They stopped outside a record store and listened. It was the early hours of the morning, but music was still booming out. They listened to "Wishin' and hopin' and prayin'" and more words of the song. The smile bubbled into a laugh. Mrs O'Brien giggled. "Listen! That's my daughter! That's Mary!"

Still don't know who she was talking about? No less than Dusty Springfield. Her mother always calls her Mary, her real name.

Dusty's mum - dusty blonde haired, youthful, and looking just a little embarrassed when talking of her daughter - sat opposite me in in a coffee house. She was recalling her happiest recollection of her trip to America with Dusty.

She had come up from her home in Brighton for the interview with me. Her husband, glasses, perpetual pipe and jolly looking, who works in town - added occasional comments.

"What can I say? Dusty is a great girl. But I'm biased," she stated - continuing, "Dusty as a young girl? Well, she was a tomboy."

Dad said very decidedly: "Oh, yes. She was a tomboy."

For a male parent, he knew an awful lot about pop music. "Tamla-Motown, that's what Dusty likes isn't it?" Mr. O'Brien said, adding: "Isn't the Seekers record pleasant?"

Mrs. O'Brien took over: "Mary always wanted to be famous," she says quietly. "She says it all boils down to an inferiority complex. She insists she's not beautiful, but talent will out, and that's the important thing.

"Right from when they where young she and Tom always made music. Mary didn't have any music lessons, but she sang in the school choir.

"There were always musical instruments lying around. I remember I would push open doors of the rooms and intruments of all sorts would fall over."

"The sitting room was a rehearsal room later on," chipped in Mr. O'Brien.

"And Mary," came back Mrs. O'Brien, "or in fact both of them, collected hundreds of film magazines. She's still got them, you know. She won't let me throw them away. She keeps them in old tin trucks."

"What about her early singing?" I asked them both.

"She first began to sing at a Belgravia club," Mr. O'Brien answered. "She used to accompany herself on a Spanish guitar."

"I often think," said her mother wistfully, "that she sounded better in those days. When she played her Spanish pieces."

"The first records she bought were all Latin American," added her father. Tom was as crazy as she was about them."

"At the club everybody seemed to like her singing," said Mrs. O'Brien. "How shall I say it? - she went down a bomb. Is that right?

"Then she joined the Lana Sisters after answering an advert. She was with them for two years. That was the last time she lived at home.

"Then came the Springfields. Tom and Tim Field had been doing very nicely themselves. Then Mary joined them and you know how successful they became. Then she went solo."

"Has Dusty changed?" I asked her. She looked very thoughtful. "Yes," she said slowly, "Mary seems more sophisticated now. It might be an affectation, though. And she's got more responsibility. When she was with the Springfields she could lean on the two boys.

"She comes home when she can, you know, and unwinds. She's a home-lover - fireside and buttered toast type. But there isn't much time. She phones me from just about everywhere when she's away.

"She rang up one night and said: 'Daddy and you must come to America with me.' And we did. It was marvellous.

"I get anxious about her sometimes but she says: 'Mum don't worry about me - it only makes me worried too,' so I try not to.

"I hope," said Mrs. O'Brien, "that I've said the right things. It still takes some getting used to having a famous daughter and son," she said, "but I love it."

Tony Bromley
New Musical Express July 2, 1965