Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull was a 1960s pop starlet and occasional actress whose personal life resulted in a series of lurid headlines, but who gained a new respect in her later career as a meaningful song interpreter. The daughter of a British military officer and an Austrian baroness, she suffered as a child from tuberculosis and was brought up in a convent. She started her music career singing in folk clubs, but a meeting with The Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham changed her course. Oldham moulded her into a saleable musician and she had her first hit in 1964 with 'As Tears Go By', written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. More hits followed including 'This Little Bird' and 'Come & Stay With Me', and she gained some notoriety when she left her husband John Dunbar to live with Jagger. Faithfull's story took a tragic turn as her career faded, she battled drug problems, attempted suicide, split with Jagger and lived on the streets of London. She struggled through the 1970s but made a strong artistic comeback, embracing modern music with the albums 'Broken English' and 'Dangerous Acquaintances'. By the late 1980s she'd discovered a new, husky voice and reinvented herself as a bluesy jazz singer recording the highly-rated 'Strange Weather' which featured a new version of her debut hit 'As Tears Go By'. In 1990 she appeared in a stage version of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' and continued her renaissance through the 2000s, including the 2011 album 'Horses and High Heels'. 'Give My Love to London' followed in 2014 with 'Negative Capability' in 2018.

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