Interviews with Roy Orbison & Dusty Springfield

Between 1982 and 1989 I was a contributor at the UK music paper, the New Musical Express (ah, music paper! Turn up the Radiogram, I think I hear Kathy Kirby). I did save a few of the cassettes of recorded interviews, and wish I’d saved more*. Mostly, we freelancers recycled promo cassettes from the more extravagant record companies (we heart Magnet Records forever), rather than buy new ones. However, there were two interviews in particular that warranted a special stop off at Curry’s, en route to the rendezvous, to purchase actual unused C90s. Both recordings traveled with me across the Atlantic when I left the UK with my spotted hanky on stick. Both remain special treasures.

Neither Roy Orbison nor Dusty Springfield, both living gods of my personal firmament, had been on my must-meet list while at the paper. At the time, I never asked myself why. The creative contributor could often work up a reason to get IPC Magazines to validate a drooling tête-à-tête with an artist on sabbatical, so it wasn’t a lack of new product getting in the way.

It was simply that I hadn’t actually updated my belief that the artists I heard on the radio as a pre-teen lived IN the radio, in a universe free from time, a place where press officers held no sway.  People there were made of different stuff, something not mortal. When Chuck Berry assaulted the UK Top 20 with ‘My Ding-A-Ling’, live and in person on Top Of The Pops, my traumatized 11 year-old mind saved the dream by declaring Chuck ‘72 and Chuck ‘56 to be two different people.  Chuck ‘56, that still unravish’d bride of quietness,  lived on in the Grecian Urn of the radio waves. Ding-A-Ling Chuck, however, had to be some unsavory relative who would be soon unmasked and restored to the St. Louis Home for Old Perves.

I had forged a deep connection with the voices of the Roy and Dusty who lived in the radio, thanks to Mr. Smith of Smith’s Coaches, Marple, Cheshire. Mr. Smith drove the school bus into the city, and kept his radio tuned in to Tony Blackburn’s Golden Oldies hour on Radio One.  From pick up at 8:09AM, for almost an hour, I was able to astrally project into that beautiful distant universe of Roy, Dusty, and the assorted car crash balladeers of the early 60s, far from the impending hell of each school day.

Thirteen years later, I was shuffling around the desk of NME Features Editor, Tony Stewart, when he asked if I wanted to interview Roy Orbison. As casual as could be, as if Roy releasing a new record was no different to another Green On Red E.P showing up in the mail.  ‘Yes! Yes. Me!’ I cried, fighting off imaginary competition, wondering if there was some sort of Tardis of the Gods (driven by Mr. Smith of Smith’s Coaches) that would actually transmute my mortal flesh and convey me to the interview. What a surprise to find out Roy used the same machinery as everyone else.

He had just released the single “Wild Hearts” with trendasaursus label ZTT and I was to discuss this with him at the Montcalm Hotel, Marble Arch, London. Knocking on his door, I was admitted into the darkened chamber by a rangy Texan man, a master of arms length courtesy who managed to wordlessly make it clear than any funny stuff, now or later, would be dealt with. Quite unnecessary but it did make me feel a little dangerous. ‘A coke and ice’ he said, telling me what I was having while appearing to offer it as a choice. ‘ Roy will be with you in a moment’. ‘Lovely’ I squeaked, heart thumping, trying to remember, in the dusk of that Montcalm morning, which way up the tape recorder went. The thick curtains were still drawn, tight shut.

I became aware than someone was descending from the ceiling, slowly circling down to earth. As he came down he nodded. He couldn’t have looked more like himself if he’d tried. Huge black-lensed glasses, grown-out black Beatle mop. I hadn’t noticed the iron spiral staircase in the corner until Roy quietly padded down it, as if not to wake the sleeping.

At the interview, I was astonished by his gentle courtesy and general…availability, for want of a better word. He was so obligingly attentive to each question; I desperately wished I could come up with some better ones, although it would have to be something that wouldn’t cause the Texan to eat my tape recorder.

 I wonder now, was I was simply unused to the old-time etiquette of those from the southern States? No, it wasn’t that. He was just quietly doing his job and seemed nowhere near as impressed with himself as I was with him. Halfway through he politely excused himself for a quick phone interview with Radio One. They were going to ask him some questions and he wanted to get his facts right, he said. He went out into the corridor to study his Guinness Book of British Hit Singles.

‘Coke and ice?’ asked the Texan, letting me know that things were going to his satisfaction. Roy came back in, thanking me for waiting (!) and we talked about this and that (oh, listen to the PadCast!) He asked if he could see the black tattoo on my wrist a little better and in doing so touched it. He didn’t register the amused disapproval that so many of his generation still felt obliged to express back in 1985.  Roy was cool.

Having proof that Roy Orbison, though deeply special, was just one of us, made the transition from distant worship of Dusty Springfield to meeting her a little easier. I met Dusty two years later in 1987.

The meeting was nonetheless universe shaking, for she had provided some substantial subtext to our outsider youth in Manchester. My flat mate Liz and I had fetishized her later career, the all too human Dusty, the drink, the horror, the beautifully honest Mary O’Brien of Ealing who refused to internalize the offensive bullshit heaped upon her, the cruelly mishandled talent.  And the tennis! ** Back in Manchester, we howled along to “Closet Man” with the windows open, hoping the Rip Rig & Panic fans crossing the Hulme Walkway could hear us. Where Roy Orbison had been a voice, Dusty carried a burden of grace, bestowed upon her by us. How could she compare?

Oh but she did. Lovely, lovely Dusty. I can still see her, so free of artifice and the usual celebrity shield of automaton SoCal clichés. Some lofty name from The Observer was just leaving the meeting venue, a discreet house on Regal Lane, near Regents Park, London. She’d left the room to freshen up. As she came back, wearing something floaty with some strappy sandals, she fell off her high heels. ‘Oooopp’, she hooted and looked gorgeously mortified, as if I was going to tell her off. We sipped zinfandel (well, she sipped, I knocked it back like Stan Butler at a clippys' picnic).

She was kind enough to entertain me longer than she needed to or should have done. We talked about the Pet Shop Boys, with whom she’d just released “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”, and those days in Amsterdam. After about an hour, a companion stopped by the house. (Dust must have pressed the emergency buzzer.) I remember this woman being dressed for tennis, but suspect this may have been my own projection and she probably just had a healthy tan.

Here in 2008, grateful thanks go to Kerry Kelekovich for restoring the ratty old recordings, a tough and lengthy job given my lack of care when it came to putting the tape mic next to ice buckets, etc. Some of my more idiotic comments have been taken out (nervous monologues on the subject of cats and tattoos directed at the patient Mary O'Brien).

Despite the distinguished body of work, both Roy Orbison and Dusty Springfield were uncomfortable with their public selves- not a secret. That they would subject themselves to the press mill and be kind and gracious in doing so made a great impression. Dusty and Roy, thank you forever for your grace and your precious time.

Cath Carroll



* I was sooooo careful to save the tape of an interview with the glorious Mael Brothers of Sparks. However, to my eternal chagrin, I appear to have destroyed the brain cells responsible for remembering where I put it. Curse you, Strongbow.

** There was no reason for us to believe Dusty enjoyed tennis. Neither did she throw her shoes at the TV when “Blue Peter” was on. Nonetheless, Liz and I liked these ideas and so we stuck with them.