<WHITE HEAT>

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
WOMAN of REPUTE

CHAPTER TEN

WHITE HEAT

If the seventies were Dusty's "wilderness" years, then the early-mid 1980s were her "lost" years. Her confidence was seriously rattled by the commercial failure of her two West Coast albums. Financially, Dusty was hitting rock bottom. Emotionally, things were even worse. At the close of the seventies, Dusty had noted that the worst thing that could happen would be for her to lose sight of the fact that she was a decent human being. For a period of perhaps five years, this is exactly what Dusty Springfield lost. Suicide attempts, an abusive relationship, binges of self-mutilation through "cutting," and frequent incarceration in psychiatric hospitals marked this difficult period of her life. Much of the details were kept from the public thanks to the love and dedication of her friends. Only in 2000--with the publication of Dancing With Demons, the so-called "authorized biography"--was the extent of her torment revealed.

One positive and creative outcome of this period, however, was an album co-produced by Dusty that proved to be her most experimental and perhaps most honest. That album was White Heat.

"I'm a woman who has learnt not to expect too much from life. And that's not a downer because there is a difference between expectation and hope. I shall become something different and successful all over again. I will retain the good things because they're still valid. But I want to add to them, not live off them."

By the early eighties Dusty decided that up-tempo dance music was the new ground she should break. Always aware of new musical trends and increasingly dissatisfied with her Californian output, which by now comprised of mediocre soundtrack ballads such as "Give Me The Night" (from the film Corvette Summer) and a version of "It Goes Like It Goes" (from Norma Rae), Dusty ventured into Hi-Energy--an intense, alternate style of disco which would later evolve into house music.

In Toronto, Canada, she recorded and co-produced the critically-acclaimed album White Heat (1982). New Musical Express noted in 1983, that White Heat was for Dusty, a personal risk--"a huge leap away from the relative security of the cabaret circuit into the dangerous currents of pop commercialism. On White Heat, the force of those great '60s melodramas has been re-ignited in an '80s context of syths, voice treatments and upfront sexuality."

On White Heat, Dusty largely abandons the genteel vocals she employed for her two previous albums and embraces instead an often world-weary snarl that embodies a potent concoction of urgency and desire. On "I Am Curious" she compares herself to a volcano "on the edge of eruption": I'm addicted to lethal sexuality/Need to be desired/Nothing else fulfills me. Elsewhere, on "Donnez Moi," she yearns for her lover's touch: Come on and give it to me/Oh, you know I want it.

Yet it's not all abandonment to sexual anarchy, for the album is permeated by an awareness and wariness of the pain and isolation that can move in once the rush of the erotically-charged moment has passed. The album's edge is thus provided and sustained by the tension between the desire for instantaneous sensual gratification and the need for love and committed relationship. On "Losing You" (not a remake of her 1964 hit, but an Elvis Costello penned song previously released as "Just A Memory") she sings plaintively:

Laying about, lying in bed
Maybe it was something that I thought I said
With the tempo of the damned and the temptation of tomorrow
I don't know if I can give you anything but sorrow.

They stay alive this late on Radio 5
But the pen that I write with won't tell the truth
'Cause the moments that I care about are moments that are too short
It'll take another measure for pleasure.

On "Blind Sheep" she laments those who are "victims to their needs," whereas on the searing hi-energy blast of "Gotta Get Used To You," she coolly apprises a delibertating sexual dilemma:

You know I'd long to feel you Reach the depths of my heart Deep inside of me The way you used to do I've had so many lovers No one could ever tame me They all seem to rub me the wrong way They always get my back up No one seems to do the things that you do for me And now that you're back in my life again I've gotta get used to you.

For many, the album's highlight is the closing track, "Soft Core." Written by Dusty's then lover, Rough Trade's Carole Pope, "Soft Core" sees Dusty grappling with the realities of a dysfunctional relationship. The track is made all the more memorable by Dusty's Marlene Dietrich-style delivery set against a jaunty Euro-blues backdrop:

You brush by me and my whole facade just melts
You seem to be twisted but that makes me more intrigued
You drag yourself through a maze of alcohol and neon lies
Can't seem to hold on to your love.

I'm sick of being submissive when I really want to scream
I know this is just a psychopathic dream
You leave me lying with my head in my hands, you've got blood in your eyes
Can't seem to understand your love.

I'm not the vindictive kind, you bring that out in me
I've been inflicted with a lot of pain, you see.

I'm so frustrated, want to tear my hair out
Can't seem to get a grip on your love

You deny me and my self-esteem just dies
You like to lash out when I dare to critizise
You drag yourself through a maze of drugs and alibis
Can't seem to understand your love
I want to shout, I want to shout it
Tear my hair out
I wanna swear up and down
Tear my hair out
Can't seem to understand your love.

Commenting on White Heat in 2001, Christian Ward observes that the album "actively denies the panda-eyed '60s diva myth that had simultaneously driven [Dusty] to the top of the charts and the depths of despair." Although Ward finds some of the production dated and some of the songs awkward, he nevertheless concedes that the "heart of this album, the point of it, is contained within that voice." He is adamant that "Nothing--not even lyrics that savagely pick apart the trauma of love and lust, not even misguided '80s sonic overstatement--can diminish the bewitching power of that sad, soulful, sensuous voice."

Accordingly, Ward concludes that White Heat "can't be dismissed as some failed experiment, or regarded as something Dusty had to get out of her system. It's a vicious, unflinching album, it's maddening and tragic and far from perfect--but it's saved by that dazzling voice."

In some ways White Heat was for Dusty Springfield what 1979's Broken English was for Marianne Faithfull. Both albums are attempts by women, burdened by past legacies and personas, to redefine themselves in the ever-changing sphere of contemporary music. Yet while the dark and profane Broken English successfully rode the wave of new punk and is rightly considered a classic recording, White Heat was not to experience the same commercial success. For even as critics hailed it as "a resurrection and a triumph" and "a brave and brilliant success," the album failed to capture the public's imagination and accordingly, like its two very dissimilar predecessors, failed to impress itself upon the charts.

For her next two singles, Dusty retreated to the safety of middle-of-the-road material, recording "Private Number" as a duet with Spencer Davis in 1984, and "Something In Your Eyes" with Richard Carpenter in 1987--the latter being a moderate success for her in the States.

In 1985 Dusty signed with entrepreneur Peter Stringfellow's label, Hippodrome Records, for a one-off single release and appearances at Stringfellow's new London club, The Hippodrome. The whole affair would become known to her fans as "the Hippodrome fiasco" and reflected perhaps the lowest point of Dusty's recording career. A mournful ballad entitled "Sometimes Like Butterflies" was hastily recorded in an atmosphere of disorganization and, on Dusty's part, growing unease. The final cut has Dusty's vocals sounding hoarse and off-key toward the end of the song. Despite this, the record reached Number 82 on the singles chart, yet soon afterwards Stringfellow dissolved his label. Dusty would later declare that her involvement with Hippodrome Records "was one of the incidents that made me so fed up with the business. I nearly gave up for good."

Going Back by Kris Kirk, Gay Times, September 1985.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PET SHOP BOYS