Dusty Springfield's personality
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This is a part of an in-depth biography of Dusty Springfield OBE.
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Springfield had been raised as a strict Catholic and, despite her reported reluctance to participate in confession and Mass, she kept her faith in a higher being to the end of her life. The conflict between her conservative religious faith and her life was one that affected her deeply. Springfield's biographers and several journalists have suggested she had two personas: shy, quiet, Mary O'Brien, and the persona she created in Dusty Springfield.
In all aspects of her career, but especially in the studio, Springfield was a perfectionist. Some labeled her as "difficult", but much of this can now be seen as a reaction from male colleagues who, in a male-dominated industry, were unused to women taking control in the studio. For example, during the rehearsal process for a concert in 1966 at Basin Street East Dusty had an argument with Buddy Rich which was followed by her making the following statement: "A four-letter word is what I would use to describe Mr Buddy Rich... I can't understand the man. We haven't had a row; he just doesn't want to talk to me. I even heard him tell his band not to put too much effort into playing for me, in case they tired themselves out..."[1] She often produced her songs, but could not take credit for doing so, as it was seen as bad form. Springfield's musical ear was finely tuned and she was intolerant of anything less than perfection, which some session musicians did not appreciate. To add to the challenges, she did not read and write music as the session musicians did, making it even harder for her to communicate what she wanted. She was known for her agonizingly painstaking vocal sessions, during which she would often record short phrases or even single words or syllables, over and over again, to get the precise feeling and musical quality that she wanted. She was not alone in this practice: many of the Motown artists in the 1960s had wracked the nerves of recording engineers by insistently punching in vocal phrases (a practice which overwrites the recorded vocal but in the 1960s could have ruined an entire recording if anything went wrong). Springfield's version of this technique was decidedly extreme by all accounts. This was accompanied by, what Jerry Wexler called, a 'gigantic inferiority complex'.[2]
Springfield's biographers attribute much of her "difficult" behaviour to her dysfunctional family background and her deep insecurity, which began in childhood. Her mother was prone to explosive rages and would often throw things to express anger — a trait that Springfield soon adopted. Her accountant father, conversely, was quiet and withdrawn, and it is evident that, at least in part, her mother's violent "acting out" was an attempt to gain her husband's attention. Mary/Dusty's growing insecurity was heightened by her parents' blatant favouring of her older brother Dion (Tom).
In her early career, much of her odd behaviour was carried out more or less in fun — like her famous food fights — and it was at the time dismissed as merely "eccentric". One story related in her biography tells how, when Springfield first performed in America, she was too nervous to meet the other performers on the bill, so she found a box full of crockery and hurled it down a flight of stairs to bring the other performers out of their dressing rooms.
But as the Springfield persona became more and more famous, she was indulged, pampered and spoiled, and plummeted into chronic drug and alcohol abuse. For much of the 1970s, living in Hollywood, Springfield alternately battled mental health and substance abuse issues. When her career imploded, she began to internalize her violent behaviour. The seriousness of her increasingly frequent acts of self-harm resulted in her being hospitalized on numerous occasions. Though she reportedly attempted suicide several times, it was later realized that she was battling with the mental health problem of cutting.
Dusty Springfield had a great love for animals, particularly cats. She was an advocate for several humane groups.
