Chords for Dusty Springfield - Interview

If [Ebm] you belong, _ [Cm] give back what's mine
Dusty Springfield, [G] what do you make of the top 20 now?
[N] You were almost never out of the top 20 in the 60s yourself.
What do you make of it now?
What do I make of it now?
_ _ It's just as much of a mixture now as it was then.
I don't know whether it's progressed or regressed
and I have no real right to make any comments on it.
I like the fact that there's more disco in and around than there was then.
The progression of music that I used to be crazy about from the early Motown days in the early 60s.
It kind of goes up and down and up and down and up and down
but I like the mixture that's around.
Is it just as hard for girls now?
Because there weren't many girls singing.
I mean even in the 60s when_
Lady singers?
Women singers?
Women singers.
I [G] mean there were two or three but you were the most successful of all.
[E] And yet it is very difficult, isn't it?
Still for the individual woman [G] singer to make it.
I think the most difficult thing is not on the surface.
[N] Material is harder to find for women still.
I think it's just a matter of the fact that it's actually more drain on a female person
to stay at the top.
The amount that's required of her.
The physical trappings of being ready and looking good
or trying to look good most of the time.
And everything takes longer for a woman.
It just_
that's the hard part of the business.
Singing really is quite fun.
And on your own, you're just on your own.
You haven't got a group to back you up or anything like that for support.
No and I'm very demanding musically so that takes a long time.
I don't just walk in the studio and do it.
It takes quite a long time.
Are there any women singers who have done this, who [Ab] have lasted [G] like that?
_ _ _ [N] Not a lot.
I think it takes a certain amount of madness to [B] stick around as well.
Madness and stamina and determination.
What I like is the emergence of a new breed of women singer
which came from the singer-songwriter.
Carole King sort of came out of the back room
where she was playing the piano for a screen jam in New York
and went to Los Angeles and decided that instead of giving other people
including me, her songs, she would start to sing them herself
and then the Carly Simon came through and now there's Carla Bonner.
And there's a much stronger [Gm] breed of women singer. _
You've tried [F] to make one or two comebacks in the 1970s, haven't you?
Before?
I mean this seems to me like the [B] biggest one.
This seems to me like this concert has nailed a comeback
because it's a live performance.
When I was here last year it was purely a promotional trip
to sort of test the waters.
This time it's for a tour?
[N] Yes, sort of.
Now, something's gone wrong with that tour.
You've had to cancel some dates outside London, all the dates outside London.
The promoter cancelled them.
I did not.
I want to make that quite clear now.
Would you have done them then?
_ Probably, but then I'm nuts.
Even though all the tickets weren't sold, [G] you'd have done them, would you?
No, really.
I don't think that has got anything to do with it.
The point is, I think the promoter has to work out
whether it's a viable thing to put a tour on.
There's a lot of money gone into this,
with regard to the musicians, [N] the rehearsal time, everything else.
And if it doesn't work out that he clears up some kind of profit,
or at least breaks even, there's not much point in it.
Of course, people don't understand that,
and it's a great shame for the people who have bought the tickets.
Hopefully there'll be a few tickets left at Drury Lane,
but there are only very few left.
Why London?
Why is London a big number then,
and they haven't been buying elsewhere?
I have no idea.
What I seem to have developed here, without any effort whatsoever,
is a cult following.
And I think [G] if you have one, you have to sacrifice the other.
You can't have an appeal for the ordinary person in the street
and have a cult following at the same time,
without my having any say in it.
You can't make the top 20 and have a cult following at the same time?
It's difficult.
Can you still make hits?
It's difficult.
I'm not saying that I can't make hits.
That [N] we'll see.
But to make hits, don't you really have to put yourself about a bit?
You haven't been here.
You went away in 1970.
You haven't been here much.
You haven't worked very hard at being present here.
No, therefore I don't expect it.
For God's sake, I was the top singer here for five years,
at least we were battling it out between syllables or whatever.
_ _ That's the longest anyone has ever been around that time.
I made my choice to go away.
And I don't expect to come back at the same level.
Why did you do that?
I come back at a different level in a different place.
We're having some problems at the moment, but it will sort itself out.
It will find its own level.
Whether I accept it or not is my decision.
Why did you go away?
Because I wanted to.
Was it musical reasons?
Or did you just want to pack up singing?
I really am not very good at doing things that become boring to me.
You don't go into show business to be bored.
You go in to be excited, to have some glory, and to be noticed,
and all those show-off things that you want to do as a kid.
And it's a fantasy.
[G] It isn't like that.
At least 95% of the time.
It's not too [Bb] boring making money and having a lot of hits.
You must have made a lot of money in your time, mustn't you?
No, [B] I had a great and wonderful and glorious time,
but it comes to an end.
Everything does.
So you move elsewhere.
That's all there is to it.
It was my choice.
Did you make a lot of money in those days?
Yes, a great deal.
I spent a great deal.
But can you live on it now?
I have been there.
Do you have to keep working [G] hard?
Or can you just take time out if you feel like it?
[N] I'm not wealthy.
I can afford my cat food.
What have you been doing in America in this time?
I stopped singing for three years.
I toyed with the idea of growing potatoes in Idaho or something.
Basically, I just really was not doing very well as a person.
I'm not going to get into any Californian phony psychology,
but it took me a long time to patch my thoughts and body and soul together during those years.
It wasn't easy.
You were talking about nightclubs there.
Is it that you don't want to be a nightclub singer?
You want to get to a broader market?
I mean, you want to actually make hits again?
[G] Yes, that's part of it.
There's a very nebulous area of my head that doesn't know what it wants and never did.
I got into the business.
We had no contact with the family.
We became famous as the Springfield.
It split up.
It took three weeks for me to have a hit record.
I did whatever was indicated as it came along.
I just wanted to be rich and famous.
I achieved a lot of that.
You got that, right?
Then what do you do? _
That sounds spoiled, but what do you do?
If you've achieved that, then you want to go somewhere else and see if you can achieve it there and achieve it here and there.
Did you deliberately try [B] to do something else?
Did you want to be a supper club singer or a nightclub singer?
No, I always hated that breed of hip type.
That's the thing that they were trying to push me [G] into in the States.
That's a terrible gray area.
I just didn't want to be a part of it.
You would like to make hit records, would you?
I'd like it to be [B] a part of my life.
I don't want it to be the dominant force in my life.
I'd like to do concerts.
I don't know whether you know who Hilda Garten-Ness is.
I'd like to become Hilda Garten-Ness.
She didn't have a lot of hit records, Hilda Garten-Ness.
No, she didn't.
She's wonderful.
Don't give it to [G] her.
_ Anyway, nice to have you back.
Good luck with the Derever Lane concerts.
I hope they go away thinking you're Hilda Garten-Ness.
Yes, they might.
You want them to buy