Marianne Faithfull, Singer And Rolling Stones Muse, Dies At 78

British singer, actor and “crown princess” of the 1960s “Swinging London” scene, Marianne Faithfull has died, her spokesperson told BBC. She was 78.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” the statement said. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family.”

“She will be dearly missed.”

Born in Hampstead, London, in December 1946, Faithfull was the only child of  Glynn Faithfull, a British spy in World War II, and Eva von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian Baroness, The New York Times reported in 2021. In 1964, at the age of 16, Faithfull attended a party that radically changed her life. 

“I wanted to go to Oxford and read English literature, philosophy, and comparative religion. That was my plan,” she told the Times at the time. “Anyway, it didn’t happen. I went to a party and got discovered by bloody old Andrew Loog Oldham.”

Oldham, who was the Rolling Stones’ first manager, saw Faithfull at the party and felt she was destined to be a pop star — despite never hearing her sing. Oldham got Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write her a song. In 1964, Faithful released the hit single “As Tears Go By,” launching the 17-year-old Faithful into instant stardom.

At 18, she married the artist John Dunbar and gave birth to their son Nicholas shortly after. She worked as a solo musician for a few years, before she left her family and began a romantic relationship with Jagger — and the two became an ‘It Couple.’ The pair dated from 1966 to 1970.

Although it was widely believed that Faithfull used her feminine wiles with Jagger to launch her music career, Faithfull was eager to bust that myth while speaking to High Times in 2019. 

“What really annoys me, the only thing that annoys me, is that it implies that I had to fuck Jagger before I got the record deal, which is bullshit!” she told the magazine. “Nonsense! It so happened that Mick and Keith wrote ‘As Tears Go By.’ That’s all they had to do with it.”

Faithfull told Rolling Stone in 2021 that her relationship with the Rolling Stones frontman “almost destroyed me.”

“Although it was wonderful, it was only four years,” Faithfull said. “It was a wonderful time, and he was great, but I don’t think I fit into that life or what he wanted in a woman, that’s all. I couldn’t do it.”

Faithfull and Jagger’s relationship seemed a bit turbulent from the get go.  

In 1967, Faithfull was found naked and covering herself with a rug during a drug-raid at Richards’s Sussex home. In 1969, while on a trip in Sydney, Australia, with Jagger, she overdosed on Tuinal sleeping pills in their hotel room, which left her in a coma for six days. Both incidents were widely reported on, and unfavorably shaped the public’s perception of Faithfull. 

In her later years, Faithfull seemed to resent the misogynistic way she was viewed by the public and media while she was dating Jager. 

“Well, just the whole thing of being considered a chick on the arm of a great rock star is an insult to me,” Faithfull told Entertainment Weekly in 2014. “But at the time, you have to remember, a lot of girls wanted to be where I was, for some weird reason.” 

After the couple split in 1970, Faithfull became addicted to heroin and lived on the streets of London for two years. 

“For me, being a junkie was an admirable life. It was total anonymity, something I hadn’t known since I was 17,” Faithfull wrote in her 1994 memoir “Faithfull: An Autobiography,” via Reuters. “As a street addict in London, I finally found it. I had no telephone, no address.” 

She later poured this experience into her gritty 1979 album, “Broken English,” which she described as her masterpiece — though Faithfull did note in her memoir that it took her a decade to get sober.

Faithfull continued to create music throughout her life, releasing more than 20 albums, per the BBC. She also appeared in several films, most notably, “ll Never Forget What’s’isname” (1967), “The Girl on a Motorcycle” (1968),
“Marie Antoinette” (2006), and her role as God on the British cult classic comedy, “Absolutely Fabulous” (1996 to 2001).

It’s unclear what Faithfull died from, but she has also had several brushes with death throughout her life. The Times reports she survived breast cancer, hepatitis C and an infection resulting from a broken hip. In 2020, she got COVID and fell into a coma. Although she woke from the coma ― and was able to release her 2021 album “She Walks in Beauty,” she told the Times that same year that she was still suffering from long-term symptoms.