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Jordan Times
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Jordan Times
Stones lead tributes to 'beautiful' Marianne Faithfull, dead at 78
LONDON — The Rolling Stones led tributes to sixties music icon Marianne Faithfull, adding she would be forever remembered after her death at the age of 78. The death of the British singer-songwriter was announced by a spokesperson who said in a statement that she would be "dearly missed" by her legions of fans the world over. Posting an old black-and-white picture of the two of them, her past lover Jagger said he was "so saddened" by the news. Faithfull was "so much part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress. She will always be remembered", he wrote on Instagram. In recent years, the British pop-rock balladeer, with a distinctive low voice in her later career, had battled illness, including breast cancer and a severe bout of Covid. Faithfull got her first break in 1964, after being discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. She shot to fame with her hit "As Tears Go By", written by Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, who were introduced to her by Oldham. Richards on Thursday sent condolences to the singer's family, adding: "I am so sad and will miss her. Love Keith." Faithfull's first hit was followed by a string of successful singles, including "Come And Stay with Me", "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan". She was long known for her tempestuous relationship with Jagger, and they moved in together when she was just 19, although she had already been briefly married and had a young son. She also acted in films including "The Girl on a Motorcycle", in which she played opposite French star Alain Delon, and various theatre productions. 'Deeply missed' "It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull," a statement from her spokesperson sent to AFP said. "Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed." Despite being feted during her relationship with Jagger, Faithfull was to become addicted to cocaine in a career of ups and downs. She enjoyed the highs of sudden fame and fortune, but also deep lows of drug addiction and homelessness, and emerged on the other side with tales to tell. She was famously found wearing nothing but a fur rug in a highly publicised police drugs raid in 1967 that saw both Jagger and Richards convicted. She left Jagger in May 1970 as her life spiralled out of control and ended up living rough for nearly two years on the streets of London. She told AFP in 2014: "Seriously, some of my memories of the Sixties are wonderful and some of them are horrible." But she coyly refused to go into more detail, insisting: "They're my memories. They're not for the public." Her 1979 album "Broken English" breathed new life into her faltering career. She earned a Grammy nomination for the album in 1981. And she reinvented herself again as a jazz and blues singer with the critically acclaimed 1987 release "Strange Weather". 'Yearning, melancholy' Over a long career with more than 20 albums to her name, Faithfull was to attract a stream of younger artists keen to work with her, including PJ Harvey, Jarvis Cocker and Beck. In 2006 she revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer from which she recovered. She was also known to have suffered from Hepatitis C. Ever the survivor, she was to face one of her hardest trials with the pandemic when she suffered a brutal dose of Covid-19 in 2020, telling AFP it had left her struggling with the effects of long Covid which had affected her voice. Asked if she would be able to sing again, she said by phone: "Darling, I don't know. I hope I can. I do singing practice once a week. A friend comes over and plays my lovely guitar and I practice. "It's an awful thought," she added. "Whatever happens, I can't change it." Far from being defeated though, she spent months completing an album which she had begun before the pandemic. It features her reading in her haunting voice some of her favourite poetry -- Byron, Shelley, Keats and other 19th century romantics -- with backing music from stars including Warren Ellis, Nick Cave and Brian Eno. Faithfull lived for a period in Paris, and her friend, the singer and supermodel Carla Bruni, said: "Goodbye my dearest Marianne" in an Instagram post. "Rest in Peace with the angels my friend." Writing after news of her death, Guardian pop critic Alexis Petridis said: "Something about Faithfull's performances injected a note of eeriness: her vocals were more yearning and melancholy than the songs needed them to be."
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marianne Faithfull, Legendary Musician And Actor, Dies Aged 78
British singer Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78. Marianne's publicist confirmed on Thursday evening that the music icon had died earlier that day 'in the company of her loving family'. 'It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,' they said in a statement. 'Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.' After being 'discovered' as a teenager by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, her breakthrough single As Tears Go By, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was released in 1964, reaching the top 10 in the UK. In the years that followed, she enjoyed success with singles including This Little Bird, Summer Nights and her highest-charting hit Come And Stay With Me. Over the course of her career, she became one of the artists associated with the so-called 'British invasion' in the 1960s, and went on to release 22 albums in total, the most recent of which, She Walks In Beauty, came out in 2021. In addition to her music career, Marianne enjoyed success as an actor, both on the stage and in films like Girl On A Motorcycle, I'll Never Forgive What's 'Isname and Sofia Coppola's historical biopic of Marie Antoinette. She also famously played God in two episodes of the UK sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Following the news of Marianne's death, Mick Jagger shared an emotional tribute on Instagram, remembering her as 'a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress'. 'She will always be remembered,' he added. His bandmate Keith Richards also wrote: 'My heartfelt condolences to Marianne's family! I am so sad and will miss her!!' Madonna Lambasts Trump Administration For 'Dismantling The Freedoms We've Fought For' Andrew Scott Brings The Drama (And Busts A Move!) In Sam Fender's New Music Video Lady Gaga Confirms Details Of Her Long-Awaited New Album And It Sounds Like Total Mayhem
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Melancholy, morphine and the Baader-Meinhof group: Marianne Faithfull's 10 best recordings
Marianne Faithfull's 60s releases were wildly variable, perhaps because she seems to have been beholden to the whims of producers who didn't really know what to do with her: one minute she was recording rounded-edged folk – Cockleshells, What Have They Done to the Rain – the next retooling the Ronettes' Is This What I Get for Loving You? to no great effect. But, occasionally, she rose above it all, injecting her cut-glass delivery with an alarming degree of melancholy, as on Morning Sun. The B-side of her hit This Little Bird, it's a pretty but slender song, driven by what sounds like a echoing harp, that her voice transforms into something weirdly wrenching: 'I'm very sad, tears follow me,' she sings, and she genuinely sounds it. Co-written with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger – the latter also acting as producer – Sister Morphine effectively curtailed Faithfull's recording career at a stroke: it was only the B-side of her comeback single, the Gerry Goffin/Barry Mann-penned Something Better, but in early 1969, the very thought of Faithfull singing about opiate addiction horrified her record company into pulling the plug on the whole enterprise. Presumably part of the problem was that it sounded so authentically damaged and decadent: a raddled country-rock track that appeared to be on the brink of falling apart, Faithfull's tremulous vocal alternately pleading and numbed. She subsequently re-recorded it in the late 70s, but the original version is the one to hear The Broken English album wasn't just a deeply expected comeback, it was a complete reinvention. Its sound spoke of the new-wave present, not the era that had made her famous. Moreover, Faithfull seemed happy to dance on the grave of 60s nostalgia, reporting – with a certain relish – how the decade's excesses had resulted in addiction, her own included, and, on the title track, how its political idealism had curdled into terrorism: its obliquely handled subject is the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Stones's Street Fighting Man turned murderous. It's a fantastic track, Faithfull's ravaged voice rasping over a sparse, tense, cyclical backing made up of electronics and clanging guitar. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan was a song that had been knocking around for years: the saga of a depressed, possibly suicidal housewife, it had been recorded by Lee Hazlewood, country star Johnny Darrell, and, most famously, Dr Hook, a band its author Shel Silverstein regularly worked with. Set to a beatless synth accompaniment courtesy of Steve Winwood, Faithfull's rendering immediately rendered them all null and void, perhaps because her vocal changed the tenor of the song completely. Dr Hook's version is full of pity for its protagonist; Faithfull's was full of an affecting empathy: if she didn't know much about being a housewife, she clearly knew about feeling like you were out of options and had blown your youthful promise. Neither 1981's Dangerous Acquaintances nor 1983's A Child's Adventure were the match of Broken English, although there's scattered highlights on both: For Beauty's Sake, Sweetheart, The Blue Millionaire. But the pick is the closing track from A Child's Adventure. She's Got a Problem starts out lovelorn but calm, Faithfull singing over a backdrop of acoustic guitar, warm electric piano chords and modish fretless bass, but gradually reveals itself to be a song not about romance but alcoholism: 'Will I see whiskey as a mother in the end … will I smash my brains with drinking?' Unsurprisingly, there's no happy ending, just a blank acceptance of fate. Stumped by the commercial failure of her previous albums, the Hal Willner-helmed Strange Weather chose to reinvent Faithfull again, this time as a battered chanteuse and interpreter of others' material – standards, old blues songs by Lead Belly, a track written for Faithfull by Tom Waits – throwing in a mordant torch song re-recording of As Tears Go By for good measure. It was risky, but it paid off. Boulevard of Broken Dreams had previously been recorded by Tony Bennett and Bing Crosby among others, but no one made it feel quite as grimy and raddled as it appears in Faithfull's version, which seems to be emanating from the stage of a particularly seedy nightclub. In the second act of her solo career, Faithfull proved adept at attracting an incredibly high calibre of collaborator. Her first album of original songs in 12 years, A Secret Life was a collaboration with David Lynch's preferred soundtrack composer Angelo Badalamenti, and also featured lyrical contributions from playwright Frank McGuinness. In truth, the material on A Secret Life didn't always work, but when it did, the results were startling: on the chanson-like She, the contrast between Badalamenti's soft-focus and very filmic orchestral arrangement – epic enough to support a mandolin solo! – and Faithfull's rough edged and very human-sounding voice lends the song's lovely melody and lyrics about a protagonist whose tough exterior hides a desperate need for companionship a real emotional impact. Not for the last time, a host of big names queued up to work with Faithfull on Kissin Time: Beck, Jarvis Cocker, Billy Corgan, Dave Stewart. The results were remarkably consistent – it sounds like an album, not a diverse bunch of collaborations – but the jewel is the title track, precisely because it sounds like nothing Faithfull had recorded before. 13-era Blur are the backing band, and the song shares some of that album's loose, experimental feel: bass informed in equal parts by dub and Krautrock, a hypnotic guitar part, ghostly backing vocals. It's both a fabulous song and alien territory, but Faithfull completely rises to the occasion: if you're always aware who's behind the music – you can spot Damon Albarn's voice a mile off – it's also clear that she's in charge. Albarn turned up again on 2004's Before the Poison, but it's largely an album split between collaborations with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, both of whom are on particularly good songwriting form. Cave co-wrote the exquisite Crazy Love with Faithfull, and it's just fantastic, Warren Ellis's violin wrapping around her vocal, which seems to have a strangely destabilising effect on the lyrics. Ostensibly a song about a dizzying romantic rush, it attracts a strange uncertainty in Faithfull's hands: the way she sings 'I know somehow you'll find me' makes the line sound less optimistic than desperate and doomed. It wasn't her last album – that was She Walks in Beauty, on which Faithfull recited Romantic poetry to Warren Ellis's soundscapes, its recording disrupted by her near fatal brush with Covid – but nevertheless, Negative Capability had a sense of finality and leave-taking about it. It featured Faithfull revisiting songs from throughout her career, and musing on mortality (in part provoked by the death of her friend Anita Pallenberg) and ageing. Co-written by Ed Harcourt, No Moon in Paris is almost unbearably sad, a reflection on fading memories and lost loves, its poignancy heightened by Faithfull's voice, which had been audibly affected by her various health scares: 'Everything passes, everything changes … it's lonely.'
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Stones lead tributes to 'beautiful' Marianne Faithfull, dead at 78
The Rolling Stones on Thursday led tributes to Sixties music icon Marianne Faithfull, adding she would be forever remembered after her death at the age of 78. The death of the British singer-songwriter was announced by a spokesperson who said in a statement that she would be "dearly missed" by her legions of fans the world over. Posting an old black-and-white picture of the two of them, her past lover Jagger said he was "so saddened" by the news. Faithfull was "so much part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress. She will always be remembered," he wrote on Instagram. In recent years, the British pop-rock balladeer, with a distinctive low voice in her later career, had battled illness, including breast cancer and a severe bout of Covid. Faithfull got her first break in 1964, after being discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. She shot to fame with her hit "As Tears Go By", written by Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, who were introduced to her by Oldham. Richards on Thursday sent condolences to the singer's family, adding: "I am so sad and will miss her. Love Keith." Faithfull's first hit was followed by a string of successful singles, including "Come And Stay with Me", "This Little Bird", "Summer Nights" and "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan". She was long known for her tempestuous relationship with Jagger, and they moved in together when she was just 19, although she had already been briefly married and had a young son. She also acted in films including "The Girl on a Motorcycle", in which she played opposite French star Alain Delon, and various theatre productions. - 'Deeply missed' - "It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull," a statement from her spokesperson sent to AFP said. "Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed." Despite being feted during her relationship with Jagger, Faithfull was to become addicted to cocaine in a career of ups and downs. She enjoyed the highs of sudden fame and fortune, but also deep lows of drug addiction and homelessness, and emerged on the other side with tales to tell. She was famously found wearing nothing but a fur rug in a highly publicised police drugs raid in 1967 that saw both Jagger and Richards convicted. She left Jagger in May 1970 as her life spiralled out of control and ended up living rough for nearly two years on the streets of London. She told AFP in 2014: "Seriously, some of my memories of the Sixties are wonderful and some of them are horrible." But she coyly refused to go into more detail, insisting: "They're my memories. They're not for the public." Her 1979 album "Broken English" breathed new life into her faltering career. She earned a Grammy nomination for the album in 1981. And she reinvented herself again as a jazz and blues singer with the critically acclaimed 1987 release "Strange Weather". - 'Yearning, melancholy' - Over a long career with more than 20 albums to her name, Faithfull was to attract a stream of younger artists keen to work with her, including PJ Harvey, Jarvis Cocker and Beck. In 2006 she revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer from which she recovered. She was also known to have suffered from Hepatitis C. Ever the survivor, she was to face one of her hardest trials with the pandemic when she suffered a brutal dose of Covid-19 in 2020, telling AFP it had left her struggling with the effects of long Covid which had affected her voice. Asked if she would be able to sing again, she said by phone: "Darling, I don't know. I hope I can. I do singing practice once a week. A friend comes over and plays my lovely guitar and I practice. "It's an awful thought," she added. "Whatever happens, I can't change it." Far from being defeated though, she spent months completing an album which she had begun before the pandemic. It features her reading in her haunting voice some of her favourite poetry -- Byron, Shelley, Keats and other 19th century romantics -- with backing music from stars including Warren Ellis, Nick Cave and Brian Eno. Faithfull lived for a period in Paris, and her friend, the singer and supermodel Carla Bruni, said: "Goodbye my dearest Marianne" in an Instagram post. "Rest in Peace with the angels my friend." Writing after news of her death, Guardian pop critic Alexis Petridis said: "Something about Faithfull's performances injected a note of eeriness: her vocals were more yearning and melancholy than the songs needed them to be." har-jkb/rlp
Express Tribune
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Sixties icon Marianne Faithfull dies aged 78
LONDON: British singer and actor Marianne Faithfull, best known for her hit song "As Tears Go By", has died at the age of 78, a spokesperson said on Thursday. The singer got her first break in 1964, after being discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Her first hit "As Tears Go By" written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was followed with a string of successful singles, including "Come And Stay with Me", "This Little Bird and "Summer Nights". She also acted in films including "The Girls on a Motorcycle" and theatre productions and was known for her tempestuous relationship with Stones frontman Jagger. "It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull," a statement sent to AFP said. "Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed."
