It’s difficult to talk about Marianne Faithfull, who has died at 78, without reaching for clichés. But the singer and actress who was famous for her entire adult life really was an icon, a survivor and, before the term felt reductive, the ultimate “rock chick”.
Faithfull could have ended up embalmed as a symbol of the Swinging Sixties, but thanks to her talent and tenacity, she built a multi-decade career as a consistently cool and interesting musician. Her 1979 masterpiece ‘Broken English’, which sets laments, confessionals and social commentary to a thrilling mix of electronica, reggae, punk, new wave and blues, is an all-time great comeback album. That she’ll be remembered as an artist in her own right and not just a muse to some very prominent men is her defining achievement.
Faithfull was born in London in 1964, the daughter of a British military officer and a Hungarian former ballet dancer who was also a baroness. For a time, the family lived on a commune in Oxfordshire. But after her parents divorced when she was six, Faithfull and her mother swapped that unconventional home for the respectable commuter town of Reading.
At 17, Faithfull was drawn to the bright lights of London, where she was “discovered” at a party by Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of The Rolling Stones. Oldham’s grisly assessment of her credentials – he called her an “angel with big tits” – was emblematic of the sexism that hung over her early career. Oldham enlisted the Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write a hit for her, so they came up with ‘As Tears Go By’, a wistful pop ballad that suited Faithfull’s wholesome soprano. Released in 1964 as her debut single, it climbed to number nine in the UK and number 22 in the US.
As a teenager, Faithfull scored three more UK Top 10 hits – with ‘Come And Stay With Me’, ‘Summer Nights’ and the ethereal ballad ‘This Little Bird’ – then branched out into acting. Though she made some notable stage appearances, including a turn opposite future Oscar winner Glenda Jackson in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, these were eclipsed in the collective imagination by her film role in 1967’s The Girl on a Motorcycle. Faithfull’s poised performance as a catsuit-clad biker crystallised her image as an icon of ’60s cool.
By this point, Faithfull’s personal life was threatening to overshadow her professional endeavours. She began dating Jagger in 1966, the same year she divorced her first husband, the artist John Dunbar, with whom she had a baby son, Nicholas. It was easy for a sexist press to peg her as a rock star’s photogenic girlfriend, but Faithfull’s presence in the Stones camp proved influential. After she gave Jagger a copy of The Master and Margarita, a dark satirical novel by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, he used it as the basis for the band’s electrifying 1968 single ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. She also said that her descent into drug addiction sparked Stones classics, including 1969’s ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ and 1970’s ‘Wild Horses’. “I know they used me as a muse for those tough drug songs. I knew I was being used, but it was for a worthy cause,” she recalled years later.
In 1967, she was caught up in a notorious police raid at Redlands, Richards’ country house in West Sussex. Jagger and Richards were arrested for drug possession, but Faithfull, who was found wearing only a fur rug, suffered the greatest dent to her reputation. “It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising,” she once said. “A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”
Soon after this incident, Faithfull’s life and career imploded. In 1970, she split from Jagger, lost custody of her son and became even more dependent on drugs. For two years, she lived on the streets of London’s Soho district as she wrestled with heroin addiction and anorexia. In future interviews, she said she only survived thanks to the kindness of strangers.
In 1976, she scored an unexpected Number One hit in Ireland with the lovely country cover ‘Dreamin’ My Dreams’, but Faithfull’s renaissance began in earnest three years later with her definitive album, 1979’s ‘Broken English’. By now, Faithfull’s formerly pure-sounding voice had become a ravaged rasp, so she assembled material to suit it. ‘Why’d Ya Do It?’ features furiously profane lyrics about the pain of being cheated on that remain jaw-dropping even now. “Why’d you spit on my snatch? Are we out of love now, is this just a bad patch?” Faithfull seethes over a reggae-rock groove. On synth-led single ‘The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’, she told the story of a bored and probably depressed suburban housewife with tremendous empathy.
‘Broken English’ proved to be the springboard for Faithfull’s long and fruitful final act as a rock godmother with great taste and cachet. It wasn’t ridiculous when Jennifer Saunders cast her as God in ’90s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, or Sofia Coppola tapped her to play an Empress in 2006’s historical film Marie Antoinette. Faithfull collaborated with Blur, Beck and Pulp on 2002’s electro-leaning ‘Kissin Time’ album, then co-wrote with Nick Cave and PJ Harvey on 2005’s darker, rockier ‘Before The Poison’. In 2018, she released her 20th studio set, ‘Negative Capability’, which included ‘They Come At Night’, a deeply poignant song about the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. A year later, she sang it at the Bataclan, the 11th arrondissement venue where 90 people were killed. It would be her last ever gig.
In interviews, Faithfull always spoke graciously about her earlier association with the Rolling Stones. She didn’t seem bitter about having to instigate legal proceedings against Jagger and Richards to have her name added to ‘Sister Morphine’, the bluesy tune about drug addiction that she released in 1969 and the Stones covered two years later. Then again, Faithfull was never afraid of a battle. In 2020, after spending 22 days in hospital floored by COVID-19, she revealed that she had lost her singing voice but added optimistically: “I do believe in miracles.” The following year, she released her final album, ‘She Walks In Beauty’, on which she recited British romantic poetry over original music composed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds member Warren Ellis. It was an elegant swansong.
Faithfull, who is survived by her son and grandchildren, had her share of tough times and dark nights of the soul. But somehow, her restless creative spirit always prevailed. She was also a master at burnishing her own mythology. “I’ll visit all the places I used to know so well, from Maida Vale to Chelsea,” she sang on her 2014 song ‘Give My Love To London’. “Paradise to hell, boys, paradise to hell.” In the end, she died in London surrounded by her family, rather closer to paradise than she might once have expected.