Marianne Faithfull
Encyclopedia
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades.
Her early work in pop and rock music in the 1960s was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse
in the 1970s. During the first two thirds of that decade, she produced only two little-noticed studio albums. After a long commercial absence, she returned late in 1979 with the highly acclaimed landmark album, Broken English. Faithfull's subsequent solo work, often critically acclaimed, has at times been overshadowed by her personal history.
From 1966 to 1970, she had a highly publicised romantic relationship with Rolling Stones' lead singer, Mick Jagger
. She also co-wrote "Sister Morphine
", which is featured on the Stones' Sticky Fingers
album.
, London. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British military officer and college professor in psychology
. Her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, was originally from Vienna
, with aristocratic
roots in the Habsburg Dynasty and Jewish ancestry on her maternal side. Erisso was a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt
Company during her early years, and danced in productions of works by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht
and Kurt Weill
. Faithfull's maternal great great uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
, the 19th century Austrian nobleman whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs
, spawned the word "masochism". In regard to her roots in nobility, Faithfull commented in March 2007 prior to beginning the European leg of her tour, "I'm even going to Budapest
, which is nice because I'm half English and half Austro Hungarian. I've inherited the title Baroness Sacher-Masoch—it comes from one of my great uncles who gave his name to masochism."
The family originally lived in Ormskirk
, a market town in West Lancashire
, while her father completed a doctorate at Liverpool University. She spent some of her early life at the commune
formed by her father at Braziers Park
, Oxfordshire. After her parents divorced when she was six years old, she moved with her mother to Milman Road in Reading
, Berkshire. Her elementary school was in Brixton
. Living in rather reduced circumstances, Faithfull's girlhood was marred by bouts with tuberculosis
and her charity boarder status at St Joseph's Convent School
. While at St. Joseph's, she was also a member of the Progress Theatre
's student group.
performer in coffeehouses. Faithfull soon began taking part in London's exploding social scene. In early 1964 she attended a Rolling Stones launch party with John Dunbar and met Andrew Loog Oldham
, who discovered her. Her first major release, "As Tears Go By
", was written by Jagger/Richards
, and became a chart success. She then released a series of successful singles, including "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "Come and Stay With Me". Faithfull married artist John Dunbar on 6 May 1965 in Cambridge
with Peter Asher
as the best man. The couple lived in a flat at 29 Lennox Gardens in Belgravia
just off Knightsbridge
, London SW1. On 10 November 1965 she gave birth to their son, Nicholas. She then "left her husband to live with Mick Jagger" and told the "New Musical Express": "My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend. I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet."
In 1966 she took their son to stay with Brian Jones
and Anita Pallenberg
in London. During that time period, Faithfull started smoking marijuana
and became best friends with Pallenberg. She also began a much publicised relationship with Mick Jagger that same year. The couple became notorious and largely part of the hip Swinging London
scene. She was found wearing only a fur rug by British police executing a drug search at Richards' house in West Wittering, Sussex. In an interview 27 years later with A.M. Homes for Details, Faithfull discussed her wilder days and admitted that the drug bust fur rug incident had ravaged her personal life: "It destroyed me. 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". In 1968 Faithfull, by now addicted to cocaine
, miscarried a daughter (whom she had named Corrina) while retreating to Jagger's country house in Ireland.
Faithfull's involvement in Jagger's life would be reflected in some of the Rolling Stones' best known songs. "Sympathy for the Devil
", featured on the album Beggars Banquet
(1968), was in part inspired by The Master and Margarita
, by Mikhail Bulgakov
, a book which Faithfull introduced him to. The song "You Can't Always Get What You Want
" on the Let It Bleed
album (1969) was written about Faithfull; the songs "Wild Horses" and "I Got the Blues
" on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers
were also influenced by Faithfull, and she herself wrote "Sister Morphine
". (The writing credit for the song was the subject of a protracted legal battle; the resolution of the case has Faithfull listed as co-author of the song.) In her autobiography, Faithfull said Jagger and Richards released it in their own names so that her agent did not collect all the royalties and proceeds from the song, especially as she was homeless and battling with heroin addiction at the time. Faithfull appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
concert, giving a solo performance of "Something Better". According to composer Graham Nash
of Crosby, Stills and Nash his song Carrie Anne
by The Hollies
is about that time in her life as well. The Beatles
1966 song "And Your Bird Can Sing
" on the Revolver
album is written about her.
with David Bowie
, singing Sonny Bono
's song (recorded in 1965 by Sonny & Cher
) "I Got You Babe
".
Faithfull lived on London's Soho
streets for two years, suffering from heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa
. Friends intervened and enrolled her in an NHS
drug programme, from which she could get her daily fix on prescription from a chemist (pharmacist). She was one of the program's most notorious failures, neither controlling nor stabilising her addiction as the NHS intended. In 1971, producer Mike Leander
found her on the streets and made an attempt to revive her career, producing part of her album Rich Kid Blues. The album would be shelved until 1985.
Severe laryngitis
, coupled with persistent cocaine
abuse during this period, permanently altered the sound of Faithfull's voice, leaving it cracked and lower in pitch. While the new sound was praised as "whiskey soaked" by some critics, journalist John Jones, of the London Sunday Times, wrote that she had "permanently vulgarised her voice". In 1975 she released the country
-influenced record Dreamin' My Dreams, which reached #1 on the Irish Albums Chart
. Faithfull moved into a squat
without hot water or electricity in Chelsea
with then-boyfriend Ben Brierly, of the punk
band The Vibrators
. She later shared flats in Chelsea and Regents Park with Henrietta Moraes
.
Faithfull's career returned full force in 1979 (the same year she was arrested for marijuana possession in Norway) with the album Broken English, one of her most critically hailed albums. The album was partially influenced by the punk
explosion and her marriage to Brierly in the same year. In addition to the punk-pop sounds of the title track (which addressed terrorism
in Europe, being dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof
), the album also included "Why D'Ya Do It", a punk-reggae
song with aggressive lyrics adapted from a poem by Heathcote Williams
. The musical structure of this song is complex; though on the surface hard rock, it is a tango
in 4/4 time, with an opening electric guitar riff by Barry Reynolds in which beats 1 and 4 of each measure are accented on the up-beat, and beat 3 is accented on the down beat. Faithfull, in her autobiography, commented that her fluid yet rhythmic reading of Williams' lyric was "an early form of rap". Broken English also revealed a dramatic change to Faithfull's singing voice. The melodic vocals on her early records were replaced with a raucous, deep voice, affected by years of smoking, drinking and drug use.
, in 1981. Despite her comeback, she was still battling with addiction in the mid 1980s, at one point breaking her jaw tripping on a flight of stairs while under the influence. In another incident her heart actually stopped. A disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live
was blamed on too many rehearsals, but it was suspected that drugs had caused her vocal cords to seize up. Rich Kid Blues (1984) was another collection of her early work combined with new recordings, a double record showcasing both the pop and rock 'n' roll facets of her output to date. In 1985, Faithfull performed "Ballad of the Soldier's Wife" on Hal Willner
's tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill
. Faithfull's restrained readings lent themselves to the material, and this collaboration informed several subsequent works.
In 1985, she was at the Hazelden Foundation Clinic in Minnesota
for rehabilitation. She then received treatment at McLean Hospital
in Belmont, Massachusetts
. While living at a hotel in nearby Cambridge
, Faithfull started an affair (while still married to Brierly) with a dual diagnosis
(mentally ill
and drug dependent) man, Howard Tose, who later committed suicide by jumping from a 14th floor window of the apartment they shared. In 1987, Faithfull dedicated a thank-you to Tose within the album package of Strange Weather, on the back sleeve: "To Howard Tose with love and thanks". Faithfull's divorce from Brierly was also finalised that year. In 1995, she wrote and sang about Tose's death in "Flaming September" from the album A Secret Life
.
In 1987, Faithfull again reinvented herself, this time as a jazz
and blues
singer, on Strange Weather, also produced by Willner. The album became her most critically lauded album of the decade. Coming full circle, the renewed Faithfull cut another recording of "As Tears Go By
" for Strange Weather, this time in a tighter, more gravelly voice. The singer confessed to a lingering irritation with her first hit. "I always childishly thought that was where my problems started, with that damn song," she told Jay Cocks
in Time, but she came to terms with it as well as with her past. In a 1987 interview with Rory O'Connor of Vogue
, Faithfull declared, "forty is the age to sing it, not seventeen. The album of covers was produced by Hal Willner
after the two had spent numerous weekends listening to hundreds of songs from the annals of twentieth century music. They chose to record such diverse tracks as Bob Dylan
's "I'll Keep It with Mine
" and "Yesterday", written by Broadway composers Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. The work also includes tunes first made notable by such blues luminaries as Billie Holiday
and Bessie Smith
; Tom Waits
wrote the title track. In 1988, Faithfull married writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza, but they divorced in 1991.
assembled an all-star cast of musicians to perform the rock opera
The Wall
live in Berlin in July 1990, Faithfull played the part of Pink's overprotective mother. Her musical career rebounded for the third time during the early 1990s with the live album Blazing Away, which featured Faithfull revisiting songs she had performed over the course of her career. Blazing Away was recorded at St. Anne's Cathedral in Brooklyn
. The 13 selections include "Sister Morphine", a cover of Edith Piaf
's "Les Prisons du Roy", and "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Broken English. Alanna Nash of Stereo Review commended the musicians whom Faithfull had chosen to back her—longtime guitarist Reynolds was joined by former Band
member Garth Hudson
and pianist Dr. John
. Nash was also impressed with the album's autobiographical tone, noting "Faithfull's gritty alto is a cracked and halting rasp, the voice of a woman who's been to hell and back on the excursion fare which, of course, she has." The reviewer extolled Faithfull as "one of the most challenging and artful of women artists," and Rolling Stone writer Fred Goodman asserted: "Blazing Away is a fine retrospective – proof that we can still expect great things from this graying, jaded contessa."
A Collection of Her Best Recordings was released in 1994 by Island Records
to coincide with the release of the Faithfull autobiography; the two products originally shared the same cover art. It contained Faithfull's updated version of "As Tears Go By" from Strange Weather, several cuts from Broken English and A Child's Adventure
and a song written by Patti Smith
scheduled for inclusion on an Irish AIDS benefit album. This track, "Ghost Dance", suggested to Faithfull by a friend who later died of AIDS, was made with a trio of old acquaintances: Stones drummer Charlie Watts
and guitarist Ron Wood
backed Faithfull's vocals on the song, while Richards coproduced it. The retrospective album also featured one live track, "Times Square", from Blazing Away as well as a new Faithfull original, "She", penned with composer and arranger Angelo Badalamenti
to be released the following year on A Secret Life
, with additional songs co written with Badalamenti. Faithfull sang a duet and recited text on the San Francisco band Oxbow
's 1996 album Serenade in Red. Faithfull also sang background vocals on Metallica's
song "The Memory Remains
" from their 1997 album ReLoad
and appeared in the song's music video; the track reached #28 in the U.S. (#3 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart) and #13 in the UK.
As her fascination with the music of Weimar
-era Germany continued, Faithfull performed in The Threepenny Opera
at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, playing Pirate Jenny
. Her interpretation of the music led to a new album, Twentieth Century Blues (1996), which focused on the music of Kurt Weill
and Bertolt Brecht
, followed in 1998 by a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins, with the Vienna Radio Symphony, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. A hugely successful concert and cabaret tour accompanied by Paul Trueblood
at the piano, culminated in the filming, at the Montreal Jazz Festival, of the DVD Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill.
In 1998 Faithfull released A Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology, a two-disc compilation that chronicled her years with Island Records
. It featured tracks from her albums Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances, A Child's Adventure, Strange Weather, Blazing Away, and A Secret Life, as well as several B sides and unreleased tracks.
Faithfull's 1999 DVD Dreaming My Dreams contained material about her childhood and parents, with historical video footage going back to 1964 and interviews with the artist and several friends who have known her since childhood. The documentary included sections on her relationship with John Dunbar and Mick Jagger, and brief interviews with Keith Richards. It concluded with footage from a 30-minute live concert, originally broadcast on PBS
for the series Sessions at West 54th
. That same year, she ranked 25th in VH1
's 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll.
(1999), which was produced and recorded by Mark Howard
. It included collaborations with Daniel Lanois
, Emmylou Harris
, Pink Floyd
's Roger Waters
, and writer (and friend) Frank McGuinness
. Later that year she sang "Love Got Lost" on Joe Jackson's
Night and Day II
.
Her renaissance continued with Kissin' Time
, released in 2002. The album contained songs written with Blur
, Beck
, Billy Corgan
, Jarvis Cocker
, Dave Stewart
, David Courts, and the French pop singer Étienne Daho
. On this record, she paid tribute to Nico
(with "Song for Nico"), whose work she admired. The album also included an autobiographical song she co-wrote with Cocker, called "Sliding Through Life on Charm".
In 2005, she released Before the Poison
. The album was primarily a collaboration with PJ Harvey
and Nick Cave
, though Damon Albarn
and Jon Brion
also contributed. In 2005 she recorded (and co-produced) "Lola R Forever", a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg
song "Lola Rastaquouere" with Sly
& Robbie for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited
. In 2007, Faithfull collaborated with the British singer/songwriter, Patrick Wolf
on the duet "Magpie" from his third album The Magic Position and wrote and recorded a new song for the French film Truands called "A Lean and Hungry Look" with Ulysse.
In March 2007 she returned to the stage with a touring show entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience. Supported by a trio, the performance had a semi-acoustic feel and toured European theatres throughout the spring and summer. The show featured many songs she had not performed live before including "Something Better", the song she sang on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
. The show also included the Harry Nilsson
song "Don't Forget Me", "Marathon Kiss" from Vagabond Ways
and a version of the traditional "Spike Driver Blues".
Recent articles hint Faithfull is looking to retirement, in hopes money from Songs of the Innocence and Experience will enable her to live in comfort. The 60-year-old said: "I’m not prepared to be 70 and absolutely broke. I realised last year that I have no safety net at all and I’m going to have to get one. So I need to change my attitude to life, which means I have to put away 10 per cent every year of my old age. I want to be in a position where I don’t have to work. I should have thought about this a long time ago but I didn’t."
Recording of her studio album Easy Come, Easy Go
commenced in New York City on 6 December 2007; the album is produced by Hal Willner
who also produced her 1987 album Strange Weather. A version of Morrissey
's "Dear God Please Help Me" from his 2006 album, Ringleader of the Tormentors
is one of the songs featured, and the album is available both as 10-song CD and 18-song CD-DVD combination. A collectible vinyl
pressing is also available. The EU release on Naive was 10 November 2008. The US, UK and Australian release dates for Marianne's new album are ..US release: 17 March 2009 on Decca
, UK release: 16 March 2009 on Dramatico, Australian release: 14 February 2009 on Shock records. On 31 March 2009, Faithfull performed "The Crane Wife 3" on The Late Show
. In late March, she began the Easy Come, Easy Go tour, which took her to France, Germany, Austria, New York City, Los Angeles and London.
On 16 April 2009, while preparing to board a British Airways
flight at London's Gatwick Airport bound for a concert appearance in Bologna
, François Ravard, accompanying Faithfull, was detained and then later arrested. In a statement, British Airways said: "A male customer became aggressive and abusive at check-in when he was refused travel on a flight from Gatwick to Bologna. He appeared to be intoxicated on arrival at check-in. In such circumstances, an assessment is made as to whether the passenger is fit to travel. When he was refused travel, he became physically and verbally abusive. Police were called and he was arrested. Such behaviour will not be tolerated."
Faithfull, however, had not been drinking and was allowed to board. The pair was flying to Italy on a leg of her world tour promoting Easy Come, Easy Go
. According to her spokesperson, "Marianne was at Gatwick airport but was not involved in any way in the situation that occurred and she managed to travel on to Bologna as planned. Her gig tonight there will go ahead as planned, and Francois travelled from Britain to join her yesterday. Marianne hadn't been drinking at the time of the incident and she does not drink alcohol. She is enjoying life and loving it as she is sober and clean."
On 18 April 2009, Faithfull revealed separately in an interview, reported in The Daily Mail, that although Ravard was still her manager, their 15-year relationship had ended some months ago. Faithfull stated, "I'm all right but I have had a bit of an adventure – my relationship broke up. I felt very betrayed and lonely. I am much, much better now, but it is not good for your self-esteem." On 3 May 2009, she was featured on CBS News Sunday Morning
and interviewed by Anthony Mason in the "Sunday Profile" segment. Both in-studio and on-the-street (New York City) interview segments with Faithfull and Mason were interspersed with extensive biographical and musical footage. In 2010, she was honoured with the Icon of the Year award from Q magazine.
On 13 November 2009, Faithfull was interviewed by Jennifer Davies on World Radio Switzerland, where she described the challenges of being stereotyped as a "mother, or the pure wife". Because of this, she insisted, it has been hard to maintain a long career as a female artist, which, she said, gave her empathy for Amy Winehouse
when they met recently. In the interview, Faithfull also said that she hoped to find love soon.
in mainland Europe. The 13 track album contains four songs co-written by Faithfull, the rest are covers of mainly well known songs such as Dusty Springfield
's "Goin' Back" and The Shangri-las
' "Past, Present, Future". A UK CD release is planned for 7 March 2011. Faithfull will support the album's release with an extensive European tour with a five-piece band, arriving in the UK on 24 May for a rare show at London's Barbican Centre
, with an extra UK show at Leamington Spa
on 26 May. TV and media interviews are also planned as part of the promotion.
On 7 May 2011 she appeared on BBC Radio 2
's Graham Norton Show.
Her first professional theatre appearance was in a 1967 stage adaptation of Chekhov
’s Three Sisters
, at the Royal Court Theatre
, London, in which she played Irina, co-starring with Glenda Jackson
and Avril Elgar
. Before that she played herself in Jean-Luc Godard
's movie Made in U.S.A.
. Faithfull has also appeared in the 1967 film I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name alongside Orson Welles
(where she notedly became the first person to say "fuck
" in a mainstream studio picture), in the French television movie Anna
, starring Anna Karina
(in which Faithfull sang Serge Gainsbourg
's "Hier ou Demain"), as a leather-clad motorcyclist in the 1968 French film La Motocyclette (English titles: Girl on a Motorcycle and Naked Under Leather) opposite Alain Delon
, and in Kenneth Anger
's 1969 film Lucifer Rising
, in which she played Lilith
. In 1969, Faithfull played Ophelia opposite Nicol Williamson
's title character
in Hamlet
, directed by Tony Richardson
and featuring Anthony Hopkins
as Claudius
. The original producers of The Rocky Horror Show
wanted her to the part of "Magenta/Usherette", but as Patricia Quinn
(who got the part) stated in an interview "She went to India with her guru".
Her stage work also included Edward Bond
's Early Morning at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in which she played a lesbian Florence Nightingale
, The Collector
at St. Martin's Theatre in the West End opposite Simon Williams
, Mad Dog at Hampstead Theatre
opposite Denholm Elliott
, A Patriot for Me by John Osborne
, at Watford
Palace Theatre and the role of Lizzie Curry in N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which toured the UK and in which Faithfull's co-star was Peter Gilmore
. Other film roles in the 1970s included Sophy Kwykwer in Stephen Weeks's Ghost Story (AKA Madhouse Mansion), released on a newly mastered DVD in the UK in 2009, and Helen Rochefort in Assault on Agathon.
Her television acting in the late 1960s and early 1970s included The Door of Opportunity (1970) with Ian Ogilvy
, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham
's story, followed by August Strindberg
's The Stronger
(1971) with Britt Ekland
, and Terrible Jim Fitch (1971) by James Leo Herlihy
, which once more paired Faithfull with Nicol Williamson.
In 1993, she played the role of Pirate Jenny
in The Threepenny Opera
at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed Kurt Weill
's "The Seven Deadly Sins" with the Vienna Radio Symphony, a CD of which was released in 1998.
She has played both God and the Devil. She appeared as God in two guest appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous
opposite friend Jennifer Saunders
, with another close friend, Anita Pallenberg
, playing the Devil. In 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in William Burroughs' and Tom Waits
' musical, The Black Rider
, directed by Robert Wilson
, which opened at London's Barbican Theatre, toured to San Francisco, but from which she was forced to withdraw prior to performances at the Sydney Festival, owing to exhaustion.
In 2001 Faithfull appeared with Lucy Russell and Lambert Wilson
in C.S. Leigh's Far From China. She has also appeared in Patrice Chéreau
's Intimacy
(2001) and, in 2004, in Jose Hayot's Nord-Plage. Faithfull appeared as Empress Maria Theresa
in Sofia Coppola
's 2006 biopic, Marie Antoinette
. She starred in the film Irina Palm
, released at the Berlinale film festival in 2007. Faithfull plays the central role of Maggie, a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker to pay for medical treatment for her ill grandson.
Faithfull lent her voice to the 2008 film Evil Calls: The Raven, although this was recorded several years earlier when the project was still titled Alone in the Dark. She has appeared in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan on Brion Gysin
and the dreamachine
, entitled FLicKeR.
In October 2008, Faithfull's website and MySpace page announced her tour of readings of Shakespeare's Sonnets
, drawing on the "Dark Lady" sequence. Her accompanist on the tour is the cellist Vincent Segal
.
In 2011 and 2012 will appear on screen again playing supporting roles in the movies Faces in the Crowd
and Belle Du Seigneur.
and significant relationships with her parents, the various Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan
.
In 2007, Faithfull released a second volume of autobiography called Memories, Dreams and Reflections. The book, published by Fourth Estate (an imprint of HarperCollins
), was a more personal history than Faithfull and contains a wide range of material, including a detailed early history of her mother's life in Austria, her recollections of friends who have died, and her assessments of various recent health issues.
announced that Faithfull had received a nomination for Best Actress, for her role as Maggie in Irina Palm. At the 20th annual European Film Awards ceremony held in Berlin, on 1 December 2007, Faithfull lost to Helen Mirren
.
On 5 March 2009, Faithfull received the World Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 Women's World Awards. "Marianne’s contribution to the arts over a 45 year career including 18 studio albums as a singer, songwriter and interpreter, and numerous appearances on stage and screen is now being acknowledged with this special award." The award was presented in Vienna, with ceremonies televised in over 40 countries on 8 March 2009 as part of International Women's Day
.
On 23 March 2011 Marianne has been awarded the Commandeur of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France's highest cultural honours.
after collapsing onstage in Milan, and was hospitalised for exhaustion. The tour resumed later and included a US leg in 2005. In September 2006, she again called off a concert tour, this time after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The following month, she underwent surgery in France and no further treatment was necessary owing to the tumour having been caught at a very early stage. Less than two months after she declared having beaten the disease, Faithfull made her public statement of full recovery.
On 11 October 2007 Faithfull revealed she suffered from hepatitis C
on the UK television programme This Morning
, and that she had first been diagnosed with the condition 12 years before. She discusses both the cancer and hepatitis diagnoses in further depth in her second memoir, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. On 27 May 2008, Faithfull released the following blog posting on her MySpace page, with the headline "Tour Dates Cancelled" and credited to FR Management – the company operated by her boyfriend/manager François Ravard: "Due to general mental, physical and nervous exhaustion doctors have ordered Marianne Faithfull to immediately cease all work activities and rehabilitate. The treatment and recovery should last around 6 months."
Her early work in pop and rock music in the 1960s was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
in the 1970s. During the first two thirds of that decade, she produced only two little-noticed studio albums. After a long commercial absence, she returned late in 1979 with the highly acclaimed landmark album, Broken English. Faithfull's subsequent solo work, often critically acclaimed, has at times been overshadowed by her personal history.
From 1966 to 1970, she had a highly publicised romantic relationship with Rolling Stones' lead singer, Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
. She also co-wrote "Sister Morphine
Sister Morphine
"Sister Morphine" is a song originally released by British singer Marianne Faithfull as a single in 1969. It was later popularised by the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, who included it on their 1971 album release Sticky Fingers...
", which is featured on the Stones' Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers
-Personnel:The Rolling Stones*Mick Jagger – lead vocals, acoustic guitar on "Dead Flowers", electric guitar on "Sway", percussion*Keith Richards – electric guitar, six & twelve string acoustic guitar, backing vocals...
album.
Early life
Faithfull was born in HampsteadHampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British military officer and college professor in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. Her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, was originally from Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, with aristocratic
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
roots in the Habsburg Dynasty and Jewish ancestry on her maternal side. Erisso was a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
Company during her early years, and danced in productions of works by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
and Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
. Faithfull's maternal great great uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name....
, the 19th century Austrian nobleman whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs
Venus in Furs
Venus in Furs is a novella by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the best known of his works. The novel was part of an epic series that Sacher-Masoch envisioned called Legacy of Cain. Venus in Furs was part of Love, the first volume of the series...
, spawned the word "masochism". In regard to her roots in nobility, Faithfull commented in March 2007 prior to beginning the European leg of her tour, "I'm even going to Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, which is nice because I'm half English and half Austro Hungarian. I've inherited the title Baroness Sacher-Masoch—it comes from one of my great uncles who gave his name to masochism."
The family originally lived in Ormskirk
Ormskirk
Ormskirk is a market town in West Lancashire, England. It is situated north of Liverpool city centre, northwest of St Helens, southeast of Southport and southwest of Preston.-Geography and administration:...
, a market town in West Lancashire
West Lancashire
West Lancashire is a non-metropolitan district with the status of a borough in Lancashire, England. Its council is based in Ormskirk. The other town in the borough is Skelmersdale....
, while her father completed a doctorate at Liverpool University. She spent some of her early life at the commune
Commune
Commune may refer to:In society:* Commune, a human community in which resources are shared* Commune , a township or municipality* One of the Communes of France* An Italian Comune...
formed by her father at Braziers Park
Braziers Park
Braziers Park is a country house and Grade II* listed building located near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England. The house is owned and operated by a charitable trust as a residential adult education college, and centre for the School of Integrative Social Research.-History:Braziers Park was built in...
, Oxfordshire. After her parents divorced when she was six years old, she moved with her mother to Milman Road in Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
, Berkshire. Her elementary school was in Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. Living in rather reduced circumstances, Faithfull's girlhood was marred by bouts with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and her charity boarder status at St Joseph's Convent School
St Joseph's Convent School
St Joseph's College is an independent co-educational school in Reading, Berkshire, England. It is a Catholic day school for students aged 3 to 18. In September 2010, it changed its name to St Joseph's College to reflect the move into co-education.The school was founded by the Sisters of St Marie...
. While at St. Joseph's, she was also a member of the Progress Theatre
Progress Theatre
Progress Theatre is a theatre company owning and managing its own theatre on The Mount, in Reading, Berkshire, England, close to Reading University. The theatre is the oldest one operating in Reading and the only venue in the town dedicated entirely to theatrical productions.The company was formed...
's student group.
1960s
Faithfull began her singing career in 1964, landing her first gigs as a folk musicFolk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
performer in coffeehouses. Faithfull soon began taking part in London's exploding social scene. In early 1964 she attended a Rolling Stones launch party with John Dunbar and met Andrew Loog Oldham
Andrew Loog Oldham
Andrew Loog Oldham is an English producer, talent manager, impresario and author. He was manager and producer of The Rolling Stones from 1963, and was noted for his flamboyant style.-Biography:...
, who discovered her. Her first major release, "As Tears Go By
As Tears Go By (song)
"As Tears Go By" is a song written by The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and was a popular hit for both British singer Marianne Faithfull in 1964 and The Rolling Stones in 1965.-History:...
", was written by Jagger/Richards
Jagger/Richards
The songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, known as Jagger/Richards , is a musical collaboration whose output has produced the majority of the catalogue of The Rolling Stones....
, and became a chart success. She then released a series of successful singles, including "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "Come and Stay With Me". Faithfull married artist John Dunbar on 6 May 1965 in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
with Peter Asher
Peter Asher
Peter Asher is an English guitarist, singer, manager and record producer. He first came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the vocal duo Peter and Gordon before going on to a successful career as a record producer.-Early life:He was born at the Central Middlesex Hospital, a child actor and...
as the best man. The couple lived in a flat at 29 Lennox Gardens in Belgravia
Belgravia
Belgravia is a district of central London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Noted for its immensely expensive residential properties, it is one of the wealthiest districts in the world...
just off Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge is a road which gives its name to an exclusive district lying to the west of central London. The road runs along the south side of Hyde Park, west from Hyde Park Corner, spanning the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
, London SW1. On 10 November 1965 she gave birth to their son, Nicholas. She then "left her husband to live with Mick Jagger" and told the "New Musical Express": "My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend. I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet."
In 1966 she took their son to stay with Brian Jones
Brian Jones
Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....
and Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
in London. During that time period, Faithfull started smoking marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
and became best friends with Pallenberg. She also began a much publicised relationship with Mick Jagger that same year. The couple became notorious and largely part of the hip Swinging London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
scene. She was found wearing only a fur rug by British police executing a drug search at Richards' house in West Wittering, Sussex. In an interview 27 years later with A.M. Homes for Details, Faithfull discussed her wilder days and admitted that the drug bust fur rug incident had ravaged her personal life: "It destroyed me. 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". In 1968 Faithfull, by now addicted to cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, miscarried a daughter (whom she had named Corrina) while retreating to Jagger's country house in Ireland.
Faithfull's involvement in Jagger's life would be reflected in some of the Rolling Stones' best known songs. "Sympathy for the Devil
Sympathy for the Devil
"Sympathy for the Devil" is a song by The Rolling Stones which first appeared as the opening track on the band's 1968 album Beggars Banquet. It was written by Mick Jagger credited to Jagger/Richards...
", featured on the album Beggars Banquet
Beggars Banquet
- Personnel :The Rolling Stones* Mick Jagger – lead and backing vocals, harmonica on "Parachute Woman"* Keith Richards – acoustic and electric guitar, bass guitar on "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man", backing vocals, lead vocals on opening of "Salt of the Earth"* Brian...
(1968), was in part inspired by The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a...
, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
, a book which Faithfull introduced him to. The song "You Can't Always Get What You Want
You Can't Always Get What You Want
"You Can't Always Get What You Want" is a song by The Rolling Stones released on their 1969 album Let It Bleed. Written primarily by Mick Jagger with assistance from Keith Richards, it was named as the 100th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone in its 2004 list of "500 Greatest Songs of All...
" on the Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed is the eighth British and tenth American album by English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in December 1969 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States...
album (1969) was written about Faithfull; the songs "Wild Horses" and "I Got the Blues
I Got The Blues
"I Got the Blues" is a song from the Rolling Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers.Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "I Got the Blues" is a slow-paced, ravished song...
" on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers
-Personnel:The Rolling Stones*Mick Jagger – lead vocals, acoustic guitar on "Dead Flowers", electric guitar on "Sway", percussion*Keith Richards – electric guitar, six & twelve string acoustic guitar, backing vocals...
were also influenced by Faithfull, and she herself wrote "Sister Morphine
Sister Morphine
"Sister Morphine" is a song originally released by British singer Marianne Faithfull as a single in 1969. It was later popularised by the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, who included it on their 1971 album release Sticky Fingers...
". (The writing credit for the song was the subject of a protracted legal battle; the resolution of the case has Faithfull listed as co-author of the song.) In her autobiography, Faithfull said Jagger and Richards released it in their own names so that her agent did not collect all the royalties and proceeds from the song, especially as she was homeless and battling with heroin addiction at the time. Faithfull appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a film released in 1996 of an 11 December 1968 event put together by The Rolling Stones. The event comprised two concerts on a circus stage and included such acts as The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and Jethro Tull...
concert, giving a solo performance of "Something Better". According to composer Graham Nash
Graham Nash
Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...
of Crosby, Stills and Nash his song Carrie Anne
Carrie Anne
"Carrie Anne" is a song written by Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, Tony Hicks and released by British pop rock group The Hollies. The song was recorded on 1 May 1967 and was released as a single in the same month by Parlophone Records in the United Kingdom and Epic Records in the United States. It...
by The Hollies
The Hollies
The Hollies are an English pop and rock group, formed in Manchester in the early 1960s, though most of the band members are from throughout East Lancashire. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style, they became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s and 1970s...
is about that time in her life as well. The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
1966 song "And Your Bird Can Sing
And Your Bird Can Sing
"And Your Bird Can Sing" is a song by The Beatles, released on their 1966 album Revolver in the United Kingdom and on Yesterday...and Today in the United States. The songwriting credit is Lennon–McCartney, though the song was written primarily by John Lennon, with contributions by George Harrison...
" on the Revolver
Revolver (album)
Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock group The Beatles, released on 5 August 1966 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin. Many of the tracks on Revolver are marked by an electric guitar-rock sound, in contrast with their previous LP, the folk rock inspired Rubber...
album is written about her.
1970s
Faithfull ended her relationship with Jagger in May 1970, and she lost custody of her son in that same year, which led to her mother's attempting suicide. Faithfull's personal life went into decline, and her career went into a tailspin. She only made a few appearances, including a 1973 performance at NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
with David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, singing Sonny Bono
Sonny Bono
Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American recording artist, record producer, actor, and politician whose career spanned over three decades.-Early life:...
's song (recorded in 1965 by Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector....
) "I Got You Babe
I Got You Babe
"I Got You Babe" is a 1965 #1 single by American pop music duo Sonny & Cher.-Background and composition:Sonny Bono, a songwriter and record producer for Phil Spector, wrote the lyrics to and composed the music of the song for himself and his then-wife, Cher, late at night in their basement. Session...
".
Faithfull lived on London's Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
streets for two years, suffering from heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
. Friends intervened and enrolled her in an NHS
National Health Service (England)
The National Health Service or NHS is the publicly funded healthcare system in England. It is both the largest and oldest single-payer healthcare system in the world. It is able to function in the way that it does because it is primarily funded through the general taxation system, similar to how...
drug programme, from which she could get her daily fix on prescription from a chemist (pharmacist). She was one of the program's most notorious failures, neither controlling nor stabilising her addiction as the NHS intended. In 1971, producer Mike Leander
Mike Leander
Michael George Farr professionally known as Mike Leander was an arranger and record producer for Decca Records in the 1960s and Bell Records in the 1970s and worked with such artists as Marianne Faithfull, Billy Fury, Marc Bolan, Joe Cocker, The Small Faces, Van Morrison, Alan Price, Peter...
found her on the streets and made an attempt to revive her career, producing part of her album Rich Kid Blues. The album would be shelved until 1985.
Severe laryngitis
Laryngitis
Laryngitis is an inflammation of the larynx. It causes hoarse voice or the complete loss of the voice because of irritation to the vocal folds . Dysphonia is the medical term for a vocal disorder, of which laryngitis is one cause....
, coupled with persistent cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
abuse during this period, permanently altered the sound of Faithfull's voice, leaving it cracked and lower in pitch. While the new sound was praised as "whiskey soaked" by some critics, journalist John Jones, of the London Sunday Times, wrote that she had "permanently vulgarised her voice". In 1975 she released the country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
-influenced record Dreamin' My Dreams, which reached #1 on the Irish Albums Chart
Irish Albums Chart
The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically...
. Faithfull moved into a squat
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
without hot water or electricity in Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
with then-boyfriend Ben Brierly, of the punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band The Vibrators
The Vibrators
- Early career:The Vibrators were founded by Ian 'Knox' Carnochan, bassist Pat Collier, guitarist John Ellis, and drummer John 'Eddie' Edwards. They first came to public notice at the 100 Club when they backed Chris Spedding in 1976. On Spedding's recommendation, Mickie Most signed them to his...
. She later shared flats in Chelsea and Regents Park with Henrietta Moraes
Henrietta Moraes
Henrietta Moraes was a British artists' model, bohémienne, and memoirist. During the 1950s and '60s, she was the muse and inspiration for many artists of the Soho subculture, like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, and known for her marriages and love affairs.A femme fatale and a bon vivant, she was...
.
Faithfull's career returned full force in 1979 (the same year she was arrested for marijuana possession in Norway) with the album Broken English, one of her most critically hailed albums. The album was partially influenced by the punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
explosion and her marriage to Brierly in the same year. In addition to the punk-pop sounds of the title track (which addressed terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
in Europe, being dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970 after having previously worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine Konkret. She was arrested in 1972, and eventually charged with numerous murders and the formation of a criminal...
), the album also included "Why D'Ya Do It", a punk-reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
song with aggressive lyrics adapted from a poem by Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...
. The musical structure of this song is complex; though on the surface hard rock, it is a tango
Tango (dance)
Tango dance originated in the area of the Rio de la Plata , and spread to the rest of the world soon after....
in 4/4 time, with an opening electric guitar riff by Barry Reynolds in which beats 1 and 4 of each measure are accented on the up-beat, and beat 3 is accented on the down beat. Faithfull, in her autobiography, commented that her fluid yet rhythmic reading of Williams' lyric was "an early form of rap". Broken English also revealed a dramatic change to Faithfull's singing voice. The melodic vocals on her early records were replaced with a raucous, deep voice, affected by years of smoking, drinking and drug use.
1980s
Faithfull began living in New York after the release of the follow-up to Broken English, Dangerous AcquaintancesDangerous Acquaintances
Dangerous Acquaintances is an 1981 album by British artist Marianne Faithfull. The work was seen by reviewers as a disappointing follow-up to Faithfull's Broken English, as the album trades the angry and controversial alternative new wave arrangements of the previous one for a more mainstream rock...
, in 1981. Despite her comeback, she was still battling with addiction in the mid 1980s, at one point breaking her jaw tripping on a flight of stairs while under the influence. In another incident her heart actually stopped. A disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
was blamed on too many rehearsals, but it was suspected that drugs had caused her vocal cords to seize up. Rich Kid Blues (1984) was another collection of her early work combined with new recordings, a double record showcasing both the pop and rock 'n' roll facets of her output to date. In 1985, Faithfull performed "Ballad of the Soldier's Wife" on Hal Willner
Hal Willner
Hal Willner is an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He is best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles...
's tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill
Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill
Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill is a 1985 tribute album to German-American composer Kurt Weill. It was executive-produced by Hal Willner and John Telfer, and produced by Hal Willner and Paul M...
. Faithfull's restrained readings lent themselves to the material, and this collaboration informed several subsequent works.
In 1985, she was at the Hazelden Foundation Clinic in Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
for rehabilitation. She then received treatment at McLean Hospital
McLean Hospital
McLean Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.It is noted for its clinical staff expertise and ground-breaking neuroscience research...
in Belmont, Massachusetts
Belmont, Massachusetts
Belmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The population was 24,729 at the 2010 census.- History :Belmont was founded on March 18, 1859 by former citizens of, and land from the bordering towns of Watertown, to the south; Waltham, to the west; and Arlington, then...
. While living at a hotel in nearby Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Faithfull started an affair (while still married to Brierly) with a dual diagnosis
Dual diagnosis
The term dual diagnosis is used to describe the comorbid condition of a person considered to be suffering from a mental illness and a substance abuse problem. There is considerable debate surrounding the appropriateness of the term being used to describe a heterogeneous group of individuals with...
(mentally ill
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
and drug dependent) man, Howard Tose, who later committed suicide by jumping from a 14th floor window of the apartment they shared. In 1987, Faithfull dedicated a thank-you to Tose within the album package of Strange Weather, on the back sleeve: "To Howard Tose with love and thanks". Faithfull's divorce from Brierly was also finalised that year. In 1995, she wrote and sang about Tose's death in "Flaming September" from the album A Secret Life
A Secret Life (Marianne Faithfull album)
A Secret Life is an album by Marianne Faithfull that was released in 1995 and produced by Angelo Badalamenti. It was her first studio album composed mostly of original material in over a decade...
.
In 1987, Faithfull again reinvented herself, this time as a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singer, on Strange Weather, also produced by Willner. The album became her most critically lauded album of the decade. Coming full circle, the renewed Faithfull cut another recording of "As Tears Go By
As Tears Go By (song)
"As Tears Go By" is a song written by The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and was a popular hit for both British singer Marianne Faithfull in 1964 and The Rolling Stones in 1965.-History:...
" for Strange Weather, this time in a tighter, more gravelly voice. The singer confessed to a lingering irritation with her first hit. "I always childishly thought that was where my problems started, with that damn song," she told Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks is a film critic and motion picture screenwriter.He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He was a critic for Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, among other magazines, before moving into film writing....
in Time, but she came to terms with it as well as with her past. In a 1987 interview with Rory O'Connor of Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, Faithfull declared, "forty is the age to sing it, not seventeen. The album of covers was produced by Hal Willner
Hal Willner
Hal Willner is an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He is best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles...
after the two had spent numerous weekends listening to hundreds of songs from the annals of twentieth century music. They chose to record such diverse tracks as Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's "I'll Keep It with Mine
I'll Keep It with Mine
"I'll Keep It with Mine" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1964, first officially released by folk singer Judy Collins as a single in 1965. Dylan attempted to record the song for his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.-Dylan's Version:...
" and "Yesterday", written by Broadway composers Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. The work also includes tunes first made notable by such blues luminaries as Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
and Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
; Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
wrote the title track. In 1988, Faithfull married writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza, but they divorced in 1991.
1990s
When Roger WatersRoger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
assembled an all-star cast of musicians to perform the rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
The Wall
The Wall
The Wall is the eleventh studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd. Released as a double album on 30 November 1979, it was subsequently performed live with elaborate theatrical effects, and adapted into a feature film, Pink Floyd—The Wall.As with the band's previous three...
live in Berlin in July 1990, Faithfull played the part of Pink's overprotective mother. Her musical career rebounded for the third time during the early 1990s with the live album Blazing Away, which featured Faithfull revisiting songs she had performed over the course of her career. Blazing Away was recorded at St. Anne's Cathedral in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. The 13 selections include "Sister Morphine", a cover of Edith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
's "Les Prisons du Roy", and "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Broken English. Alanna Nash of Stereo Review commended the musicians whom Faithfull had chosen to back her—longtime guitarist Reynolds was joined by former Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
member Garth Hudson
Garth Hudson
Eric Garth Hudson is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist. As the organist, keyboardist and saxophonist for Canadian-American rock group The Band, he was a principal architect of the group's unique sound...
and pianist Dr. John
Dr. John
Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...
. Nash was also impressed with the album's autobiographical tone, noting "Faithfull's gritty alto is a cracked and halting rasp, the voice of a woman who's been to hell and back on the excursion fare which, of course, she has." The reviewer extolled Faithfull as "one of the most challenging and artful of women artists," and Rolling Stone writer Fred Goodman asserted: "Blazing Away is a fine retrospective – proof that we can still expect great things from this graying, jaded contessa."
A Collection of Her Best Recordings was released in 1994 by Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
to coincide with the release of the Faithfull autobiography; the two products originally shared the same cover art. It contained Faithfull's updated version of "As Tears Go By" from Strange Weather, several cuts from Broken English and A Child's Adventure
A Child's Adventure
A Child's Adventure is the tenth album by Marianne Faithfull, released on Island Records in 1983.- Track listing :-Personnel:* Marianne Faithfull – vocals* Barry Reynolds – vocals, guitar* Ben Brierley – vocals, guitar...
and a song written by Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
scheduled for inclusion on an Irish AIDS benefit album. This track, "Ghost Dance", suggested to Faithfull by a friend who later died of AIDS, was made with a trio of old acquaintances: Stones drummer Charlie Watts
Charlie Watts
Charles Robert "Charlie" Watts is an English drummer, best known as a member of The Rolling Stones. He is also the leader of a jazz band, a record producer, commercial artist, and horse breeder.-Early life:...
and guitarist Ron Wood
Ron Wood
Ronald David "Ronnie" Wood is an English rock guitarist and bassist best known as a former member of The Jeff Beck Group, Faces, and current member of The Rolling Stones. He also plays lap and pedal steel guitar....
backed Faithfull's vocals on the song, while Richards coproduced it. The retrospective album also featured one live track, "Times Square", from Blazing Away as well as a new Faithfull original, "She", penned with composer and arranger Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo Badalamenti is an American composer, known for his movie soundtrack work for director David Lynch, notably Blue Velvet, the Twin Peaks saga and Mulholland Drive...
to be released the following year on A Secret Life
A Secret Life (Marianne Faithfull album)
A Secret Life is an album by Marianne Faithfull that was released in 1995 and produced by Angelo Badalamenti. It was her first studio album composed mostly of original material in over a decade...
, with additional songs co written with Badalamenti. Faithfull sang a duet and recited text on the San Francisco band Oxbow
Oxbow (band)
Oxbow is a long-lived Avant-Garde band out of San Francisco, California notable for a unique sound. Oxbow plays a blend of Noise rock, Avant-garde jazz, Musique concrète , and Blues, creating soundscapes caustic, or plangent, with overtones of paranoia, revulsion, exaltation.-Current line-up:*Dan...
's 1996 album Serenade in Red. Faithfull also sang background vocals on Metallica's
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
song "The Memory Remains
The Memory Remains
-Personnel:Metallica*James Hetfield – vocals, rhythm guitar*Kirk Hammett – rhythm and lead guitar*Jason Newsted – bass*Lars Ulrich – drumsAdditional performer*Marianne Faithfull – additional vocals on "The Memory Remains"Production...
" from their 1997 album ReLoad
ReLoad
ReLoad is the seventh studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on November 18, 1997 through Elektra Records. The album is a sequel or counterpart to the band's previous album, Load. It debuted number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 417,000 copies in its first week....
and appeared in the song's music video; the track reached #28 in the U.S. (#3 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart) and #13 in the UK.
As her fascination with the music of Weimar
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
-era Germany continued, Faithfull performed in The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, playing Pirate Jenny
Pirate Jenny
"Pirate Jenny" is a well-known song from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. The English lyrics are by Marc Blitzstein...
. Her interpretation of the music led to a new album, Twentieth Century Blues (1996), which focused on the music of Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
and Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, followed in 1998 by a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins, with the Vienna Radio Symphony, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. A hugely successful concert and cabaret tour accompanied by Paul Trueblood
Paul Trueblood
Paul Trueblood has been musical director/pianist for a variety of performers including Diane Keaton, Michael Feinstein, Julie Wilson, Carol Lawrence, Matthew Broderick, Anita Ellis, and Earl Wrightson and Lois Hunt. During their lifetime, he was personal pianist for lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and...
at the piano, culminated in the filming, at the Montreal Jazz Festival, of the DVD Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill.
In 1998 Faithfull released A Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology, a two-disc compilation that chronicled her years with Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
. It featured tracks from her albums Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances, A Child's Adventure, Strange Weather, Blazing Away, and A Secret Life, as well as several B sides and unreleased tracks.
Faithfull's 1999 DVD Dreaming My Dreams contained material about her childhood and parents, with historical video footage going back to 1964 and interviews with the artist and several friends who have known her since childhood. The documentary included sections on her relationship with John Dunbar and Mick Jagger, and brief interviews with Keith Richards. It concluded with footage from a 30-minute live concert, originally broadcast on PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
for the series Sessions at West 54th
Sessions at West 54th
Sessions at West 54th was an American television program that featured music performances, and was in some ways a pop music variation on the theme set by the long-lived Austin City Limits, though the featured musicians represented a number of musical genres. It was called Sessions at West 54th...
. That same year, she ranked 25th in VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
's 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll.
2000s
Faithfull has released several albums in the 2000s that received positive critical response, beginning with Vagabond WaysVagabond Ways
Vagabond Ways is a rock album by Marianne Faithfull. This is her first album of original material since A Secret Life . This work, produced by Daniel Lanois and Mark Howard, is a balladry-like extension of her then neo-cabaret persona, interpreting songs by herself and legendary songwriters of her...
(1999), which was produced and recorded by Mark Howard
Mark Howard (producer)
Mark Howard is a Canadian record producer, engineer, and mixer. He has worked with many artistsincluding Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, Marianne Faithful, Emmylou Harris, U2, Peter Gabriel, R.E.M...
. It included collaborations with Daniel Lanois
Daniel Lanois
Daniel Lanois born September 19, 1951 in Hull, Quebec) is a Canadian record producer, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He has released a number of albums of his own work and has produced albums for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Willie...
, Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including...
, Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's Roger Waters
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
, and writer (and friend) Frank McGuinness
Frank McGuinness
Professor Frank McGuinness is an award-winning Irish playwright and poet. As well as his own works, which include Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen and...
. Later that year she sang "Love Got Lost" on Joe Jackson's
Joe Jackson (musician)
Joe Jackson is an English musician and singer-songwriter now living in Berlin, whose five Grammy Award nominations span from 1979 to 2001...
Night and Day II
Night and Day II
Night and Day II is a 2000 album by Joe Jackson. It was a revisit of the style of a prior album, Night and Day. The songs are about New York lifestyle, seen by different characters...
.
Her renaissance continued with Kissin' Time
Kissin' Time
Kissin' Time is the 16th album by veteran British musician Marianne Faithfull.- Overview :After turns as a neo-cabaret/slow ballad crooner in previous works , Faithfull was eager to collaborate with contemporary musicians...
, released in 2002. The album contained songs written with Blur
Blur (band)
Blur is an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1989 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing...
, Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
, Billy Corgan
Billy Corgan
William Patrick "Billy" Corgan, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional poet best known as the frontman and sole permanent member of The Smashing Pumpkins. Formed by Corgan and guitarist James Iha in Chicago, Illinois in 1987, the band quickly gained steam with the...
, Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
, Dave Stewart
David A. Stewart
David Allan Stewart , often known as Dave Stewart, is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for his work with Eurythmics. He is usually credited as David A. Stewart, to avoid confusion with other musicians named "Dave Stewart".-Early life:Stewart was born in Sunderland,...
, David Courts, and the French pop singer Étienne Daho
Étienne Daho
Étienne Daho is a French singer, songwriter and record producer who has released a number of synth-driven and rock-surf influenced pop hit singles since 1981.- Career :...
. On this record, she paid tribute to Nico
Nico
Nico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, and actress, who initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s...
(with "Song for Nico"), whose work she admired. The album also included an autobiographical song she co-wrote with Cocker, called "Sliding Through Life on Charm".
In 2005, she released Before the Poison
Before The Poison
Before the Poison is the 17th album by Marianne Faithfull, recorded in 2003 and released in 2005.- Overview :The album has a dark and fatalistic mood, which Faithfull attributes partially to the post-9/11 world....
. The album was primarily a collaboration with PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
and Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
, though Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn is an English singer-songwriter and record producer who has been involved in many high profile projects, coming to prominence as the frontman and primary songwriter of Britpop band Blur...
and Jon Brion
Jon Brion
Jon Brion is an American rock and pop multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, composer and record producer.-Early life:...
also contributed. In 2005 she recorded (and co-produced) "Lola R Forever", a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
song "Lola Rastaquouere" with Sly
Sly Dunbar
Lowell "Sly" Fillmore Dunbar is a drummer.-Biography:Dunbar, whose nickname was reportedly given for his passion for Sly & the Family Stone, launched his musical career while still in his adolescence, playing with a local group, The Yardbrooms, at the age of fifteen...
& Robbie for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited
Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited
Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited is a tribute album to the works of late French singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. First released on Virgin Records in 2006, it consists of English language cover versions of Gainsbourg songs, performed by a diverse array of contemporary artists...
. In 2007, Faithfull collaborated with the British singer/songwriter, Patrick Wolf
Patrick Wolf
Patrick Wolf is an English-Irish singer-songwriter from South London. Patrick utilises a wide variety of instruments in his music, most commonly the ukulele, piano and viola...
on the duet "Magpie" from his third album The Magic Position and wrote and recorded a new song for the French film Truands called "A Lean and Hungry Look" with Ulysse.
In March 2007 she returned to the stage with a touring show entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience. Supported by a trio, the performance had a semi-acoustic feel and toured European theatres throughout the spring and summer. The show featured many songs she had not performed live before including "Something Better", the song she sang on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a film released in 1996 of an 11 December 1968 event put together by The Rolling Stones. The event comprised two concerts on a circus stage and included such acts as The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and Jethro Tull...
. The show also included the Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
song "Don't Forget Me", "Marathon Kiss" from Vagabond Ways
Vagabond Ways
Vagabond Ways is a rock album by Marianne Faithfull. This is her first album of original material since A Secret Life . This work, produced by Daniel Lanois and Mark Howard, is a balladry-like extension of her then neo-cabaret persona, interpreting songs by herself and legendary songwriters of her...
and a version of the traditional "Spike Driver Blues".
Recent articles hint Faithfull is looking to retirement, in hopes money from Songs of the Innocence and Experience will enable her to live in comfort. The 60-year-old said: "I’m not prepared to be 70 and absolutely broke. I realised last year that I have no safety net at all and I’m going to have to get one. So I need to change my attitude to life, which means I have to put away 10 per cent every year of my old age. I want to be in a position where I don’t have to work. I should have thought about this a long time ago but I didn’t."
Recording of her studio album Easy Come, Easy Go
Easy Come, Easy Go (Marianne Faithfull album)
Easy Come, Easy Go is a studio album of cover versions by English singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull, which was released in the EU on 10 November 2008. The album is produced by Hal Willner and features guest appearances from a variety of musicians...
commenced in New York City on 6 December 2007; the album is produced by Hal Willner
Hal Willner
Hal Willner is an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He is best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles...
who also produced her 1987 album Strange Weather. A version of Morrissey
Morrissey
Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...
's "Dear God Please Help Me" from his 2006 album, Ringleader of the Tormentors
Ringleader of the Tormentors
-The Band:* Morrissey – vocals* Alain Whyte – guitars and backing vocals* Boz Boorer – guitars* Jesse Tobias – guitars* Gary Day – bass guitar* Matt Chamberlain – drums* Michael Farrell – piano, organ, keyboards, trumpet, trombone and percussion...
is one of the songs featured, and the album is available both as 10-song CD and 18-song CD-DVD combination. A collectible vinyl
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
pressing is also available. The EU release on Naive was 10 November 2008. The US, UK and Australian release dates for Marianne's new album are ..US release: 17 March 2009 on Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, UK release: 16 March 2009 on Dramatico, Australian release: 14 February 2009 on Shock records. On 31 March 2009, Faithfull performed "The Crane Wife 3" on The Late Show
Late Show with David Letterman
Late Show with David Letterman is a U.S. late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and is produced by Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated. The show's music director and band-leader of the house band, the CBS Orchestra, is...
. In late March, she began the Easy Come, Easy Go tour, which took her to France, Germany, Austria, New York City, Los Angeles and London.
On 16 April 2009, while preparing to board a British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
flight at London's Gatwick Airport bound for a concert appearance in Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, François Ravard, accompanying Faithfull, was detained and then later arrested. In a statement, British Airways said: "A male customer became aggressive and abusive at check-in when he was refused travel on a flight from Gatwick to Bologna. He appeared to be intoxicated on arrival at check-in. In such circumstances, an assessment is made as to whether the passenger is fit to travel. When he was refused travel, he became physically and verbally abusive. Police were called and he was arrested. Such behaviour will not be tolerated."
Faithfull, however, had not been drinking and was allowed to board. The pair was flying to Italy on a leg of her world tour promoting Easy Come, Easy Go
Easy Come, Easy Go (Marianne Faithfull album)
Easy Come, Easy Go is a studio album of cover versions by English singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull, which was released in the EU on 10 November 2008. The album is produced by Hal Willner and features guest appearances from a variety of musicians...
. According to her spokesperson, "Marianne was at Gatwick airport but was not involved in any way in the situation that occurred and she managed to travel on to Bologna as planned. Her gig tonight there will go ahead as planned, and Francois travelled from Britain to join her yesterday. Marianne hadn't been drinking at the time of the incident and she does not drink alcohol. She is enjoying life and loving it as she is sober and clean."
On 18 April 2009, Faithfull revealed separately in an interview, reported in The Daily Mail, that although Ravard was still her manager, their 15-year relationship had ended some months ago. Faithfull stated, "I'm all right but I have had a bit of an adventure – my relationship broke up. I felt very betrayed and lonely. I am much, much better now, but it is not good for your self-esteem." On 3 May 2009, she was featured on CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning is an American television news magazine program created by Robert Northshield and original host Charles Kuralt. The program has aired continuously since January 28, 1979 on the CBS Television Network, airing in the Eastern US on Sunday from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m...
and interviewed by Anthony Mason in the "Sunday Profile" segment. Both in-studio and on-the-street (New York City) interview segments with Faithfull and Mason were interspersed with extensive biographical and musical footage. In 2010, she was honoured with the Icon of the Year award from Q magazine.
On 13 November 2009, Faithfull was interviewed by Jennifer Davies on World Radio Switzerland, where she described the challenges of being stereotyped as a "mother, or the pure wife". Because of this, she insisted, it has been hard to maintain a long career as a female artist, which, she said, gave her empathy for Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...
when they met recently. In the interview, Faithfull also said that she hoped to find love soon.
2010s
On 31 January 2011, Faithfull released her 18th studio album Horses and High HeelsHorses and High Heels (Marianne Faithfull album)
Horses and High Heels is the 19th solo album release by British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull.The 13 track album was released on 31 January 2011 in continental Europe and on 7 March 2011 in the UK on the Dramatico record label...
in mainland Europe. The 13 track album contains four songs co-written by Faithfull, the rest are covers of mainly well known songs such as Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
's "Goin' Back" and The Shangri-las
The Shangri-Las
The Shangri-Las were an American pop girl group of the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1966 they charted with often heartbreaking teen melodramas, and remain best known for "Leader of the Pack" and "Remember ".- Early career :...
' "Past, Present, Future". A UK CD release is planned for 7 March 2011. Faithfull will support the album's release with an extensive European tour with a five-piece band, arriving in the UK on 24 May for a rare show at London's Barbican Centre
Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory...
, with an extra UK show at Leamington Spa
Leamington Spa
Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or Leamington or Leam to locals, is a spa town in central Warwickshire, England. Formerly known as Leamington Priors, its expansion began following the popularisation of the medicinal qualities of its water by Dr Kerr in 1784, and by Dr Lambe...
on 26 May. TV and media interviews are also planned as part of the promotion.
On 7 May 2011 she appeared on BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
's Graham Norton Show.
Acting career
In addition to her music career, Faithfull has had a career as an actress in theatre, television and film.Her first professional theatre appearance was in a 1967 stage adaptation of Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
’s Three Sisters
Three Sisters (play)
Three Sisters is a play by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters, but most probably by the three Zimmermann sisters in Perm...
, at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
, London, in which she played Irina, co-starring with Glenda Jackson
Glenda Jackson
Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...
and Avril Elgar
Avril Elgar
Avril Elgar is an English stage, radio and television actress.She trained at the London Old Vic Theatre School...
. Before that she played herself in Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's movie Made in U.S.A.
Made in U.S.A. (film)
Made in U.S.A is a 1966 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Greatly inspired by the Howard Hawks film The Big Sleep and unofficially based on the novel The Jugger, by Richard Stark , it stars Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó and Yves Afonso...
. Faithfull has also appeared in the 1967 film I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name alongside Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
(where she notedly became the first person to say "fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
" in a mainstream studio picture), in the French television movie Anna
Anna (1967 film)
Anna is a 1967 French musical-comedy film directed by Pierre Koralnik and starring Anna Karina.-Cast:* Anna Karina - Anna* Jean-Claude Brialy - Serge Anna is a 1967 French musical-comedy film directed by Pierre Koralnik and starring Anna Karina.-Cast:* Anna Karina - Anna* Jean-Claude Brialy - Serge...
, starring Anna Karina
Anna Karina
Anna Karina is a Danish film actress, director, and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. Karina is known as a muse of the director, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave...
(in which Faithfull sang Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
's "Hier ou Demain"), as a leather-clad motorcyclist in the 1968 French film La Motocyclette (English titles: Girl on a Motorcycle and Naked Under Leather) opposite Alain Delon
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot...
, and in Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
's 1969 film Lucifer Rising
Lucifer Rising (film)
"Lucifer Rising" is a short film by director Kenneth Anger. The film was completed in 1972 but was only widely distributed in 1980.-History:Anger began filming around 1966, hiring a young musician named Bobby Beausoleil to act and compose the soundtrack. The film was abandoned in 1967 because Anger...
, in which she played Lilith
Lilith
Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...
. In 1969, Faithfull played Ophelia opposite Nicol Williamson
Nicol Williamson
Nicol Williamson is a Scottish-born English actor who was described by English playwright John Osborne as "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando".-Early life:...
's title character
Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet is a fictional character, the protagonist in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and...
in Hamlet
Hamlet (1969 film)
Hamlet is a 1969 British film adaptation of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, starring Nicol Williamson as Prince Hamlet. It was directed by Tony Richardson and based on his own stage production at the Roundhouse theatre in London...
, directed by Tony Richardson
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...
and featuring Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
as Claudius
King Claudius
King Claudius is a character and the antagonist from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the brother to King Hamlet, second husband to Gertrude and uncle to Hamlet. He obtained the throne of Denmark by murdering his own brother with poison and then marrying the late king's widow...
. The original producers of The Rocky Horror Show
The Rocky Horror Show
The Rocky Horror Show is a long-running British horror comedy stage musical, which opened in London on 19 June 1973. It was written by Richard O'Brien, produced and directed by Jim Sharman. It came eighth in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "Nation's Number One Essential Musicals"...
wanted her to the part of "Magenta/Usherette", but as Patricia Quinn
Patricia Quinn
Patricia Quinn, Lady Stephens is a Northern Irish actress best known for her role as Magenta in the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show . Hers were the red lips that appeared in the film's opening song "Science Fiction/Double Feature"...
(who got the part) stated in an interview "She went to India with her guru".
Her stage work also included Edward Bond
Edward Bond
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...
's Early Morning at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in which she played a lesbian Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
, The Collector
The Collector
The Collector is the title of a 1963 novel by John Fowles. It was made into a movie in 1965.- Plot summary :The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time...
at St. Martin's Theatre in the West End opposite Simon Williams
Simon Williams (actor)
Simon Williams is an English actor known for playing James Bellamy in the period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. Frequently playing upper-class roles, he is also known for playing Dr...
, Mad Dog at Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...
opposite Denholm Elliott
Denholm Elliott
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...
, A Patriot for Me by John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
, at Watford
Watford
Watford is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, situated northwest of central London and within the bounds of the M25 motorway. The borough is separated from Greater London to the south by the urbanised parish of Watford Rural in the Three Rivers District.Watford was created as an urban...
Palace Theatre and the role of Lizzie Curry in N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which toured the UK and in which Faithfull's co-star was Peter Gilmore
Peter Gilmore
Peter Gilmore is a British actor, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Captain James Onedin in the BBC Television period drama The Onedin Line. He also had roles in eleven Carry On films, and played the heroic lead in the adventure film Warlords of Atlantis...
. Other film roles in the 1970s included Sophy Kwykwer in Stephen Weeks's Ghost Story (AKA Madhouse Mansion), released on a newly mastered DVD in the UK in 2009, and Helen Rochefort in Assault on Agathon.
Her television acting in the late 1960s and early 1970s included The Door of Opportunity (1970) with Ian Ogilvy
Ian Ogilvy
Ian Raymond Ogilvy is an English film and television actor.-Early life:He was born in Woking, Surrey, England, the son of advertising executive Francis Ogilvy and actress Aileen Raymond .He was educated at Sunningdale School, Eton College and at the Royal Academy of...
, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's story, followed by August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
's The Stronger
The Stronger
The Stronger is a famous 1889 play by August Strindberg. The play is quite short, consisting of only one scene that can be performed in approximately 10 minutes. The characters consist of only two women: a "Mrs. X" and a "Miss. Y", only one of whom speak, an example of a dramatic monologue...
(1971) with Britt Ekland
Britt Ekland
Britt-Marie Ekland is a Swedish actress and singer, and a long time resident of the United Kingdom. She is best known for her roles as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man, as well as her marriage to actor Peter Sellers, and her...
, and Terrible Jim Fitch (1971) by James Leo Herlihy
James Leo Herlihy
James Leo Herlihy was an American novelist, playwright and actor.Born into a working class family in Detroit, Michigan, Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for cinema...
, which once more paired Faithfull with Nicol Williamson.
In 1993, she played the role of Pirate Jenny
Pirate Jenny
"Pirate Jenny" is a well-known song from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. The English lyrics are by Marc Blitzstein...
in The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
's "The Seven Deadly Sins" with the Vienna Radio Symphony, a CD of which was released in 1998.
She has played both God and the Devil. She appeared as God in two guest appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous, also known as Ab Fab, is a British sitcom created by Jennifer Saunders, based on an original idea by her and Dawn French, and written by Saunders, who plays the leading character. It also stars Joanna Lumley and Julia Sawalha, along with June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks...
opposite friend Jennifer Saunders
Jennifer Saunders
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English comedienne, screenwriter, singer and actress. She has won two BAFTAs, an International Emmy Award, a British Comedy Award, a Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival Award, two Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards, and a Peoples Choice Award.She first came into...
, with another close friend, Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
, playing the Devil. In 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in William Burroughs' and Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
' musical, The Black Rider
The Black Rider
The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is a self-billed "musical fable" in the avant-garde tradition created through the collaboration of theatre director Robert Wilson, musician Tom Waits, and writer William S. Burroughs. Wilson was largely responsible for the design and direction....
, directed by Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
, which opened at London's Barbican Theatre, toured to San Francisco, but from which she was forced to withdraw prior to performances at the Sydney Festival, owing to exhaustion.
In 2001 Faithfull appeared with Lucy Russell and Lambert Wilson
Lambert Wilson
Lambert Wilson is a French actor. He is internationally known for his portrayal of The Merovingian in The Matrix He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, the son of Georges Wilson, who was an actor, theatrical manager and director of the Theatre National de Paris.Wilson screen tested for The...
in C.S. Leigh's Far From China. She has also appeared in Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer.-Biography:Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, and went to school in Paris. At a young age he became well-known to Parisian critics as director, actor, and stage manager of his high-school theatre...
's Intimacy
Intimacy (2001 film)
Intimacy is a 2001 film directed by Patrice Chéreau, starring Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox.Intimacy is an international co-production among production companies in France, the U.K., Germany, and Spain featuring a soundtrack of pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s...
(2001) and, in 2004, in Jose Hayot's Nord-Plage. Faithfull appeared as Empress Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...
in Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...
's 2006 biopic, Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (2006 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is very loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design...
. She starred in the film Irina Palm
Irina Palm
Irina Palm is a tragicomedy film starring Marianne Faithfull and Miki Manojlović. It is a co-production of five countries . The film premiered, to great acclaim, at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival...
, released at the Berlinale film festival in 2007. Faithfull plays the central role of Maggie, a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker to pay for medical treatment for her ill grandson.
Faithfull lent her voice to the 2008 film Evil Calls: The Raven, although this was recorded several years earlier when the project was still titled Alone in the Dark. She has appeared in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan on Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...
and the dreamachine
Dreamachine
The dreamachine is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.-History:In the dreamachine's original form, a...
, entitled FLicKeR.
In October 2008, Faithfull's website and MySpace page announced her tour of readings of Shakespeare's Sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
, drawing on the "Dark Lady" sequence. Her accompanist on the tour is the cellist Vincent Segal
Vincent Ségal
Vincent Ségal, is a French cellist and bassist born in 1967 in the French city of Reims.He is a conservatory musician from the National Music Academy of Lyon who also studied at Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. He is mainly known for the variety of his collaborations and out of the ordinary...
.
In 2011 and 2012 will appear on screen again playing supporting roles in the movies Faces in the Crowd
Faces in the Crowd (film)
Faces in the Crowd is a thriller-horror film written and directed by Julien Magnat, starring Milla Jovovich, Julian McMahon, David Atrakchi, Michael Shanks, Sandrine Holt, and Sarah Wayne Callies.-Plot:...
and Belle Du Seigneur.
Career as a diarist
In 1994, she published an autobiography, entitled Faithfull, in which she discusses her early life, career, drug addictions, experimentation with bisexualityBisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
and significant relationships with her parents, the various Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
.
In 2007, Faithfull released a second volume of autobiography called Memories, Dreams and Reflections. The book, published by Fourth Estate (an imprint of HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
), was a more personal history than Faithfull and contains a wide range of material, including a detailed early history of her mother's life in Austria, her recollections of friends who have died, and her assessments of various recent health issues.
Nominations and awards
On 4 November 2007, the European Film AcademyEuropean Film Academy
The European Film Academy is an initiative of a group of European filmmakers who came together in Berlin on the occasion of the first presentation of the European Film Awards in November 1988.- European Film Academy :...
announced that Faithfull had received a nomination for Best Actress, for her role as Maggie in Irina Palm. At the 20th annual European Film Awards ceremony held in Berlin, on 1 December 2007, Faithfull lost to Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...
.
On 5 March 2009, Faithfull received the World Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 Women's World Awards. "Marianne’s contribution to the arts over a 45 year career including 18 studio albums as a singer, songwriter and interpreter, and numerous appearances on stage and screen is now being acknowledged with this special award." The award was presented in Vienna, with ceremonies televised in over 40 countries on 8 March 2009 as part of International Women's Day
International Women's Day
International Women's Day , originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and...
.
On 23 March 2011 Marianne has been awarded the Commandeur of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France's highest cultural honours.
Health
In the past five years, Faithfull's touring and work schedule has been interrupted four times by various health issues: In late 2004 she called off the European leg of a world tour, promoting Before The PoisonBefore The Poison
Before the Poison is the 17th album by Marianne Faithfull, recorded in 2003 and released in 2005.- Overview :The album has a dark and fatalistic mood, which Faithfull attributes partially to the post-9/11 world....
after collapsing onstage in Milan, and was hospitalised for exhaustion. The tour resumed later and included a US leg in 2005. In September 2006, she again called off a concert tour, this time after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The following month, she underwent surgery in France and no further treatment was necessary owing to the tumour having been caught at a very early stage. Less than two months after she declared having beaten the disease, Faithfull made her public statement of full recovery.
On 11 October 2007 Faithfull revealed she suffered from hepatitis C
Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease primarily affecting the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus . The infection is often asymptomatic, but chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver and ultimately to cirrhosis, which is generally apparent after many years...
on the UK television programme This Morning
This Morning (TV series)
This Morning is a British daytime television programme broadcast on ITV. As of September 2011, its main presenters are Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, and Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes, with various other presenters standing in for illness or contributing to sections of the programme.The...
, and that she had first been diagnosed with the condition 12 years before. She discusses both the cancer and hepatitis diagnoses in further depth in her second memoir, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. On 27 May 2008, Faithfull released the following blog posting on her MySpace page, with the headline "Tour Dates Cancelled" and credited to FR Management – the company operated by her boyfriend/manager François Ravard: "Due to general mental, physical and nervous exhaustion doctors have ordered Marianne Faithfull to immediately cease all work activities and rehabilitate. The treatment and recovery should last around 6 months."
Actress
- 2010: Faces in the CrowdFaces in the Crowd (film)Faces in the Crowd is a thriller-horror film written and directed by Julien Magnat, starring Milla Jovovich, Julian McMahon, David Atrakchi, Michael Shanks, Sandrine Holt, and Sarah Wayne Callies.-Plot:...
- 2010: WaveWaveIn physics, a wave is a disturbance that travels through space and time, accompanied by the transfer of energy.Waves travel and the wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium—that is, with little or no associated mass...
(pre-production) - 2009: FM (TV Series)FM (TV series)FM was a British sitcom which aired on ITV2, starring Chris O'Dowd , Kevin Bishop and Nina Sosanya . The series followed the lives of two DJs and their producer on their FM radio progamme, "Skin 86.5 FM"...
(episode 1, 2009) - 2008: Evil Calls (V) (voice) .... Narrator
- 2007: Irina PalmIrina PalmIrina Palm is a tragicomedy film starring Marianne Faithfull and Miki Manojlović. It is a co-production of five countries . The film premiered, to great acclaim, at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival...
.... Maggie / Irina Palm - 2006: Marie AntoinetteMarie Antoinette (2006 film)Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is very loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design...
.... Queen Maria Theresa - 2006: Paris, je t'aimeParis, je t'aimeParis, Je t'aime is a 2006 anthology film starring an ensemble cast of actors of various nationalities. The two-hour film consists of eighteen short films set in different arrondissements...
.... Marianne (segment "Le Marais") - 2004: Nord-Plage
- 2001: Far from China .... Helen
- 2001: Intimacy .... Betty
- 1996: Absolutely FabulousAbsolutely FabulousAbsolutely Fabulous, also known as Ab Fab, is a British sitcom created by Jennifer Saunders, based on an original idea by her and Dawn French, and written by Saunders, who plays the leading character. It also stars Joanna Lumley and Julia Sawalha, along with June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks...
.... God (3 episodes, 1996–2001) - 1996: Crimetime .... Club Singer
- 1995: MoondanceMoondanceMoondance is the third solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released on Warner Bros. Records on 28 February 1970 and peaked at #29 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart....
.... Mother - 1994: ShoppingShoppingShopping is the examining of goods or services from retailers with the intent to purchase at that time. Shopping is an activity of selection and/or purchase. In some contexts it is considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one....
.... Bev - 1993: When Pigs Fly .... Lilly
- 1992: The Turn of the ScrewThe Turn of the ScrewThe Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
.... Narrator - 1991: Screen Two .... Woman in street (1 episode, 1991)
- 1990: The Wall - Live in Berlin (TV) .... The Mother (act two)
- 1975: Assault on Agathon .... Helen Rochefort
- 1974: Ghost StoryGhost Story (1974 film)Ghost Story is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Stephen Weeks and starring Marianne Faithfull, Leigh Lawson and Anthony Bate. Several old University friends gather in an old country house.-Cast:* Anthony Bate - Dr...
.... Sophy Kwykwer - 1972: Lucifer RisingLucifer Rising (film)"Lucifer Rising" is a short film by director Kenneth Anger. The film was completed in 1972 but was only widely distributed in 1980.-History:Anger began filming around 1966, hiring a young musician named Bobby Beausoleil to act and compose the soundtrack. The film was abandoned in 1967 because Anger...
(uncredited) .... Lilith - 1971: The StrongerThe StrongerThe Stronger is a famous 1889 play by August Strindberg. The play is quite short, consisting of only one scene that can be performed in approximately 10 minutes. The characters consist of only two women: a "Mrs. X" and a "Miss. Y", only one of whom speak, an example of a dramatic monologue...
(TV) .... Woman 2 - 1971: Thirty-Minute Theatre; Terrible Jim Fitch .... Lonesome Sally (1 episode, 1971)
- 1970: Somerset Maugham Theatre; The Door of Opportunity .... Anne Torel (1 episode, 1970)
- 1969: HamletHamlet (1969 film)Hamlet is a 1969 British film adaptation of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, starring Nicol Williamson as Prince Hamlet. It was directed by Tony Richardson and based on his own stage production at the Roundhouse theatre in London...
.... Ophelia - 1968: The Girl on a MotorcycleThe Girl on a MotorcycleThe Girl on a Motorcycle , also known as Naked Under Leather, is a 1968 British-French film starring Alain Delon, Marianne Faithfull, Roger Mutton, Marius Goring, and Catherine Jourdan. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of...
.... Rebecca - 1967: I'll Never Forget What's'isname .... Josie
- 1965: The Eamonn Andrews Show .... Guest (3 episodes, 1965–1967)
- 1967: AnnaAnna (1967 film)Anna is a 1967 French musical-comedy film directed by Pierre Koralnik and starring Anna Karina.-Cast:* Anna Karina - Anna* Jean-Claude Brialy - Serge Anna is a 1967 French musical-comedy film directed by Pierre Koralnik and starring Anna Karina.-Cast:* Anna Karina - Anna* Jean-Claude Brialy - Serge...
(TV) .... Une jeune femme dans la soirée dansante - 1966: Made in U.S.A. (as MF) .... Marianne Faithfull
- 1966: Zomercarrousel TV series .... Performer (unknown episodes)
- 1964: Juke Box JuryJuke Box JuryJuke Box Jury was a musical panel show which originally ran on BBC Television from 1 June 1959 until December 1967. The programme was based on the American show Jukebox Jury, itself an offshoot of a long-running radio series....
.... Guest. (1 episode, 1964)
Books
- (with David Dalton) Faithfull: an autobiography. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000 (first appeared 1994), ISBN 0815410468
- Memories, Dreams and Reflections. HarperCollins UK, 2008 (first appeared 2007), ISBN 9780007245819
Further reading
- Stieven-Taylor, Alison (2007). Rock Chicks:The Hottest Female Rockers from the 1960’s to Now. SYD. Rockpool Publishing. ISBN 9781921295065
- "As years go by." The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, 1 Sept 1996, p. 18. An interview with Faithfull in which she specifically denies the notorious Mars Bar incident. - Epinions.com entry on Marianne Faithfull