'60s survivor at peace with past (From Basingstoke Gazette)

'60s survivor at peace with past

8:50am Monday 30th March 2009

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BEING an icon of the 1960s entitles you to certain things – and calling in some of the most credible names in music to help you out on your latest album is one of them.

Smoking indoors is the other, as one poor individual found out when he tried to reprimand Marianne Faithfull for lighting up in the office block of her press agent.

“Has someone been smoking in here?” he asks, but Marianne mishears and thinks he’s asking to join her for a fag. She beckons him in, but he’s not impressed.

“You’re not supposed to smoke in here,” he continues.

“I know, darling,” comes the steely response. Speechless, the jobsworth retreats and Marianne continues talking about her forthcoming album, Easy Come, Easy Go.

This 18-song strong collection of covers recorded in ten days in New York is a deeply personal album, with the songs clearly carefully chosen to reflect on her wild past and broken hearts.

On Merle Haggard’s Sing Me Back Home, she purrs: “My guitar-playing friend, make my memories come alive” – a direct nod to Keith Richards, who guests on the track.

“He really is very nice,” she says of old friend Richards. “Really incredible. He’s very bright and really very sane,” she adds affectionately.

The Rolling Stones guitarist isn’t the only big name to make an appearance on Easy Come, Easy Go.

There are guest spots from Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker, Chan ‘Cat Power’ Marshall, Nick Cave, Teddy Thompson, Antony Hegarty and Sean Lennon.

“They’re all great friends of Hal’s [producer Hal Willner] as well as friends of mine. I know most of their parents,” Marianne explains.

The casual way in which Marianne throws names into the conversation is a reminder of her place in music history.

The former convent schoolgirl first found fame in 1964 when, after seeing her at a party and being taken in by her beauty, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham insisted that he, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would write songs for her.

Their first composition for her, As Tears Go By, became an instant classic. More followed, but it was infamy rather than straightforward fame that seemed to follow Marianne.

In 1965, she gave birth to Nicholas, her son with influential artist and collector John Dunbar. Not long after, she left him for Jagger and the pair began a turbulent five-year relationship.

During that time, Marianne fell headlong into the drug addiction that saw her lose custody of her son. Her career went into an almost terminal decline and she wound up homeless on the streets of London. As she admits, she’s lucky to have come through intact.

Today, she’s 62 but could easily pass for ten years younger. There are crow’s feet, and a voice ravaged by hedonism, but there’s still something special about her.

Easy Come, Easy Go is her 22nd album, but aside from her best-known hits of the mid-’60s and 1979 career-best album Broken English, many UK music fans are unaware of most of her output.

But self-awareness is not something Marianne has a problem with.

“I think people know my little girl self and the records I put out then. I meet a lot of people who say ‘What are you doing now?’ and I try to say ‘I never actually stopped’.”

“I was coming back to Ireland from New York, and there were two nice ladies in the airport,” she says, smiling.

“They saw me and started pointing, and one of them said to the other ‘Oh look. Didn’t she used to be Marianne Faithfull?’ I don’t care! But it’s very weird how I can go from doing incredible things in New York or wherever else I go, and then to no one knowing me in the UK. I think this album could change things.”

Marianne, the daughter of a college professor who had been a high-ranking Army man and spy during the Second World War, and an Austro-Hungarian Baroness, says that people in Britain have never forgiven her for running off with Mick Jagger, or for what happened at Keith Richards’ house, Redlands.

During a 1966 drug raid on the property, she was found naked, wrapped in a fur rug. The police found a stash of drugs belonging to Marianne, although boyfriend Mick took the blame for them.

“It was all a hell of a long time ago,” she says. “It’s about time people got over it, including me!”

Cigarettes are now her only vice.

“I haven’t done drugs for years,” she says. “I think it’s very off-putting when I see or hear of a woman my age still taking drugs. It wouldn’t be nice. If I was blind drunk or high now, it’d just be embarrassing.”

As well as music, Marianne has developed a sideline in acting. She appeared in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and received a European Film Award nomination for her starring role in 2007’s Irina Palm.

She says that her increased workload has come about because of her recent health scare. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, although now, with a gym regime, acupuncture and massages, has never felt better.

“They found a little lump in my breast and it was cut out. It all happened so fast. I got to the bit where I thought ‘My God, I hope I’m not going to die’ and the next minute, I was in hospital having my operation and the next I was OK. It took a while to get over it, physically,” she says, before adding a reflective final thought.

“No one should deny their past. I’m certainly not ashamed of mine. I think some of it was a waste of my time, but I don’t do regrets. It’s just better now to be healthy and to get things done.”

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