Francais | English | Espanõl

Marianne Faithfull

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations. This article has been tagged since November 2006.
Marianne Faithfull on the cover of her album A Secret Life

Marian Evelyn Faithfull<ref>Repertoire at Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI)</ref> (born December 29, 1946) is an English singer and actress whose career spans over four decades.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Faithfull's parents were British military officer and college professor Major Robert Glynn Faithfull and the Baroness Eva Erisso, a Viennese noblewoman of Jewish and Austrian descent (from the Habsburg dynasty). Eva was a ballerina during her early years and worked with the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill. Through her mother's side of the family, another prominent relative to Faithfull is her great-uncle Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the infamous 19th century Austrian nobleman whose classic erotic novel, Venus in Furs, spawned the word "masochism". <ref>The Times 1999 interview: "Sex God? Marianne's last word"</ref>

Marianne was born in Hampstead, London. During childhood, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Reading, Berkshire. As a teenager, she attended a Roman Catholic girls school.

[edit] Music career

[edit] 1960s

Faithfull began her singing career in 1964. Her first gigs were folk music performances in coffeehouses. Not long after launching her career, Faithfull was discovered at a Rolling Stones' launch party by pop music producer Andrew Loog Oldham.

Her first song, "As Tears Go By", was penned by Oldham, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and became a chart success. She then released a series of successful singles, including "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "Come and Stay With Me".

Faithfull married artist John Dunbar in 1965 and that same year gave birth to a son named Nicholas. The marriage was short-lived however, due to Dunbar's heroin addiction and related issues. Faithfull fled her home with Dunbar and took her son to stay with Brian Jones' and Anita Pallenberg in London.

During that time period, Faithfull started experimenting with marijuana and became best friends with Pallenberg. She also began a much publicized relationship with Rolling Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger. The relationship with Jagger lasted throughout the late 1960s, and it became notorious for an alleged incident involving a Mars Bar. The rumor was triggered when she was found by English police while on a drug search at Keith Richards' house in Redlands. At the time, Faithfull was only wearing a rug. (Faithfull has repeatedly and vehemently denied the incident in interviews, and her account has been publicly corroborated by Richards and Bill Wyman.) In 1968 Faithfull, by now a heavy cocaine user, miscarried a daughter (whom she had named Corrina) while retreating at Jagger's country house in Ireland.

Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits

Faithfull's involvement in Jagger's life would be reflected in some of the Rolling Stones' best-known songs:

[edit] 1970s

After splitting up with Jagger and losing custody of her son in 1970, Faithfull's personal life went into decline, and her career went into a tailspin. She only made a few appearances, like her notorious 1973 performance at NBC with David Bowie, singing Sonny and Cher's song "I Got You Babe" dressed as a nun. Faithfull lived on London's Soho streets for two years, strung out on heroin. Her friends intervened and enrolled her in a NHS drug programme, from which she could get her daily fix on prescription from the chemist. Faithfull had one of the highest dosages going: 25 jacks of heroin a day.

In 1976, producer Mike Leander found her on the streets and made an attempt to save her career, producing part of her album Rich Kid Blues. The attempt at recording would be shelved (although the music would be released in 1985). Faithfull moved into a squat without hot water or electricity in Chelsea with her then-boyfriend Ben Brierly, from punk band The Vibrators. In 1977 she released the country-filled record Dreaming my Dreams, which reached the top of the Irish pop charts.

Faithfull's career returned full force in 1979 (the same year she was arrested for marijuana possession in Norway) with the album Broken English, one of her most critically hailed album releases. The album was partially influenced by the punk explosion and on her marriage to Brierly in the same year; In addition to the punk-pop sounds of the title track (which addressed terrorism in Europe), the album also included "Why D'Ya Do It", a punk-reggae song with aggressive lyrics adapted from a poem by Heathcote Williams.<ref>The New York Times 1981 article: "The Pop Life"</ref> Broken English also revealed Faithfull's new voice, a raucous, deep and low-toned, affected by tabagism, alcohol and drug use. This contrasted with her angelical vocals on the 1960s records. The album also saw the singer emerge as a songwriter of some ability with powerful songs on follow up albums Dangerous Acquaintances and A Child's Adventure.

[edit] 1980s

Living in Dublin since the release of Broken English, Faithfull was still battling with her addiction in mid-1980s, and even broke her jaw while tripping on a flight of stairs on drugs. In 1985, she ended up at Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota, U.S. for rehabilitation on the same year. There she started an affair with a fellow junkie who jumped out of the 36th floor window of the clinic after the end of the romance. During that time, Faithfull was still married to Ben Brierly. The divorce would happen only in 1986.

In 1987, Faithfull re-invented herself as a jazz and blues singer on the record Strange Weather, produced by Hal Willner. The album became her most critically lauded album of the decade. In 1988, the singer married writer and actor Giorgio Della Terza, from whom she would divorce in 1991.

[edit] 1990s

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 third fillip during the early 1990s with the recording of the live album Blazing Away and her new artistic persona of a neo-cabaret singer, performing works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. She released a recording of The Seven Deadly Sins and 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 addictions, and bisexuality. 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.

[edit] 2000s

The new millennium has seen Faithfull's talent flourish, with every album receiving critical plaudits. In 2000 she released Vagabond Ways which was hailed as one of the finest of her career, and certainly showed her songwriting reaching a new peak, and sang on Joe Jackson's Night and Day II album.

Her renaissance continued with Kissin' Time, released in 2002. The album contains songs written with Beck, Billy Corgan, Jarvis Cocker, Dave Stewart, David Courts, and the French pop singer Étienne 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 2005 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 Chieftains, Tom Waits, Lenny Kaye, Rupert Hine and Pink Floyd. Most recently she performed a duet on Patrick Wolf's new album The Magic Position and made a Serge Gainsbourg cover with Sly & Dunbar for a tribute album.

Faithfull currently resides in Paris, with her manager François Ravard. In September 2006, the singer was diagnosed with breast cancer. The following month, she underwent surgery in France and no further treatment was necessary due to the very early stage of the tumor. Less than two months after she declared having the disease, Faithfull made her public statement of full recovery.<ref>"Faithfull makes full recovery from cancer", 6 November 2006.</ref>

[edit] Acting career

Faithfull has had a modestly successful acting career, beginning with a 1965 stage adaptation of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Before that she played herself in Godard's movie Made in U.S.A.. Faithfull has also given notable performances in the 1967 film I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name alongside Orson Welles (where she notedly became the first person to say the f-word in a studio picture), as a leather-clad motorcyclist in the 1968 French film La Motocyclette 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 appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (as God), in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001), and plays Empress Maria-Theresa in Sofia Coppola's biopic, Marie-Antoinette, alongside Kirsten Dunst who plays the title role. During her most recent theatrical performance, in 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in Robert Wilson and Tom Waits' The Black Rider.

[edit] Discography

  • Come My Way (1965) UK #12
  • Marianne Faithfull (1965) UK #15 US #12
  • Go Away From My World EP (1966) US #81
  • North Country Maid (1966)
  • Faithfull Forever (US only release of songs mainly from Loveinamist, 1966) US #147
  • Loveinamist (1967)
  • The World of Marianne Faithfull (singles collection)(1969)
  • Dreamin' My Dreams (1977)
  • Faithless (1978)
  • Broken English (1979) UK #57 US #82
  • Dangerous Acquaintances (1981) UK #45 US #104
  • A Child's Adventure (1983) UK #99 US #107
  • Rich Kid Blues (1985)
  • Strange Weather (1987) UK #78
  • Blazing Away (1990) US #160
  • A Secret Life (1995)
  • 20th Century Blues (1997)
  • A Perfect Stranger (includes un-released material, 1998)
  • The Seven Deadly Sins (Brecht/Weill songs, 1998)
  • Vagabond Ways (1999)
  • Kissin' Time (2002)
  • Before the Poison (2005) US #37

[edit] Compilations

  • Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits (1969) US #171
  • As Tears Go By (1980)
  • The Very Best of Marianne Faithfull (1987)
  • Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits (1987)
  • This Little Bird (1993)
  • Faithfull: A Collection of Her Best Recordings (1994)
  • 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)
  • The Best of Marianne Faithfull: The Millennium Collection (2003)
  • Marianne Faithfull: The Collection (2005)

[edit] Filmography

  • Made in U.S.A (1966)
  • I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name (1967)
  • La Motocyclette (1968)
  • Hamlet (1969)
  • Lucifer Rising (1972)
  • Madhouse Mansion (1974)
  • Assault on Agathon (1975)
  • The Turn of the Screw (1992) (narration)
  • When Pigs Fly (1993)
  • Shopping (1994)
  • Moondance (1995)
  • Crimetime (1996)
  • Intimacy (2001)
  • Far From China (2001)
  • Nord-Plage" (2004)
  • Paris, je t'aime (2006)
  • Marie Antoinette (2006)
  • Irina P. (in post-production, 2007)

[edit] References

<references />

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

[edit] External links

de:Marianne Faithfull es:Marianne Faithfull fr:Marianne Faithfull hu:Marianne Faithfull nl:Marianne Faithfull no:Marianne Faithfull pl:Marianne Faithfull pt:Marianne Faithfull fi:Marianne Faithfull sv:Marianne Faithfull

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Marianne_Faithfull"
Personal tools