Dana Gillespie: Weren't Born A Man

She's made more than seventy albums, everything from delicate Dylanesque folk to Bowie-esque glam rock before reinventing herself as a saucy, bawdy blues queen. She starred as Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar and been a devout follower of the Indian spiritual leader Sai Baba for four decades. 

Yet for people of a certain generation, Dana Gillespie will always be the lusty, busty provocateur who appeared in her Moulin Rouge undercrackers on the cover of her best-known album Weren't Born A Man, as if she needed to illustrate the point made by the title. Recently she published her long-awaited memoir of the same name, so to celebrate the winding down of Women's History Month and Dana's birthday here's a mini-review at 72.