She had 2 such distinct stages in her singing — the sweet 60s ideal of youth and then the scarred, raspy fully mature woman.
"Marianne Faithfull, a Pop Star Turned Survivor, Is Dead at 78/A fresh-voiced singer and Mick Jagger’s muse in the 1960s, she went on to experience more than her share of hard times before emerging triumphant" (NYT): "What I’ve been trying to do, and I think I’ve done it rather well, is bring the persona — or what was a false persona in the beginning — and me together.... I’ve got the right voice for me.... It gives an edge to everything. I don’t have to act out. I just have to open my mouth and there it is."
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Marianne Faithful did a really great version of The Ballad of the Soldier's Wife by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2bofp8ND0
I liked her “Broken English”. Seems like nearly everyone who fell into the Stones’ orbit left it saddled with drug addiction… at the very least.
A great talent. She could make a song her own. Just an aside, "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" had a country hook to it, and whenever I hear it, I can imagine someone singing it in such a styling.
She also starred in Irina Palm, a very strange 2007 movie about a housewife who takes a job giving handies at a glory-hole parlor.
JSM
Yet, Keith Richards keeps on ticking. Even after "falling out of a coconut tree".
A great talent, RIP.
I got to know Faithfull in the mid-1980s while she lived in Cambridge, MA. She would appear backstage at concerts. Very unassuming, it took a while to realize who this Marianne talking to me with her jaw wired shut and a bolt through her cheek was. She rode there about an hour each way on the back of Howard Tose's motorcycle. I felt really bad the time their two leather jackets fell off the back on the highway.
What a survivor! RIP dear lady.
Losing [Brian] Jones hit Marianne hard... In a drug-induced haze, she stared in the mirror and saw her recently deceased friend instead of her own face looking back. Confused, she truly thought she was Brian. And if she was Brian, she was supposed to be dead. So, she downed a bottle of sleeping pills and attempted to take her own life. She would be found by Mick, but remained in a coma for six days. She eventually recovered, but in 1970 she left Mick. That same year, she lost custody of her son, sending her spiraling and putting her career at a complete standstill. She attempted suicide once again.
For the next two years, Marianne struggled with heroin addiction and anorexia, and she lived on the streets of Soho...
In 1979, things began to look up for Marianne as her career was brought back to life and returned with full force with her album Broken English... critically hailed and revealed both her struggles with drink and drugs and the effect it had taken on her voice, which was now raspy and deep and a far cry from her Barbie Doll image. After the success of her new album, Marianne moved to New York, but she was still grappling with addiction. While under the influence, she attempted suicide once again — this time, immediately regretting it. She panicked as she felt her heart begin to slow and attempted to cross the room, but in her helpless state she tripped and shattered her jaw. She felt herself floating in and out of her body before deciding this wasn’t the end. Miraculously, she crawled upstairs to her then-boyfriend and shook him awake. She lived, with the only evidence being the fact that her jaw was wired shut. It was this event that would push Marianne to enter a rehab facility.
She received treatment at McLean Hospital in Belmont Massachusetts, where she seemed to thrive in 1985 and found a friend in fellow addict, Howard Tose. Their friendship eventually took a romantic turn, and the two left the facility and planned to work together to stay clean. Unbeknownst to Marianne, Howard was not only an addict but severely mentally ill. They lived together in their 14th floor apartment [in Cambridge] and Marianne took on the role of housewife for the first time in her life — she cooked and cleaned while Howard worked. But after such an extravagant life and a renewed sense of hope now that she was clean, Marianne was unsatisfied. She sat Howard down and explained that she was leaving him. It wasn’t working. Howard quietly left the room to get ready for work. When he never reappeared, Marianne grew concerned. She searched the apartment for him, only to find an open window. She stuck her head outside and saw only a swirling pool of red on the ground far below. Howard had thrown himself out of the window.
As the years progressed, Marianne continued to release music and perform, reinventing herself repeatedly, but after kicking addiction, things had begun to settle down. That isn’t to say she faced no more hardships, however — no, she would go on to beat breast cancer, be diagnosed with Hepatitis C, collapse from a kidney infection, fall and break her hip, and survive a life-threatening battle with Covid-19 at 74 years old. Her 58-year long career has been marked with tragedy and suffering, taking a naïve convent girl who buried her nose in books and making her one of the toughest women in the industry — who still harbors a deep love for literature. Her strength and resilience are beyond admirable, and she has proven time and again that she is a survivor.
I'm thinking she played Ophelia in Nicol Williamson's Hamlet.
Those are wonderful videos, thanks for posting them. She seemed angelic to me as ten-year-old boy. Life was not good to her; it rarely is for addicts. It's amazing to hear her as an older woman; haunting, in fact.
RIP Marianne. Three eras, really -- wispy young chanteuse, rock'n'roll drug survivor, elderly cabaret singer. She did all of them well. A survivor and another broken link to a golden musical age.
My high school sister was on the Lloyd Thaxton Show, a LA teen dance show like ABS. Lloyd loved to camp and would lipsync popular hits before he was able to get live performers. He then started a lipsync contest between two of the kids. My sister won lip syncing to As Tears Go By. It helped that she looked very similar to Marianne, with long blonde hair and bangs. There are YouTube videos of the show. Unfortunately, I haven't found the one with my sister. I didn't get to see it live either. I was off doing green uniform things.
Here is her performance of "Something Better" from the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus show. RIP, Marianne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIg49PAM2CY
I only remember her as "The Girl on a Motorcycle."
I absolutely loved Broken English. Dangerous Acqaintances was good too, but B. E was really, really something else. I'm stunned that she lived as long as she did. RIP.
Getting old isn't hard at all, it just happens. what is difficult is outliving all the people who provided the amazing lyrics and music to that time, now long long gone. RIP to a beautiful, talented and tough woman.
Every time I see your face, I see her cunt in my bed.
Broken English is one of the great albums. I suppose there have been people with harder lives, but very few had the voice to sing about it. Maybe Piaf....Perhaps self-inflicted wounds are the most painful and the slowest to heal, if in fact she ever really healed. Well, she had longer life than Winehouse and left behind a considerable body of work.
I find the hosting of Hullabaloo by Paul Anka (on the American side) and Brian Epstein (on the British side) as interesting as bits of history as I do the performance by Faithful. She seems sort of out of it in some way, maybe just stage fright, maybe not.
It was all so staid . . .
I think you're right about the fright.
The first time I ever heard Faithfull was her performance of a couple of the songs from "Broken English" on SNL when I was in the 8th grade. Wiki says the performance was one of the worse ever- my memory is a bit different.
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