Discovered at a Rolling Stones party at the age of 17, Marianne Faithfull broke out in the early '60s with the Jagger/Richards song "As Tears Go By." Faithfull's liaison with Mick Jagger kept her in the public eye. In the '70s, she struggled with addiction, but she made a triumphant comeback in her 30s, and became a critically acclaimed rock cabaret singer. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the Brazilian film I'm Still Here, which he describes as a "moving, inspiring, beautifully made story about learning to confront tyranny."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who was Marianne Faithfull?
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're remembering Marianne Faithfull, the recording artist and actress who died last week at age 78. We'll listen back to two interviews Terry Gross conducted with her, one from 1994, the other from 2005. In 1994, Marianne Faithfull had just published her autobiography.
When she was 17, a chance meeting in London with Andrew Lug-Oldham, who managed a young blues group called the Rolling Stones, led her to record before they did one of the first compositions by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It was As Tears Go By and was a hit for Marianne Faithfull in 1964.
It is the evening of the day I sit and watch the children play. Smiling faces I can see, but not for me. I sit and watch as tears go by.
She had a string of popular recordings in the UK and established quickly a reputation she would develop and build upon all her life, interpreting the songs of others in her distinctly emotional way. She appeared on TV lip-syncing her hit records, but seldom looked at the camera, caught instead in some sort of pensive mood. And she acted on stage in film as well.
In 1967, she appeared on stage opposite Glenda Jackson in Chekhov's Three Sisters. In 1969, she appeared in a film version of Hamlet, playing Ophelia. But with success came complications. Famously, she became Mick Jagger's girlfriend, then overdosed in a suicide attempt and fell into a coma.
She survived that, as later in life, she also survived heroin addiction, breast cancer, a decade-long bout with hepatitis C, and most recently, a hospitalization for COVID-19. But when she could, she performed as a cabaret artist and acted on film and television, including playing God in three episodes of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Marianne Faithfull recorded 22 solo albums, and the range of songs she covered over the decades was breathtakingly diverse, just as her vocals were raw and intense. She recorded songs by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Kurt Weill, and collaborated with Steve Earle and Angelo Badalamenti.
Terry Gross first spoke with Mary Ann Faithful in 1994 upon the publication of Faithful, an autobiography. In the book, she writes that when she went into rehab in 1985, part of the therapy process was for each person to tell his or her story. That's when she realized there was a blank in her life.
She had a sense of being in the Rolling Stones scene when she and Mick Jagger were lovers in the 60s, but she had no idea what her own story was.
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Chapter 2: What was the significance of 'As Tears Go By'?
A shy smile and a liking for people who are long-haired and socially conscious. Marianne digs Marlon Brando woodbine cigarettes, poetry, going to the ballet, and wearing long evening dresses. She is shy, wistful, waif-like. Now, what did you think of that image of yourself?
I thought it was a hoot. I remember taking it back to my mum. and sitting in Millman Road reading it to my mother and Chris, my brother, we just fell about laughing, you know. I never in my wildest dreams thought that people would think I was like that. Although I did dig Marlon Brando. That's true. And I was at a convent. And my mother was a baroness.
But apart from that... But then again, you know, I can't be too sort of sticky about this because... it's quite obvious that none of us really see ourselves as others see us.
Now, you ended up doing a lot of drugs, doing a lot of heroin. How did you start doing heroin?
I used it as a coping mechanism, I think. For coping with what? For coping with my life. Mm-hmm. And it worked for a while, but it did have a tremendous drawback, which was that it was addictive and it would kill you.
How long did it take you to figure that out?
Ages. Very long time. But I did figure it out eventually, thank God.
I want to play a song that you wrote the lyrics for called Sister Morphine that was released in England in 1969. Tell me a little bit about where you were in your life when you wrote the song and what the lyrics are about.
I don't know. It's a very weird thing about Sister Morphine because it was knocking about the house for six months and Mick was playing it all the time. Playing the melody. Yes. The basic thing. That thing. All the time. So it went into my sort of whole nervous system, blood, bones, everything. I really had it in my head. I knew it by heart. Let's say that. And then I remember it.
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Chapter 3: How did Marianne Faithfull's relationship with Mick Jagger affect her career?
So is that like the first music you heard?
I suppose it is, yes.
Was your mother a singer?
I had read that she... No, no, no, no, no, no.
My mother was a dancer. Oh.
She was very young, of course. And she was only 24 when Mr. Hitler marched into Vienna in the Anschluss. But she was a dancer in Berlin. And she, as she would be coming into the theatre to rehearse the corps de ballet for Mr. Reinhardt, would see Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht staggering out in the morning, having been up all night writing the Threepenny Opera.
And they would all bob a little curtsy and say, Guten Morgen, Mr. Weill, Guten Morgen, Mr. Brecht.
When you were growing up, did she have clothes from her costumes from when she danced in the closet?
Not much, no. I just have a very beautiful piece of chiffon and some beads. I have very little. She didn't bring any of that much with her. No, I don't know what happened to it. But that sense of theater was... It's as if she wanted to leave it all behind and have a new life. She'd had quite a hard time, I think, during the war. My grandmother was Jewish, you know, and my father was a spy.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Marianne Faithfull face in her life?
What did you make of it when The Velvet Underground recorded Venus in Furs?
I didn't really think about it. I ask this in case our listeners are confused. My great-great-uncle was Baron Leopold von Sachemazoch, who gave his name to Mazochism and wrote a book called Venus in Furs. Yeah, I mean, I sort of noticed it, but didn't really notice it. There were other songs on the Velvet Underground that I thought were better. I didn't think that was one of the best.
I'm a huge and was always a huge fan of Andy Warhol. Before I got discovered and all that stuff happened, my mother took me to see a huge Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate. I went to see the Picasso retrospective. I went to see the Surrealist retrospective. It was wonderful. I had a wonderful life before all that stuff happened.
Did you feel, I mean, you've lived in a very unconventional world your whole adult life.
Well, and my whole life as a child.
That's what I was wondering.
My parents were extremely unconventional and I was brought up in a delightful bohemian manner. So I sailed right into swinging London with no problem.
Tell us a little bit about the delightful bohemian manner that you were brought up in.
Well, my father was a real idealist. After the war, he formed a commune, not like a 60s commune, a 50s or even a 40s commune, more like an Iris Murdoch kind of thing. And the purpose of this place, which was called Braziers Park, was to change the world. And to teach people, only Europeans, he couldn't really go further than that, to live together in harmony so that war would never happen again.
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Chapter 5: What led to Marianne Faithfull's musical comeback?
Of course.
You occupy a kind of unique spot in pop music now because, you know, you were a teenage pop star, but what you're doing now is somewhere between... A pop princess, yes. What you're doing now is a kind of... What you're doing now is a kind of hybrid of cabaret and theater music and pop and rock and... I don't really do cabaret.
I do rock and roll. Sort of. With a lot of drama. I don't know what I do. I do what I do, you know.
And if you don't mind my mentioning your age, is that... I don't mind.
I've just turned 58. Right.
And, you know, back when you were starting in the 60s, there still was the sense of what do rock and rollers do when they get older?
Well, I didn't think I would. You didn't think you'd live that long? No way. I thought, I mean, I thought broken English was the end. I thought after that I would die. Yeah. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I had to make another record. And Broken English was, what, 1979? Yeah. Right. I thought that was it. I thought, go out in a blaze of glory. Off you go.
Before the interview started, you mentioned to me that you stopped smoking about three weeks ago. Three weeks now, yeah.
And why did you decide to stop after all these years? Well, I've been wanting to stop for about a year because I've got the beginning of emphysema. And my mother died of emphysema and alcoholism. So I kind of didn't really want history to repeat itself. So I did everything I could. I went to a hypnotist. I read Alan Carr. I did all these things. Nothing worked.
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