Marianne Faithfull: Survivor of the 60's
In 1964, Andrew Loog Oldham was on top of the world, managing The Rolling Stones and watching as their success skyrocketed under his leadership. He was 20 years old and stood out in a crowd with his flamboyant style and tiny trademark sunglasses, and after his success with the Stones, he was on the prowl for new acts to manage. It was at a launch party for the newest Stones album that his eyes would land on a young girl who was the perfect package. Like a porcelain doll neatly packed in a fancy box, she was petite and blonde and pretty and innocent, with a name that would look great up on the marquis: Marianne Faithfull.
Faithfull was a teenaged convent girl with dreams of going to Oxford and studying literature and philosophy. Oldham had never heard her sing a lick, but took one look at her and determined her destiny was to be a pop star. He quickly scooped her up and ordered Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write a song for her. Together, they wrote “As Tears Go By,” which would send Faithfull’s pop career into full swing. It was a miracle, as if some fairy godmother had swooped down from the heavens and bestowed a blessing upon Marianne, an easy life of fame and riches just for being pretty. But Marianne’s long life would not prove to be easy at all.
Marianne Faithfull became the embodiment of strength and resilience, of overcoming adversity and using that pain to create something beautiful. Her many years of struggle have made her thick-skinned and brutally honest, a detail evident in her autobiography “Faithfull.” In her no-holds-barred book, Marianne gives completely honest accounts of her life as she recalls it. She describes her brushes with big names like Roy Orbison, Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan with complete sincerity, telling the stories exactly as is, not painting any one figure in a necessarily bad or good light, just as how they were. She even tells of the days in which she knew Jimmy Page — and how boring she thought he was.
“He played on almost all my sessions in the sixties. He was very dull in those days. This was before he went away and god interesting.”
Although, Page did co-write “In My Time of Sorrow” with Jackie DeShannon for Marianne’s next album. But Marianne does more than describe her dalliances with rock legends.
In the beginning, Marianne was a cute girl who sang pretty songs and wore sparkly dresses, a neat package tied with a bow. She was the face of innocence and beauty, but her fame placed her under a microscope enabling the world to see her every move. By 1967, her innocent image was already unraveling. She was involved in a drug bust at Keith Richards’ Sussex home, in which the police found a small amount of drugs — just not quite small enough. Marianne was the only woman there, surrounded by a party of her friends who also happened to be bad-boy rock stars. After a long day, she had decided to take a bath — just before the police arrived. The only clothes she‘d had were the ones she was wearing, which had become filthy after a full day of running about. With little thought, Marianne had thrown a fur rug over her as a sort of makeshift dress. This would be the beginning of her downfall. She was painted by tabloids as the wanton woman wearing only a fur rug at a drug party. Headlines in big black letters blared “NAKED GIRL AT STONES PARTY.”
“It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorizing. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”
This was Marianne’s first real glimpse of misfortune, but it was far from her last.
Over the next year, Marianne would discover the she was pregnant. She and Mick were ecstatic, and Marianne hoped this might pull the pair back together after a bumpy few months. They both longed for a little girl, and Marianne had already carefully picked out the perfect name: Corinna. When she was seven months pregnant, however, she suffered a tragic miscarriage and lost her little girl (making her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Corrina Corrina” all the more heartwrenching). This wouldn’t stop the hits from coming, however.
After the death of Brian Jones and her heightened intake of drugs, things would look even bleaker for Marianne. Losing Jones hit Marianne hard, possibly harder than any of his fellow band members. She had watched as he slipped through the cracks and his mental state rapidly deteriorated and she felt sympathy, as well as saw a reflection of herself. In a drug-induced haze, she stared in the mirror and saw her recently deceased friend instead of her own face looking back. Confused, she truly thought she was Brian. And if she was Brian, she was supposed to be dead. So, she downed a bottle of sleeping pills and attempted to take her own life. She would be found by Mick, but remained in a coma for six days. She eventually recovered, but in 1970 she left Mick. That same year, she lost custody of her son, sending her spiraling and putting her career at a complete standstill. She attempted suicide once again.
For the next two years, Marianne struggled with heroin addiction and anorexia, and she lived on the streets of Soho. More specifically, she lived on the wall of a building that had been destroyed in World War II. Once a pop sensation, she now spent her days desperately searching for heroin and her nights shivering on a wall. She was eventually found by producer Mike Leander, who attempted to help her by reviving her career. Marianne was given a place to live and a project to work on — her album Rich Kid Blues, which would be shelved until 1985, 14 years later. She eventually met her future husband (and future ex-husband), Ben Brierly, and together they lived in a squat with no hot water or electricity.
In 1979, things began to look up for Marianne as her career was brought back to life and returned with full force with her album Broken English. Broken English was critically hailed and revealed both her struggles with drink and drugs and the effect it had taken on her voice, which was now raspy and deep and a far cry from her Barbie Doll image. After the success of her new album, Marianne moved to New York, but she was still grappling with addiction. While under the influence, she attempted suicide once again — this time, immediately regretting it. She panicked as she felt her heart begin to slow and attempted to cross the room, but in her helpless state she tripped and shattered her jaw. She felt herself floating in and out of her body before deciding this wasn’t the end. Miraculously, she crawled upstairs to her then-boyfriend and shook him awake. She lived, with the only evidence being the fact that her jaw was wired shut. It was this event that would push Marianne to enter a rehab facility.
She received treatment at McLean Hospital in Belmont Massachusetts, where she seemed to thrive in 1985 and found a friend in fellow addict, Howard Tose. Their friendship eventually took a romantic turn, and the two left the facility and planned to work together to stay clean. Unbeknownst to Marianne, Howard was not only an addict but severely mentally ill. They lived together in their 14th floor apartment and Marianne took on the role of housewife for the first time in her life — she cooked and cleaned while Howard worked. But after such an extravagant life and a renewed sense of hope now that she was clean, Marianne was unsatisfied. She sat Howard down and explained that she was leaving him. It wasn’t working. Howard quietly left the room to get ready for work. When he never reappeared, Marianne grew concerned. She searched the apartment for him, only to find an open window. She stuck her head outside and saw only a swirling pool of red on the ground far below. Howard had thrown himself out of the window.
As the years progressed, Marianne continued to release music and perform, reinventing herself repeatedly, but after kicking addiction, things had begun to settle down. That isn’t to say she faced no more hardships, however — no, she would go on to beat breast cancer, be diagnosed with Hepatitis C, collapse from a kidney infection, fall and break her hip, and survive a life-threatening battle with Covid-19 at 74 years old. Her 58-year long career has been marked with tragedy and suffering, taking a naïve convent girl who buried her nose in books and making her one of the toughest women in the industry — who still harbors a deep love for literature. Her strength and resilience are beyond admirable, and she has proven time and again that she is a survivor.
