Marianne Faithfull, singular icon of British pop, dies aged 78

[dutchman]

Singer and actor overcame drug addiction and homelessness to collaborate with everyone from the Rolling Stones and Metallica to Jean-Luc Godard



Marianne Faithfull, whose six-decade career marked her out as one of the UK’s most versatile and characterful singer-songwriters, has died aged 78.

A spokesperson said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull.

“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

With a discography that spanned classic 60s pop tunes to the prowling synthpop of Broken English and onto collaborations with Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Lou Reed and more, Faithfull was idolised by fans and fellow musicians alike, and was also celebrated across the worlds of fashion and film.

Mick Jagger, with whom she had a four-year relationship, said: “I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull. 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.”

Born in 1946 in London, Faithfull was descended from Austrian nobility on her mother’s side – her great-great-uncle Leopold von Sacher-Masoch wrote the erotic novel Venus in Furs – but grew up in relatively ordinary surroundings in a terraced house in Reading.

After leaving for London in her teens, she met Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who asked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write her 1964 debut single As Tears Go By, which hit the UK Top 10. She had three other Top 10 singles in 1965, all of which also reached the Top 40 in the US.

Faithfull also began acting at that time, appearing on stage in productions of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, alongside Glenda Jackson, and Hamlet, playing Ophelia with Anjelica Huston as her understudy and performing each night’s climactic “madness” scene, she later revealed, high on heroin.

On screen, she acted alongside Orson Welles, Oliver Reed, Alain Delon and Anna Karina, and played herself in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 film Made in the USA.

Her fame as an icon of “swinging London” was superseded, though, by the infamy that came from her relationship with the Rolling Stones. She had married the artist John Dunbar in 1965 and had a son, Nicholas, but soon left Dunbar for Mick Jagger.

Faithfull married and divorced two additional times, to Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators, and the actor Giorgio Della Terza. “I’ve had a wonderful life with all my lovers, and husbands,” she said in 2011, excepting Della Terza: “He was American, and he was a nightmare.”

In her later years she lived in Paris, and reacted to the 2015 terror attack at the city’s Bataclan concert venue, in which 90 people were killed, with a song called They Come at Night written on the day of the attacks.

Faithfull had numerous health issues. In 2007, she announced she had the liver illness hepatitis C, having been diagnosed 12 years previously. She had successful surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, and weathered numerous joint ailments in her later years, including arthritis. In the early 1970s, she also suffered from anorexia during her heroin addiction. In 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 22 days.

She is survived by her son, Nicholas Dunbar.

[rebbonk]

Always fancied her, possibly due to 'Girl on a Motorcycle'. R.I.P.