Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull on the cover of her album A Secret Life

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (born December 29, 1946 in Hampstead, London) is an English singer and actress whose career spans over four decades.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Discography
3 External links
4 References

Biography

Faithfull was born to a British military officer father named Major Glynn Faithfull and the Baroness Eva Erisso, a Viennese noblewoman of half Jewish and half noble Austrian descent, coming from the Habsburg dynasty. Faithfull attended a Roman Catholic girls school.

Faithfull began her singing career in 1964 (see 1964 in music) after being discovered at a Rolling Stones launch party by pop music producer Andrew Loog Oldham. Her first hit, "As Tears Go By", was penned by Mick Jagger[link] and Keith Richards. She then released a series of successful singles, including "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "Sister Morphine" which she co-wrote with Mick Jagger.

Marianne Faithfull married artist John Dunbar in 1965 and that same year gave birth to a son named Nicholas. The marriage was short-lived however, and Faithfull began a much publicized relationship with Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. The relationship with Jagger lasted throughout the late 1960s, and has become notorious for a fictitious incident involving a Mars Bar. Faithfull has repeatedly and vehemently denied the incident in interviews, and her account has been publicly corroborated by Bill Wyman and Keith Richards. In 1968 Faithfull miscarried a daughter named Corrina at seven months gestation.

After splitting up with Jagger in 1970, Faithfull briefly stopped recording and nursed a drug addiction. Thereafter, Marianne's then boyfriend, [Count Jean De Breteuil] may have provided the unknown substance which might have been the cause of the [supposed death] of Jim Morrison. Pamela Courson, Morrison's live in lover was a former lover of the Count, and called them to assist with the dead body, hours before calling an ambulance, on July 3, 1971. Jim Morrison reportedly did not like Count Jean De Breteuil.She moved to Dublin in the middle of the 1970s and had quite a success with Dreaming my Dreams, which reached the top of the Irish pop charts. She returned in 1979 (see 1979 in music) with Broken English, one of her most critically hailed album releases. Broken English also saw Faithfull emerge as a songwriter of some ability with powerful songs on follow up albums Dangerous Acquaintances and A Child's Adventure. Her success continued throughout the 1980s, culminating with Strange Weather (1987), her most critically lauded album of the decade.

When Roger Waters assembled an all-star cast of musicians to perform the rock opera The Wall live in Berlin in July 1990, Faithfull played the part of Pink's over-protective mother.

Faithfull’s musical career had a second fillip during the early 1990s with the recording of the live album "Blazing Away" and performances of the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. She released a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins and also performed in The Threepenny Opera. Her interpretation of the music of this era has been critically acclaimed and led to a new album, Twentieth Century Blues, and a successful concert and cabaret tour.

In 1994 she published her autobiography, entitled Faithfull in which she discussed her life, career, drug additions, and bisexulity. The next year she recorded A Secret Life, with songs written with Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch's composer.

Faithfull also sang backup vocals on Metallica's song "The Memory Remains" from their 1997 album ReLoad and appeared in the song's surrealistic video.

Faithfull's 1999 DVD Dreaming my Dreams contains material about her childhood and parents, good historical video footage going back to 1964, and interviews with the artist and several women friends who have known her since she was a young girl. There are sections on her relationship with first husband John Dunbar and with Mick Jagger and brief interviews with his fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards, with whom she has remained on friendly terms since the 1960s. The DVD concludes with a 30-minute live concert.

The new millennium has seen Faithfull's talent flourish, with every album receiving critical plaudits. In 2000 she released the Vagabond Ways. which was hailed as one of the finest of her career, and certainly showed her songwriting reaching a new peak. Her renaissance continued with Kissin' Time (2002), with songs written with Beck, Billy Corgan, Jarvis Cocker, Dave Stewart, David Courts, and the French pop singer Etienne Daho. On this record, she paid tribute to Nico (with "Song for Nico") whose work she admired, and showed a strong sense of humour with the autobiographical "Sliding Through Life on Charm." This was followed in 2004 by Before the Poison, a collaboration with PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Damon Albarn and Jon Brion. It was considered by many critics to be the best work of her career, though to much of the public Broken English remains her definitive record. In 2005, André Schneider did a cover version of her song The Hawk.

With a recording career that spans over four decades, Faithfull has continually reinvented her musical persona; Experimenting in vastly different musical genres and collaborating with such varied artists as David Bowie, The Chieftans, Tom Waits, Lenny Kaye, and Pink Floyd.

Faithfull also made a modestly successful foray into an acting career and has given notable performances in the 1967 film I'll Never Forget Whats 'Is Name alongside Orson Welles, as a leather-clad motorcyclist in the 1968 French film Girl On A Motorcycle opposite Alain Delon, and in the 1969 Kenneth Anger cult film Lucifer Rising. In 1969, Faithfull played Ophelia in the Nicol Williamson adaptation of Hamlet. In 1993 she played the role of Pirate Jenny In The Threepenny Opera at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed "The Seven Deadly Sins" with the Vienna Radio Symphony. She has made brief guest star appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (as God), in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001 film), and plays Empress Maria-Teresa in Sofia Coppola's biopic, Marie-Antoinette which will star Kirsten Dunst in the title role. She also pursues a theatrical career. In 2004 and in 2005, she appeared in Robert Wilson and Tom Waits's The Black Rider. Faithfull currently resides in Paris, France, and still regularly appears in concerts. Most recently she performed a duet on Patrick Wolf's new album The Magic Position.

Discography

Come My Way (1965)
Marianne Faithfull (1965)
Go Away From My World (1966)
North Country Maid (1966)
Faithfull Forever (1966)
Love in a Mist (1967)
The World of Marianne Faithfull (1969)
Dreamin' My Dreams (1977)
Faithless (1978)
Broken English (1979)
As Tears Go By (1980)
Dangerous Acquaintances (1981)
A Child's Adventure (1983)
Rich Kid Blues (1985)
The Very Best of Marianne Faithfull (1987)
Strange Weather (1987)
Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits (1987)
Blazing Away (1990)
This Little Bird (1993)
Faithfull: A Collection of Her Best Recordings (1994)
A Secret Life (1995)
20th Century Blues (1997)
A Perfect Stranger (1998)
Vagabond Ways (1999)
The Best of Marianne Faithfull (1999)
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (2000)
True - The Collection (2000)
Stranger On Earth: An Introduction to Marianne Faithfull (2001)
Kissin' Time (2002)
The Best of Marianne Faithfull: The Millennium Collection (2003)
Before the Poison (2004)
Marianne Faithfull: The Collection (2005)

External links

References

Faithfull: An Autobiography by Marianne Faithfull. Boston: Little, Brown; 1994. ISBN 0-316-27324-4
As years go by An interview with Faithfull in which she specifically denies the notorious Mars Bar incident. The Independent newspaper, 1 Sept 1996, page 18.

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