|
|
| moy |
Marianne learned a long time ago to live with the past and always look to the future
May 11 2007
Marianne Faithfull cares little for her fame and notoriety, aiming simply to please her loyal army of fans. Laura Davis reports
by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post
IT IS nearly impossible to separate the fresh-faced blonde believed to have inspired hits by the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world from the Marianne Faithfull of today.
Her image as Mick Jagger’s former girlfriend – the naked girl wrapped in a fur rug during a police raid – endures despite a successful musical and acting career spanning four decades.
But her past is something she isn’t keen to talk about in the middle of her current tour, which will include a concert at the Philharmonic Hall tonight.
“Come on, imagine . . . read my book,” she says, when I ask what life was like for a teenage girl suddenly finding herself with a recording career and a circle of friends that included The Rolling Stones.
But, although she avoids any mention of Jagger, she does concede that it was both a difficult and an exciting time.
“It was very lonely because I left school and had a hit record and suddenly I was on tour with The Hollies and Freddie and the Dreamers and all that, three big tours in England and I missed my mother.
“I was too young . . . but at the same time I had fun.”
Born in Hampstead, Marian Evelyn Faithfull’s upbringing was a contradictory mix of socialism and aristocracy. Her mother, Baronness Eva Erison, was originally from Vienna and inherited her noble roots from the Habsburg Dynasty. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British military officer and college professor who went on to establish a commune in Oxfordshire.
Her discovery by the Stones’s manager Andrew Loog Oldham led to her first major release, As Tears Go By, in 1964, and a series of other hits.
But her pop career lasted barely 12 months and she turned to acting, becoming the first actor to say the word “F**k” in a mainstream film – Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s ’Is Name.
“I love acting, I really love it, because I get the chance to play another character. I don’t have to be Marianne Faithfull,” she says.
The singer married and soon separated from artist Richard Dunbar, with whom she had a son.
Within a few years, the wholesome teenager, in the short print dress and white knee socks, became a single mother divorcee with a drug habit and a rock ’n’ roll boyfriend.
Perhaps one of the reasons Faithfull is reluctant to discuss the past is that she has managed to come to terms with it.
“There’s nothing I can do about it, it happened and over the years I have . . . at first I was not happy but there was a moment, I can’t really remember when, when I said to myself ‘now come on, do you really want to do this or do you want to do something else, the time has come to choose’ and I chose,” she says.
Were there other paths she would have taken instead?
“Oh yes, opening a health food shop, a bookshop, things like that.”
Faithfull’s relationship with Jagger was much publicised, particularly after the infamous police raid on Rolling Stone Keith Richards’s Sussex home, where she was discovered wearing only that rug. Jagger is believed to have written Wild Horses after one of her expres- sions – “Wild horses wouldn’t drag me away.” Together the couple penned her 1969 single Sister Morphine, later a hit for The Stones.
“It’s the first song I wrote, the words, and I’m very proud of it. People have misunderstood it completely, of course, as they do. They thought it was about me but it is like all my songs, a story,” she explains in her trademark husky voice, adding however that she does have a knack of making lyrics sound personal when she sings them.
“I do that to every song I sing. It just happens. I suppose I get really into it and for that moment I really am in the song, but I won’t be singing Sister Morphine in Liverpool.”
What she will be performing at the Philharmonic Hall goes on the long list of the things she won’t talk about, but she does hint that “it’s like my whole life”.
“Once again another different kind of show, more intimate with a trio,” adds Faithfull, whose close friends include Kate Moss. “That gives me a chance to rearrange some of the old faves and do a lot of real rarities, well I like it.
“I usually find if I like it, the audience likes it.”
It is fair to say Faithfull is one of life’s survivors. She has managed to cope with the emotional turmoil of losing custody of a child, the gnawing emptiness of drug addiction, and the trauma of living homeless on the streets of Soho. Last year she was forced to cancel a tour due to breast cancer, which she managed to beat with the strength of a younger woman.
At the age of 60, she still packs out theatres and concert halls with people fascinated by the voice and the woman behind it. Yet she says she doesn’t know why that is.
“I have no idea . . . maybe I’m good,” she laughs.
“The legend is one thing and I am another. They’re not very connected . . . but I don’t mind, the legend lives on, blah blah blah.”
She is also beyond caring about her reputation.
“I think I couldn’t care less. My fans love me and I love them and obviously I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, I realise that but you can’t please everybody. I used to think I could when I was young, but I realised a long time ago that I can’t.
“I have been on tour now for 2½ months, I’ve got a long road but I think it’s very good for me, especially after I had such a s*** year last year. It’s very good for me to connect with my audience again and to sing.”
|
|
|
| fireontheplatter |
i have never heard a faithful recond in its entirity
when i hear her name i think of the early photos of her and mick when they went out together
i am glad she is still performing...i guess.
nice read there....thank you for posting.
everybody say oww |
|
