In search of the “real” Marianne Faithfull

It is difficult to express the void that leaves the death of Marianne Faithfull, an artist with a multifaceted career, but above all a woman who crossed hell and brought Satan to Paradise taking it by the neck. His existence made of extremes, with drugs of drugs and alcohol, attempts to suicide, anorexia nervosa, homeless life and repeated attempts of Rehab, was more extreme than that of the Rolling Stones, which owe her much more than the history of Love with Mick Jagger. Part of the initial repertoire of the Glimmer Twins was born from some intuitions of Marianne: they range from Wild Horses to You Can't Always Get What You Want until Sympathy for the Devilnot to mention Sister Morphine of which she was recognized as co-author after a long battle to recover its rights.

It is remembered as the clean and beautiful seventeen year old AS Tears Go byan “angelic” role that wants her firm in her youth, eternal shoulder of males. Instead, no, he becomes Marianne Faithfull when he in spite of himself (because in the vortices you always enter without realizing it) turns into Bad Girl engaged in the perennial battle with a life that has not made her discounts. Author of herself, actress (fantastic her part in Irina Palm), sublime interpreter with the rumor transformed by trauma and whiskey into a vitriol uvola. A punk ante litteram that will in fact become wife of Ben Brrierly of the Vibrators and who will summarize in the masterpiece Broken Englishstill today not very reassuring album (the title track speaks of terrorism and is dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof), a melting pot of waved styles (from disk to reggae to synth pop to dark blues) to the levels of the Berlin Bowie, if not better.

Instead of remembering her pure and unspoiled girl, better to talk about the end, than what she left today. The pandemic tested him hard. Contracts the Covid and despite the advanced age, he defeats him, but the aftermaths are heavy: the lungs are damaged, he will no longer be able to sing. Instead of despairing public She Walks in Beautya disk of Spoken Word in which he reads the English romantic poets, with the help of Warren Ellis, Brian Eno, Nick Cave and Vincent Segal, managing to tie ambient HD soundscape with contemporary music that does not disdain moments concrete and electronic-thechestral.

In short, Faithfull has always voted on herself to experimentation, displacing criticism. He never sold to the enticements of fashions or the market even when he revisited his (once again) cumbersome past. Negative capability of 2018, where he strengthens the almost symbiotic auto -partnership with Nick Cave and with a Mark Lanegan in form, is a purely folk album, almost a return to the origins so much that we can consider it the closure of a circle (not surprisingly we find a version of AS Tears Go by and one of Witches' Song originally on Broken English).

In 2021. Photo Press

The route was traced, with Horses and High Heels of 2011 and Easy how, Easy Go of 2008, mainly discs of covers, lingered on a recovery of the 60s played with a voices to the sandpaper, as if they were dragged out of the memory cave to deal with topicality. Because Faithfull has always surrounded young authors, new rock levers and above all symbols of the alternative world: it testifies to it Before the Poison of 2004, his last masterpiece of unpublished, which sees her in the command writing and producing the songs together with PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Damon Albarn of the Blur and Jon Brion for a rough and guitar sound sometimes even subtly Emocore who supports desolate memories and that many have rightly understood as a Broken English composed on the other side of the mirror.

A few years earlier, in 2002, he had instead lavished in an incredible electro-art rock with Kissin Timevery successful album written with Beck, Blur, Billy Corgan, Les Valentines, Pulp. The oldest to participate in the project was Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, just to say that Marianne played in the same championship as those who could be – and artistically they were – children if not grandchildren (in 2014 Anna Calvi also wrote for her, just for say). Instead, the male press often attacked it by giving her old hippie or even the “Courtney Love Mummificata”, showing that once again a 70 -year -old artist is not recognized in the innovation, the inner thrust that leads to creating something of peculiar, personal and for this eternal, also and above all risky and daring.

Against fashions it goes Vagabond Ways of 1999, of which Give My Love to London (2014) is a kind of revised and correct version, this time with the refined production of Daniel Lanois and the unpublished Roger Waters who pulls out Incircration of a Flower Childa song written in 1968 on the Barrettian tragedy (but which in the theme is clearly adherent to the period of TSO of Faithfull), of Elton John who writes For wanting you A specially for her, who already alone does a great writing work for an album that is to be considered in itself a “narcotic” ballad in its entirety.

Yes, because in the meantime, from 1996 to 1998, Marianne Faithfull has a neo cabaret drift, a smoky re -appropriation of the style of Kurt Weill and its own works, such as The Seven Deadly Sces And 20th Century blueswhose prodrome is the sensational A Secret Life of 1995 written in four hands with Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch's right musical arm, an incredibly elegiaco and musically isolationist album characterized by the smoky and glacial classic hand of the master and by the texts on turbid sentimental bonds that are poetically in pieces (they uncomfortable Dante in the prologue and Shakespeare in the final). The disc launches the Faithfull as a kind of Marlene Dietrich of the future, but predictably divides the criticism and is refused by the market (it will be a sensational flop).

In 1990. Photo: Island/Universal

It's not the first time. The battle against the music industry had already started in 1987 with Strange Weatherwhich sees the return to the scenes of Faithfull after cleaning up from the heroine. Symbolically, here he also gets rid of an ancient himself: there are no songs written by her, but some covers and above all of the unpublished Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, with the contribution of Bill Frisell (who applies his hypnotic guitars to everything The album, assisted by the great Robert Quine). There is no room for trends, but rather we linger on a dark cabaret, a kind of dilated and night blues, like a female Waits.

It is a stylistic turning point compared to the New Wave triptych At Child's Adventure (1983), DANGEROUS ACQUOintances (1981) e Broken English (1979), scattered between a Grace Jones style mood burned by spirits, synth ballads proto hypnagogic and post punk attitude, when confusion, abuse, addiction and madness reigned. The best period is perhaps this, paradoxically just when she struggles to shake off the worst (Broken English It is clearly the album par excellence to understand the complexity of Marianne's life). But perhaps his most important album is dated 1976, Dreamin 'My Dreams. Nine years later Love in a Mist He returned to sing by putting the tombstone on the 60s records, with the vocal cords now derailed by years of smoke, alcohol and so on.

In 1965. Photo: David Wedgbury/Decca/Universal

Dreamin 'My Dreams It is the only country record engraved by Marianne, while on the contrary in her life there is very little country. In this period, in fact, he lives in a squad apartment without light and water together with Brierly of the Vibrators. But Dreamin 'My Dreams It is a field of action in which to experiment with that vocal stamp that will then characterize it and that will also make its performances immortal on the stage (also the live records sensational Blazing Away of 1990 e No exit of 2016, in all respects peaks of his discography).

In short, the accounts with the years in which it was considered “an angel with big boobs” (as Andrew Loog Oldham said, the Stones manager) Marianne has always made them, paying a salty price: evidently the printing and public opinion still not . Let's face it for all: Faithfull was not Jagger's muse, he was not the fiancée of the Stones, it was not the icon of Swinging London, it was not even the toxicomane witch and it was not the sacrificial victim of rock, it was not a simple singer . He was a free woman, an artist who leaves us a will in his faceted records and in his last words: «If you can, focus on the present. That's what I did ».