Dusty, 1939 - 1999
It was John Macaulay who told me. Stuart and I
walked happily into the Port o'Leith Bar. "Oh Pete - Dusty's dead," John said,
immediately giving me one of his lovely hugs and cuddles.
There's no way I can communicate to you
youngsters just how much this grand singer meant to us all. She was our hope, our dream,
our icon....our main lady. You don't know - you cannot understand - the way the pop world
worked in the late sixties - how so many of the century's wonders of popular music were
created in the hot, mad and horny months of late 1967.
Nowadays, and I choose my words carefully, the
charts are full of "here today gone tomorrow" nondescripts. They are huge for
five minutes, then gone for ever. Then it was different. You had all the major songs of
the second half of the century - at number 1 as you tuned in...a new one every second day
it seemed.
Imagine a couple of months filled with
Satisfaction, Sergeant Pepper, Mr Tambourine Man, Baby Love, You Don't have to say you
love me, If You're going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
That was how we lived then...these absolute
rock-solid megahits turning up in the charts, week after fucking week. We didn't know then
- how could we know - that their message and music would last on down the
decades. It was different then. There was class.
Amidst this Dusty strode like a collossus. She
was everything. Great songs, great tragedy, great wigs. And a dyke to boot, everybody
said. Her and that Madeleine Bell. (Melting Pot). It was the era of Round the Horne, when
gay life was not just under-represented, it was almost an absolute zero in the media.
But always there was Dusty - our heroine, our
love, our songbird, our legend.
We miss you to bits honey - we thank you for the
joy you brought us, in your life and in your music, and we wish you eternal peace.
We note the atmosphere of respect in the pub from
so many, as well as the TV tributes from Cliff, Elton, Lulu, Her Majesty the Queen, and of
course Cilla.
Dusty was our youth. She is no more, but we are,
and for this one day we're all together again, lying baking in the Hyde Park sun, or
marvelling at the Blue Whale in the Natural History Museum.
For the gang at Imperial
College...Tim, Ted, Wendy, Frank, Otto, Bob - and yes, even you Rosemary. God, we had it
all - the bodies of angels, the intellects of giants and the wonder of babies. Yesterday
each of us died a little too.
Rest well, my sweet, and I hope you knew how much
you gave.
