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Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an English singer and actress whose career spans over four decades.

Faithfull's early work in pop and rock music was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse in the 1970s. After a long commercial absence during which only two additional albums were produced, she returned in late 1979 with the landmark album, Broken English.

With a recording career that spans over four decades, Faithfull has continually reinvented her musical persona, experimenting in vastly different musical genres and collaborating with such varied artists as David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Beck, Sly and Robbie, The Chieftains, Tom Waits, Lenny Kaye, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Rupert Hine, Metallica and Roger Waters. Faithfull's subsequent solo work, often critically acclaimed, has at times been overshadowed by her personal history.

Early life

Born Marian Evelyn Faithfull[1] in Hampstead, London, her parents were British military officer and college professor Major Robert Glynn Faithfull and the Baroness Eva Erisso, originally from Vienna and of partial Jewish descent, with noble roots from the Habsburg Dynasty. Eva was a ballerina during her early years and worked with the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Faithfull's great-great-uncle on her mother's side of the family is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the infamous 19th century Austrian nobleman whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs, spawned the word "masochism".[2]

After her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to Reading, Berkshire. As a teenager, she attended St Joseph's Convent School there and was a member of the Progress Theatre student group.

Music career and personal life

1960s

Faithfull began her singing career in 1964, landing her first gigs as a folk music performer in coffeehouses.

Faithfull was discovered at a Rolling Stones' launch party by pop music producer Andrew Loog Oldham. Her first major release, "As Tears Go By", was penned by Oldham, Mick Jagger and Keith 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 in 1965. That same year, she gave birth to their son, Nicholas. The marriage was short-lived, principally owing to Dunbar's heroin addiction.

Faithfull fled from the home she had shared with Dunbar and took their son to stay with Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg in London. During that time period, Faithfull started experimenting with marijuana and became best friends with Pallenberg. She also began a much publicized relationship with Mick Jagger. The relationship with Jagger lasted throughout the late 1960s, and the couple became notorious. She was found by British police while on a drug search at Keith Richards' house in Redlands, while wearing only a fur coat. 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.

Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits
Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits

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. Two songs on 1971 album Sticky Fingers were also influenced by Faithfull: the chorus of "Wild Horses" ("wild horses couldn't drag me away") is said to be based on a phrase Faithfull uttered after coming out of a coma after an overdose, while Faithfull 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 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards released it in their own names in order 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.

1970s

Faithfull dissolved her relationship with Jagger in 1970, and lost custody of her son in that same year. Her personal life went into decline, and her career went into a tailspin. She only made a few appearances, including a notorious 1973 performance at NBC with David Bowie, singing Sonny and Cher's song "I Got You Babe" dressed as a nun.

Faithfull lived on London's Soho streets for two years, suffering from heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa.[3] Friends intervened and enrolled her in a NHS drug programme, from which she could get her daily fix on prescription from a chemist (pharmacy).[4] She was one of the program's most notorious failures, neither controlling nor stabilizing her addiction as the NHS intended. In 1976, 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 vulgarized her voice".

Faithfull moved into a squat without hot water or electricity in Chelsea with her then-boyfriend Ben Brierly, of punk band The Vibrators. In 1977 she released the country-influenced record Dreaming my Dreams, which reached the top of the Irish Albums Chart.

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 album releases. The album was partially influenced by the punk explosion and on 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.[5] Broken English also revealed an astonishing 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

File:MarianneFaithfullAfterRecovery.jpg

Faithfull lived in Dublin after the release of Broken English. 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 1985, she ended up at Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota, U.S. for rehabilitation on the same year. She then received treatment at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. While living at a hotel in nearby Cambridge, she started an affair (while still married) with a dual diagnosis (mentally ill and drug dependent) man, Howard Tose. He jumped out of the apartment window on the 36th floor at the end of the romance.[citation needed] She and Brierly would divorce in 1986. In 1987, Faithfull dedicated a thank you to Mr. Tose within the album package to Strange Weather and, in 1995, she wrote and sang about the experience of his death in "Flaming September" from the album A Secret Life. The song, with lyrics by Faithfull set to Angelo Badalamenti's melody and production, has since been occasionally identified with the September 11, 2001 attacks and used both in various media essays and as an accompaniment to photo and video montages of those events.[citation needed]

In 1985 she 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 1987, Faithfull again reinvented herself, this time as a jazz and blues singer, on the record Strange Weather, also produced by Willner. The album became her most critically lauded album of the decade. In 1988, the singer married writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza; the couple divorced in 1991.

1990s

When Roger Waters 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 over-protective 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'd performed over the course of her career. As her fascination with the music of Weimar-era Germany continued, she released a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins and performed in The Threepenny Opera. Her interpretation of the music of this era has been critically acclaimed[citation needed] and led to a new album, Twentieth Century Blues, which focused on the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and a successful concert and cabaret tour.

In 1994 she published her autobiography, entitled Faithfull, in which she discussed her life, career, drug addictions, and bisexuality. The next year she recorded A Secret Life, with songs written with Angelo Badalamenti. Faithfull also sang backup 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 U.K.

In 1998 she 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 contains 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 includes sections on her relationship with John Dunbar and Mick Jagger, and brief interviews with Keith Richards. The DVD concludes with a 30-minute live concert.

2000s

Faithfull has been a prolific artist in the new century, releasing several albums that have received positive critical response.

In 2000, she released Vagabond Ways which many critics hailed as her finest album since Broken English.[citation needed] It included collaborations with Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, and writer (and friend) Frank McGuiness. Later that year she sang "Love Got Lost" on Joe Jackson's Night and Day II album.

Her renaissance continued with Kissin' Time, released in 2002. The album contained songs written with 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. Once again critics hailed it as one of her best albums since Broken English 26 years earlier.[citation needed]

In 2005, André Schneider performed a cover version of her song "The Hawk", and 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. Later this year Marianne will release a second volume of autobiography called Memories, Dreams and Reflections. The book, to be published by Fourth Estate, is a more personal history than Faithfull.

Faithfull currently resides in Paris, with her manager François Ravard. In September 2006, she called off a concert tour after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.[6] 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 the disease, Faithfull made her public statement of full recovery.[7]

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 & Roll Circus. The show also included the Harry Nillson song "Don't Forget Me" which features the line "When we're old and full of cancer, it doesn't matter now, come on, get happy" seen as a celebration of her surviving the disease.

Recent articles hint Faithfull is looking into retirement, in hopes money from Songs of the Innocence and Experience, will enable her to live in comfort. The 60-year-old says: “I’m not prepared to be 70 and absolutely broke. I realized 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.”[1]

Acting career

In addition to her music career, Faithfull has had a modestly successful career as an actress in theater, television and film.

Her first theater appearance was in a 1965 stage adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. 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), 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 the 1969 Kenneth Anger cult film Lucifer Rising. In 1969, Faithfull played Ophelia opposite Nicol Williamson's Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson and featuring Anthony Hopkins as Claudius.

In 1993, she played the role of Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed The Seven Deadly Sins with the Vienna Radio Symphony. She has also appeared in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001) and was featured as Empress Maria-Theresa in Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic, Marie-Antoinette. Her most recent work is 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.[8]

She has played both God and the Devil. She appeared as God in three guest appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous opposite friend Jennifer Saunders. In 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in William Burroughs' and Tom Waits' musical, The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson.

Discography

Main article: Marianne Faithfull Discography

Filmography

Notes

  1. ^ Confirmed by Faithfull's agent Sara Bessadi on 15 Dec 2006. More on it in "Discussion".
  2. ^ The Times 1999 interview: "Sex God? Marianne's last word"
  3. ^ Mojo Magazine, 2005: Marianne Faithfull's interview with Sylvie Simmons
  4. ^ The Observer, 2001: "You know, I'm not everybody's cup of tea!"
  5. ^ The New York Times 1981 article: "The Pop Life"
  6. ^ "Sixties star Faithfull has cancer", 14 September 2006.
  7. ^ "Faithfull recovers after cancer", 6 November 2006.
  8. ^ "Marianne Faithfull shines as grandmother-turned-sex worker", February 13 2007.

References

  • Faithfull, Marianne. Faithfull: An Autobiography Boston: Little, Brown; 1994. ISBN 0-316-27324-4
  • "As years go by." The Independent, 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
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