Marianne Faithfull is an English singer, songwriter, and actress. Faithfull began her singing career in 1964, landing her first gigs as a folk singer in coffeehouses. She soon began taking part in London’s exploding social scene. In early 1964 she attended a Rolling Stones launch party with artist John Dunbar and met Andrew Loog Oldham, who discovered her. Her first major release, “As Tears Go By”, was written and composed by Jagger, Richards and Oldham, and became a art success.
She then released a series of successful singles, including “This Little Bird”, “Summer Nights”, and “Come abd Stay With Me”. Faithfull married John Dunbar in May 1965. The couple lived in a flat in Belgravia, London SW1. In November 1965, she gave birth to their son, Nicholas. She left her husband shortly after to live with Mick Jagger. It was her delicate and fragile performance of This Little Bird that first alerted me to her singing.
Faithfull’s involvement in Jagger’s life would be reflected in some of the Rolling Stones’s best known songs. “Sympathy for the Devil”, featured on the 1968 album Beggar’s Banquet, was partially inspired by The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Biugakov, a book to which Faithfull introduced Jagger. The song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” on the 1969 album Let It Bleed, was supposedly written and composed about Faithfull; and she co-wrote “Sister Morphine”. Faithfull ended her relationship with Jagger in May 1970, and she lost custody of her son in that same year, which led to her attempting suicide. Faithfull’s personal life went into decline, and her career went into a tailspin. Faithfull lived on the streets of Soho for two years, suffering from heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa. Her friends eventually helped onto a rehabilitation programme. Severe laryngitis, coupled with persistent drug abuse during this period, permanently altered Faithfull’s voice, leaving it cracked and lower in pitch. The new sound was praised as “whisky soaked” by some critics. Faithfull’s career returned full force in 1979 with the album Broken English, one of her most critically hailed albums.
This is where I picked up her story again. Especially with the sublime track, the Ballad of Lucy Jordan’.
Her career continued to have its ups and downs, largely due to problems of drugs and relationships in her personal life, but she continued to bounce back from time to time. She would produce some excellent music and then disappear from the scene. Here is her version of Lennon’s Working Class Hero.
In April 2020, it was announced that Faithfull was in hospital in London receiving treatment for pnuemonia after having tested positive for COVID-19. Her management company reported that she was “stable and responding to treatment”] She was discharged following a three-week hospitalization, having fully recovered from the virus. In a brief statement, Faithfull publicly thanked the hospital staff who “without a doubt” saved her life.
