In writing this book, Penny Valentine had several advantages. She knew Springfield well in the 1960s and - via Vicki Wickham, once the editor of the television pop show Ready Steady Go! and later Dusty's manager - she had access to some of what went on behind the veneer of Dusty's career. Still, despite the book's dutiful survey of Dusty's professional achievements, and its often harrowing account of her problems with drink and drugs, there is a hole in the middle of this story. It is as if Valentine wanted to expose the cruel sufferings Dusty endured, apparently due to her upbringing, her Catholicism and her guilt about being a lesbian, while at the same time keeping her memory protected.

The book has the air of a small clique of friends sitting round and reminiscing about the Dusty they knew. Hence, there are various episodes intended to illustrate the wit, warmth and wonderfulness of Dusty that are meaningless to anybody who wasn't present. A description of a trip to Ireland with her friend Helene Sellery is like being forced to look at somebody else's embarrassing holiday snaps, and an interlude about how she used to go round to see Debbie, her hairdresser, at her home has the unmistakable ring of bathos. We learn that Debbie's dog was fond of Dusty, and that Debbie and Dusty used to talk about "very ordinary things".

Above all, it seems bizarre to bill a biography as "authorised" when there is no contribution from Dusty, beyond quotes from previously published interviews. Although Dusty apparently reached a new plane of comparative contentment at the end of her life (paradoxically, the news that she had cancer seems to have enabled her to rise above the anxieties that had hobbled her for decades), she didn't spend any time unravelling her innermost thoughts into Valentine's tape recorder.

Hence, Valentine's efforts to get inside Dusty's head and to analyse why she fell so dramatically from her mid-1960s stardom into years of self-destruction must be speculative. There are passages about the anti-gay bias in the music industry, and about the damage that being "outed" might have done to Dusty's career, which merely leave you regretting that Dusty herself never opened up on the topic. There are quasi- scientific discussions of emotional neglect and Dusty's alarming penchant for self-mutilation, but none of this is accompanied by any particular insights into Springfield's musical gifts. It is like saying that Charlie Parker was destroyed by living in a racist society - maybe so, but it tells you nothing about his revolutionary impact on jazz.

Nevertheless, Dusty, born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, was evidently scarred by her repressed and eccentric Irish family in west London, where the chief form of self-expression was throwing food around the room. Educated by nuns in all-girl schools, she never got to grips with the terrifying notion of having relationships with boys. When she eventually summoned up the courage to tell her parents she was gay, they refused to take any notice. Out of these traumas, how did Springfield become such a widely admired and soulful singer, with eclectic tastes and a broad musical knowledge?

Although the writer is complimentary about Dusty's best work, and stresses the admiration felt by her peers, she offers scant musical insight beyond the news that Dusty's father played her a lot of jazz and classical music. The book's narrow focus means there is little sense of Dusty's place in the wider music industry, and there is a mysterious absence of comments from producers, writers or musicians who worked with her.

As a testament to its subject, this book leaves many stones unturned, though if you want to know about Dusty's numerous near-suicides and failed lesbian relationships when she lived in California, there is quite a bit of that. The description of her lowest point, when she was reduced to miming karaoke versions of her own hits in gay bars for $500 a go, is vintage Hollywood Babylon. But, secretive and capricious to the last, the real Dusty stays well away.

Adam Sweeting
London Times, August 20, 2000