During a television interview in which he promoted An autobiographyMarianne Faithfull faced, in addition to the memories of her tumultuous life, the stigma that persecuted her for years. The presenter asked him about the number of promiscuous situations that were narrated in the book and she, without altering himself but with the expression of those who are still surprised again and again, replied: “It was casual sex and it was very funny, darling. Promiscuity? Yes, the same as the one that a man could have, but only the woman is called promiscuous. ”
Marianne Faithfull never hid, or of the years in which she lived hooked to the heroin or the stage in which she was part of the circle of the stones, an experience that phagocitated it for years. It cost time and effort that the public stopped seeing it as Mick Jagger’s unreasonable ex -girlfriend sixty shook the Swinging London.
The punk and everything that came later threatened to bury many of the sixties rock totems. But they also led to the revaluation of figures that took advantage of artistically reborn with another sound skin. Marianne Faithfull was one of them, the only woman who got it. He made an album in accordance with the new times, merging synthesizers, guitars and reggae rhythms. He titled it Broken English (1979) and the album became an instant classic.
There was his version of The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, that years later would be immortalized in Thelma & Louise. But there were also other bold songs, such as WHY’D YA DO IT, Built around a text by the poet and playwright John Heathcott-Williams, full of explicit sexual language, something unusual in those days for an interpreter. Broken English, A lucid rarity in the middle of the New Wave, was the first great artistic flash of the Faithfulull.
It would take almost ten years to take another firm step, although this time he found the voice- in the literal and metaphorical sense- that made it definitely pass to the Olympus of popular music. It was the producer Hal Willner who created the perfect musical frame for that to happen. Musical sobriety that wrapped its rough voice, that was what made Strange Weather (1987), a triumphal album. In him he made his songs from Dylan and Tom Waits, and even revised, from a primorous maturity, the theme of Jagger and Richards that made her famous in 1965, As Tears Go By.
The publication of his autobiography in 1994 helped him to take stock and move on. At that time he recorded an album with Angelo Badalamenti, To Secret Lifewhich contributed to continue to keep up its artistic prestige. It was not an easy task because sincerity is paid face and becomes an easy target for misogyny. As he told everything in his book, the past insisted on pursuing her.
But in the same way that Postpunk’s public welcomed her with open arms, a new generation of talents went to her to wrap her. Damon Albarn, Beck, Jarvis Cocker, Etienne Daho, PJ Harvey … The list of famous admirers was growing over the years, strengthening the importance of a name that, in reality, already spoke for itself. And in the end, Marianne Faithfull got what she deserved: a unanimous respect that came from her work and, at the same time, celebrated her status as a survivor, as a woman who had managed to impose her conditions in a world willing to always remember him who had lying down.
His albums were still full of devotees collaborators: Anohni, Rufus Wainwright, Sean Lennon, Lou Reed, and, above all, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. For the first, Faithfull was almost one more member of his family – it is revealing to see her in the documentary credits One More Time With Feelingplaying with the children of Cave marriage. With the second, he recorded what would be the last work of his discography.
In She Walks in Beauty (2021), Ellis composes musical funds on which Faithfull recites Byron, Keats or Wordsworth verses. When he registered it, he had been with health problems for years that began with a hip break. A year earlier he had survived Covid, and although he managed to recover, the sequelae of the disease made it even more fragile. She was a fighter who won the adjective of legend.
Broken English, Strange Weather, Before the Poison, Easy Easy Go They are masterful works through which he told us who he was. Marianne Faithfull belongs to a rare lineage of female pioneers (Patti Smith, Nico …), who forged works that only they could have created. There has never been anyone like Marianne Faithfull, who now walks Bella, like the night.
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