Marianne Faithfull Dead at 78

Singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull, one of the most popular female artists of the British Invasion, has died at age 78.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” a statement said (via the BBC). “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

Born in 1946 in Hampstead, London, Faithfull’s father was a British Intelligence officer, whose work led him to meet Faithfull’s mother abroad, who had been born in Budapest and worked for a time as a ballet dancer. Faithfull’s parents divorced when she was six and she spent most of her childhood living with her mother.

Marianne Faithfull and the Rolling Stones

She began her singing career in 1964, landing folk music gigs in local coffee houses and engaging with the blossoming musical scene. That same year, she attended a Rolling Stones launch party where she met the band’s then-manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who decided to give the young singer a shot in the studio. Faithfull’s first ever recording, a cover of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ “As Tears Go By” became an instant hit, reaching No. 9 on the U.K. singles chart. (The Stones would release their own version a year later in 1965.)

Listen to Marianne Faithfull’s ‘As Tears Go By’

Faithfull released three albums in 1965, partially because of creative differences with her label, Decca. While the label wanted a pop album from her, Faithfull wanted to record folk. Thus, she released her self-titled debut, which was more pop-centric, as well as a folk LP, Come My Way. She also released a third studio album that was available in the U.S. only, titled Go Away From My World. Two more LPs followed before the decade was out: 1966’s North Country Maid and 1967’s Love in a Mist.

Faithfull married the British artist John Dunbar in May 1965, giving birth to their son in November, but then moved in with Mick Jagger shortly after, with whom she subsequently struck up a romantic relationship.

Faithfull’s drug habit began to pick up around this time — one infamous incident involved a drug bust at Richards’ home where Faithfull was found clad in nothing but a fur rug. “It destroyed me,” she later said of the period in her autobiography. “To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorizing. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”

Faithfull’s relationship with Jagger reportedly permeated the Stones’ musical output. “Sympathy for the Devil,” from 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet was partially inspired by a book Faithfull had given Jagger, The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Various other songs were allegedly influenced or inspired by Faithfull, such as “Wild Horses,” “I Got the Blues” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Faithfull also received a co-write credit on “Sister Morphine,” a song from 1971’s Sticky Fingers that she also provided vocals for.

Listen to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sister Morphine’

Further Work

In 1970, Faithfull and Jagger split, and she struggled for several years with ongoing addiction, eating disorders and homelessness. Repeated drug use and a serious case of laryngitis left Faithfull’s voice in weak shape. She released a country album, Dreamin’ My Dreams, in 1976, which reached No. 1 in Ireland, but it wasn’t for another three years that Faithfull’s career returned full force with 1979’s Broken English. The LP landed at No. 57 in the U.K. and No. 82 on the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., becoming her first album to chart in the States since 1965. It also earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and is now considered one of her landmark recordings.

Faithfull also collaborated with various artists. One of the most unexpected arrived in 1997 when she contributed vocals to Metallica’s single “The Memory Remains.” On her own, she continued to consistently release albums every couple of years through the rest of her career. Her most recent LP, She Walks in Beauty, a collection of poems spoken over instrumentals by Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds, arrived in 2021.

“I made a decision to really, completely give my heart to the whole thing, and that’s what happened,” Faithfull told The Guardian in 2021. “I was quite smart enough to realize that I had a lot to learn. You know, I didn’t go to Oxford, but I went to Olympic Studios and watched the Rolling Stones record, and I watched the Beatles record as well. I watched the best people working and how they worked and, because of Mick, I guess, I watched people writing, too – a brilliant artist at the top of his game. I watched how he wrote and I learned a lot, and I will always be grateful.”