Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull dies at 78
Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78, her spokesperson has said.
Born in Hampstead in December 1946, she was known for hits like As Tears Go By, which reached the UK top 10 in 1964, and for starring roles in films including 1968’s The Girl On A Motorcycle.
She was also famously the girlfriend of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in the 1960s, inspiring songs such as Wild Horses and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. After a period of heroin addiction in the 70s, she resurrected her career with the classic album Broken English.
Paying tribute, Jagger described Faithfull as “a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress,” saying he was “so saddened”.
His bandmate Keith Richards posted that he was “so sad” following Faithfull’s death, adding that he “will miss her”.
Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood posted twice on Instagram. One an old picture of him, Faithfull and Richards in a recording studio with the caption “Farewell dear Marianne”, and a more recent shot of the pair with the words “Marianne will be dearly missed. Bless her xx”.
“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family,” a statement from her spokesperson said.
“She will be dearly missed.”
The singer had previously suffered multiple health problems, including bulimia, breast cancer and emphysema caused by decades of smoking.
In 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 22 days.
Doctors said they did not expect her to survive – but she pulled through, releasing her 21st album, She Walks in Beauty, a year later.
Her story is a remarkable portrait of the rock and roll era.
She was a doe-eyed poster girl of the 1960s, plucked from obscurity by the Rolling Stones’ manager at the age of 16 and given As Tears Go By, the first song ever written by Jagger and Keith Richards.
An international hit, her version was light and breathy, delivered in a folk-pop style that was to become her trademark during the swinging 60s.
With her eponymous debut album and 1966’s North Country Maid, she became part of the “British Invasion” of the US pop charts.
Meanwhile, her affair with Jagger turned her into a tabloid lightning rod. After they split she fell into drug addiction – at one point living homeless on the streets of Soho.
She re-emerged tentatively with the 1976 album Dreamin’ My Dreams but really hit her stride with 1979’s New Wave-influenced Broken English, on which she showcased the ashen voice and hard-won wisdom that would define the second act of her career. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In recent years, she teamed up with songwriters like PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, who each cited her as an inspiration.
Other collaborators over the years included David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Emmylou Harris and Metallica, whose drummer Lars Ulrich thanked Faithfull for her “incredible and unique contribution to our music, and for always being so willing to join us in performing it”.
Her acting career ran in parallel to music. On stage, she appeared alongside Glenda Jackson in Chekhov’s Three Sisters; and played Ophelia in Hamlet – later admitting her nightly descent into madness had been chemically enhanced.
She also played God in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the devil in William Burroughs’ and Tom Waits’ musical, The Black Rider.
But music was where her heart lay. Her penultimate album, 2018’s Negative Capabilty, was a meditation on ageing, loneliness and grief – inspired partly by the death of her old friend, and fellow Rolling Stones’ paramour Anita Pallenberg; and partly by the terror attacks on the Bataclan nightclub in her adopted home of Paris.
Taking her full circle, the album included a raw and emotional re-recording of As Tears Go By that reduced everyone in the studio to tears, according to producer Rob Ellis.
Faithfull received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Women’s World Awards, and was made a commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.
Faithfull’s long-time friend, the BBC Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris, called her an “encapsulation of the sixties”.
He said while she initially was known for being Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, through her “people began to see her as an artist, as a creator”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Harris added: “To me, she was wonderful, she was interesting, very, very bright, and from an aristocratic background, which was always part of the way she carried herself.”
The singer married and divorced three times – to artist John Dunbar in 1965, Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators in 1979, and actor Giorgio Della Terza in 1988.
She is survived by her son, Nicholas Dunbar.
