Marianne Faithfull, icon of the 60s and evolution pop star, died at 78 years old: NPR

English singer Marianne Faithfull in her Kensington apartment in 1965.

Stephan C Archetti / Getty Images / Hulton Archive

hide

tilting legend

Stephan C Archetti / Getty Images / Hulton Archive

British musician and actress Marianne Faithfull, an icon of the fertile music scene from the 1960s in London, died Thursday at the age of 78.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, composer and actress Marianne Faithfull,” said a representative in a statement provided at NPR. “Marianne died peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. We will miss a lot.”

In the reader’s note to his 1994 autobiography, FaithfulThe native of London wrote: “Never apologize, never explain to you – have we not always said that? Well, I didn’t do it and I don’t do it.”

This without compromise spirit guided his musical career, which took off in 1964 with his point of view on “As Tears Going”, an early composition by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards who reached the top 10 of the British singles painting. She followed this success in 1965 with two long distinct long: an eponymous effort with pop-sense, and Come on my waywhich contained a robust and confident turn on traditional folk songs.

In 1979, after a decade of fallow fallow, she released the superb Broken Englishwhich was selected by NPR as one of the 150 larger albums made by women In 2017. The progressive LP incorporated Glacial art-rock guitars and percolated electronic elements (including Steve Winwood keyboards), and received a Grammy nomination for the best female rock vocal performance.

In the 1980s and beyond, Faithfull continued to transform between styles; She tried the German cabaret (“Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife”, from the tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill), Indie-Folk (a 2008 version on “The Crane Wife 3” of the Decrews with Nick Cave) and Smoky Jazz Noir (coverage in 2011 of the “stations” of the twins of gutter).

These various covers reflected the dramatic evolution of the Faithfull voice. In the 1960s, she exercised a royal and dark viola, which boasted of a clarity amplified by a precise and graceful phrasing. Over time, his voice deepened, giving it gravitas and a greater than life presence; Its delivery in gravelly slipped the songs roughly, just like smooth wooden sandpaper.

She used this evolution to her advantage, in particular on very recent collaborations with the producer renowned Hal Willner, including Moody from 1987 Strange time and various stars and starings of 2008 Easy Come, Easy Go: 12 songs for music lovers. At the end of 1997, Faithfull also reached the American top 40 thanks to the Rock Metallica group, which specifically tapped it to provide obsessive voices on their song “The Memory Remain”.

Faithfull was born on December 29, 1946 in the Hampstead district of London. His mother, Eva, was a baroness descended from Austro-Hungarian royalty, and her father worked for the British Intelligence Agency known as Mi6. As a teenager, Faithfull joined a repertoire theater company and also “a little suspended in cafes and folk clubs”, she wrote in Faithful.

These two experiences would prove to be formators. In addition to her musical career, Faithfull acted on stage, as well as on television and cinema.

In 1964, she was discovered by the director of Rolling Stones, Andrew Loog Oldham, who spotted her during a party and asked if she could sing. “I said:” MM, mm, I can. MM. MM “”, she said at NPR in 2005. “And I think that a week later, I obtained a telegram from Andrew saying:” Be at the Olympic studios at 2 am “Clock to a Address this or that, London.

This session produced “as tears passes” and launched his association for life with the Rolling Stones, or more precisely Mick Jagger, with whom she had a romantic relationship during the second half of the 1960s. During this time , Faithfull co -written “Sister Morphine” with Jagger and Keith Richards, and published his own vision of the song in 1969 – well before the version of the Stones made surfaces 1971 Sticky fingers.

Over the years, Faithfull has faced many health challenges, including anorexia, breast cancer and hepatitis C, and has experienced homeless in the 1970s due to dependence on ‘Well -published heroine. She told Terry Gross of NPR in 1994 that she had started using the drug as “adaptation mechanism”, to “face my life”.

However, Faithfull worked hard in sobriety and continued to create. His 2018 album, Negative capacitypresented original collaborations of composition with Nick Cave and Ed Harcourt and included a new poignant version of “As Tears Go”. Faithfull’s voice seemed more fragile, and its delivery was melancholy and dried, as if it was not only taking the lyrics of the song of the song to heart; She was thinking about her own life and the distance she had traveled since the initial recording of the song.

She followed this in 2021 with She walks in beautyA collaboration with Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds rooted in his love of poetry. She finished the project after spending three weeks in the hospital fighting a potentially fatal COVI-19 infection.