Yahoo Lifestyle Marianne Faithfull Dies: Singer, Actor And Rolling Stones Muse Was 78
UPDATED with Mick Jagger statement: Marianne Faithfull, who during the Swinging ’60s in London built a career as a singer, songwriter, actor and a muse to such other stars as the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, died today in London. She was 78.
Her death was reported to the BBC by a spokesperson.
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“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” a statement said. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”
Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull was born in Hampstead, London, on December 29, 1946, to father Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, a British intelligence officer and professor at Bedford College of London University and mother Eva, the daughter of an Austro-Hungarian nobleman. With the beauty of a model and an aristocratic bearing, Faithfull was on 18 (some reports say 17) when she attended a party for the Rolling Stones and was discovered by the band’s manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Her debut album was released the following year.
That self-titled album was a commercial success, especially in the U.K., and included the hit that became her signature song: the sweetly sung “As Tears Go By,” written by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Oldham. The Rolling Stones’ version of the song made the Top 10 on both sides of the pond a year later.
Soon becoming one of the most photographed faces of Mod London, Faithfull embarked on a four-year romance with Jagger, recording numerous songs, appearing in movies (The Girl on a Motorcycle in 1968, Hamlet in 1969).
“I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull,” Jagger said in a statement on social media. “She was so much part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress. She will always be remembered.”
Fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards posted on X today: “My heartfelt condolences to Marianne’s family! I’m so sad and will miss her!! Love, Keith.”
It was during her years both with and after Jagger that Faithfull developed the heroin and prescription drug habit that would plague her for decades. By the end of the 1970s, though, Faithfull was putting her damaged vocals to use: She released the 1979 album Broken English, which featured her new image as a world-weary, whisky-soaked chanteuse. Americans were stunned by her 1980 performance on Saturday Night Live, during which she sang the title track from Broken English in a cracking, battered yet somehow mesmerizing and fitting voice.
The album earned Faithfull a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and has built a devoted following over the years, not to mention a later-in-life career as a cabaret performer in such hot spots as New York’s Rainbow Room and Carnegie Hall.
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Faithfull made the UK Top 10 four times, starting in 1964 with “As Tears Go By,” which was her biggest Stateside single, reaching No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.
She also hit in Britain with the singles “Come and Stay with Me,” “This Little Bird” and “Summer Nights,” all in 1965, and scored a pair of Top 15 LPs that year. Those four songs also made the U.S. Top 40.
In all, Faithfull had 10 albums make the UK chart, from her eponymous 1965 debut through 2018’s Negative Capability. Eight would make the Billboard 200 in the U.S., led by Marianne Faithfull, which reached No. 12.
After Faithfull left her first husband, the artist John Dunbar, in 1966, she staked a claim in the rock and roll firmament in grand fashion: In 1967, a police raid at the home of Keith Richards led to the arrest of both Jagger and Richards, but it was arguably Faithfull who made the greatest news: She was described by police and reporters as being dressed only in a fur rug – a much-disputed description
In addition to having written “As Tears Go By” for her, the Stones would also immortalize Faithfull – with her help – in the autobiographical song “Sister Morphine,” a number that would be included on the classic Stones album “Sticky Fingers.”
Despite some reappearances here and there — notably, clad quite marvelously as a nun to appear with Bowie in the latter’s 1973 Midnight Special concert (watch them duet on “I Got You Babe” from that show below) — drugs continued to hold sway. The next years would include heroin, romantic breakups, health issues and periods of homelessness.
Her life took a turn for the better in 1979, when she released what would be considered her great comeback album, Broken English on Island Records, and that memorably dicey SNL appearance that endeared her to fans as a latter-day Marlene Dietrich crossed with Edith Piaf, with a hint of Janis Joplin.
Later in life, she would become an icon of times past, a heroine, even, playing no less a character than God in a 2001 episode of Absolutely Fabulous (Anita Pallenberg, another Stones castoff, played the devil).
Cancer, hepatitis C and other ailments — including, most recently, Covid — were recurrent battles.
She is survived by a son.
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