So, farewell then, to a true icon.
Marianne Faithfull’s death aged 78 marks the end of a life that through its ups and downs had so much in it. First and foremost she was a singer, but also an actress, and much more than just the muse of an iconic rock star.
Even her early life seems to have been the stuff that when fiction stretches credulity. She was born in London on December 29 1946. She was descended from Austrian nobility on her mother’s side; her mother was Baroness Eva Sacher-Masoch, a Hungarian, half-Jewish former ballet dancer who had fled the Nazis in World War II. Her father, meanwhile, was Major Glyn Faithfull, an eccentric British MI6 agent turned professor of Italian literature. Her great-great-uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch who wrote the erotic novel Venus in Furs. Marianne spent her early years at Braziers Park, an upmarket commune founded by her father in an Oxfordshire country house. Years later, in her autobiography, she would describe it as a ‘mixture of high utopian thoughts and randy sex.’ However, her parents separated and she grew up in relatively ordinary surroundings in a terraced house in Reading. There she started singing in folk clubs before making her way to London.
In 1964 she was discovered by the Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. She recorded the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards‘ composition (also credited to Oldham) ‘As Tears Go By,’ which became her first hit of several in the sixties. Although she married her first husband John Dunbar soon afterwards, and had a son Nicholas with him, she was now in the Stones’ orbit. She and Mick Jagger were a couple between 1966 and 1970, and she is credited as being the inspiration for several Stones songs, including ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,‘ and ‘Wild Horses‘ and perhaps the Stones’ greatest song ‘Sympathy For The Devil‘ came about after she introduced Jagger to Mikhail Bulgakov‘s novel The Master and Margarita.
However she was dismissive of the idea of being a muse, and it took her until the nineties for her to get the co-credit on ‘Sister Morphine.’ Her version appeared in 1969, as the b-side to her single ‘Something Better,’ but the label withdrew it due to the drugs reference. The Stones’ own version appeared on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers, but it would take until 1994 to get the co-credit restored.
As the sixties progressed, she also made an impact as an actress appearing in several films and plays. While her casting in a stage version of Chekhov‘s Three Sisters caused controversy at the time, she also was well received in several plays and also appeared in the films Girl On A Motorcycle, I’ll Never Forget Whatsisname and Hamlet. However she was also slipping into drug use and associations; she felt her reputation had been damaged by being part of the infamous ‘Redlands’ drugs bust, and that ‘To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.’
By 1970, Faithfull was experiencing something of a downwards spiral. She and Jagger split, and she was addicted to heroin . She lost custody of her son, and for two years was homeless in Soho. Her appearances were rare at this point, though David Bowie got her to duet with him on television on a cover of ‘I’ve Got You Babe‘ in 1973. It was clear that her voice had changed from a decade previously, becoming much huskier in tone.
Although she would not kick drugs until the late eighties, she started to record again. She made her one and only country album, Dreamin’ My Dreams, later repackaged as Faithless which reached no.1 in Ireland. But it was in 1979 that she released Broken English, often regarded as her finest album. Led by a haunting cover of Dr. Hook‘s ‘The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan‘ (later featured in Thelma And Louise), the album’s sound was perfectly in tune with with the cold-war paranoia (the title track was inspired by Ulrike Meinhof), punk attitude and post-punk sounds. It also features ‘Why’d Ya Do It’ which is one of the most furious ripostes to a former lover ever recorded (and probably still unlikely to get played on the radio in English-speaking countries even today).
Over the next forty years she proved herself to be a survivor and icon, rather than a victim. She would release a further fourteen albums over the next forty years. These saw her tackle a variety of styles, from Weimar type cabaret to alternative rock. She re-recorded ‘As Tears Go By,’ observing that it was a song to sing when you were forty, not seventeen (Joni Mitchell felt similarly about her song ‘Both Sides Now‘). The list of those who worked with her over the succeeding decades included Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, and Blur, as well as many members of the Bad Seeds. She also sang vocals on Metallica‘s single ‘The Memory Remains.’
Faithfull received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Women’s World Awards, and was made a commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. Her final album, released in 2021, saw her bring her teenage passion for the Romantic poets to She Walks in Beauty, made in collaboration with Warren Ellis.
So long, Marianne.
