary O'Brien, a convent girl, transformed herself into Dusty, the woman with the big hair, panda eyes and booming soul voice.

Springfield championed black music in the UK when it was barely acceptable in America, befriending many of that era's stars in the process. One marvellous anecdote describes her sharing a dressing room with the Ronettes; the four's enormous beehives constantly clashed in the confined space.

Springfield possessed of one of the great white soul voices, but constantly found herself denied the sort of material most suited to her by her record labels and her chronic lack of confidence. Inevitably, as the hits dried up she suffered increasingly from a doubt and despair that drove her to alcohol and drugs and, eventually, the brink of suicide. Her bisexuality only served to complicate matters, as she battled with her Catholic upbringing and the moral strictures that would have destroyed her career forever.

But Springfield could be strong. O'Brien recounts the moment when she made a personal stand against apartheid in South Africa by refusing to sing to segregated audiences. Where other entertainers paid lip-service or toed the line, she voiced her feelings and found herself deported.

Her final years saw Springfield rehabilitated as a performer, thanks largely to the efforts of the Pet Shop Boys, whose material and production gave her voice the treatment it deserved. Her record sales would never reach the level of her peak, but Dusty reigned as the queen bee of British pop music once more. And that is how we will remember her.

Mike Pettenden
The Times (London),
April 3, 1999