Dancing With Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield

Penny Valentine and Vicki Wickham

[2000, St. Martin’s Press, NY]

AMG RATING: 6

Some of the worst biographies are produced by friends, family members, and business associates who should know their subjects best. Whether due to inadequacies as writers or the desire to bend history to their interests, these insiders perpetrate some of the most incomprehensible biographies. Add Dancing With Demons—written by Dusty Springfield’s long-time friend, Penny Valentine, and long-term manager, Vicki Wickham—to the list of insider biographies that utterly fails to lend any sense of what made its subject exceptional. While the authors clearly care for their subject and her music, their attempts to interpret Dusty’s eccentricities, along with their hazy sense of chronology, are as much of a disservice to the singer’s legacy as a sleazy tell-all.

Dusty Springfield was a remarkable stylist who crafted an achingly soulful vocal sound from her deep appreciation of rhythm and blues music, not that you’d learn that from this book. The overwhelming impression of Dusty in Dancing With Demons is that she was famous primarily for being an eccentric “personality,” like Zsa Zsa Gabor or Anna Nicole Smith. Throughout Demons, Dusty’s musical accomplishments are overshadowed by accounts of her bizarre behavior and unconventional lifestyle. The authors trot out numerous accounts of Dusty throwing dinnerware and cutting herself before revealing that she was diagnosed as manic depressive. Many of these numbingly repetitive episodes serve no purpose other than to support the authors’ pop psychology analysis, that Dusty’s behavior was her way of dealing with “chaotic … psychic pain.”

Dusty’s contributions to pop music are incidental to the story the authors try to tell, which focuses far more extensively on her sexuality than on her accomplishments. It seems likely that anyone who would seek out a biography of Dusty Springfield would be more interested in reading about her singing a duet of “Mockingbird” with Jimi Hendrix (on her BBC TV show), for example, than with the names of the gay clubs she played late in her career. There are some revealing anecdotes, such as the encounter with Buddy Rich that gained her a reputation as a “difficult” performer, but far too few. Late in the book, there are brief references to her “fine” R&B record collection (which she sold to Graham Nash) and to her perfectionism in the studio. These tantalizing glimpses into the singer’s personal and professional life only make the reader more aware of the book’s shortcomings.

There are allegedly better books on Dusty Springfield out there, and it’s always possible that one of her confidants will pen a revealing biography doesn’t lose sight of why the singer is so revered. Dancing With Demons, though, despite an author named Valentine, is no love letter.—James A. Gardner, All Media Guide

Bonus JAG blab: Like all the book reviews here, and a ton more, this was written for (and invoiced to) AMG, and has been in their hands for years. As far as I can tell, apart from commissioning them, they do nothing with the book reviews they pay for. Maybe laugh at them during company parties. I don’t know.

I had forgotten that I’d been putting these on my site (and if AMG wants me to stop, all they have to do is say so) until I read a reference to this book and author Penny Valentine, in an interview with Andrew Loog Oldham. As I recall (which is usually dimly), he disparages the book, saying something like “at least Penny Valentine acknowledges being Dusty’s friend,” and suggesting the lack of objectivity that goes along with that. So if someone like Oldham, who was there, finds this account lacking, I’m not surprised it seems so deficient.

Just so you know where I stand on, you know, deficiencies.

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