London, 1964. A 17-year-old Marianne Faithfull walked into a Rolling Stones party and left with a career. She was tall, blonde, and had an eerie kind of beauty—like someone out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. But she wasn’t just a pretty face. She had a sharp mind, a rebellious streak, and a voice that could make even the simplest melody sound haunting.
That night, Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones’ manager, saw her potential. He handed her a song—As Tears Go By—written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It was a hit, and just like that, she was a star.
Rise to Fame
Faithfull was born on December 29, 1946, in Hampstead, London. Her childhood was anything but ordinary. Her father, Major Glynn Faithfull, was a British Intelligence officer turned professor who later started a commune in the English countryside. Her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, was an Austro-Hungarian baroness and ballet dancer who had fled the Nazis.
After her parents’ divorce, Marianne was raised mostly by her mother in a small house in Reading. She described her childhood as lonely and emotionally distant. “I was like one of my mother’s cats,” she once said. She attended a strict Catholic school, where she first started singing folk songs. By her late teens, she was performing in coffeehouses and drawing attention from London’s music scene.
Love and Scandal
By 18, she had married artist John Dunbar and had a son, Nicholas. But within a year, she left them for Mick Jagger, the most famous rock star in Britain. Their relationship turned her into half of the world’s most talked-about couple.
She wasn’t just a girlfriend in the background. She was in the recording studio, singing backup on Sympathy for the Devil. She was inspiring songs like Wild Horses and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. She co-wrote Sister Morphine, a chilling ballad about drug addiction.
But the same world that adored her also loved tearing her down. In 1967, a police raid at Keith Richards’ Sussex home turned her into a scandal. She was found wrapped in a fur rug, and rumors spread like wildfire. The press painted her as a reckless party girl.
“That moment destroyed me,” she later said. “To be a male drug addict and act like that is always enhancing. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”
The Fall
By 1970, her relationship with Jagger ended, and her life unraveled. She spiraled into heroin addiction, anorexia, and homelessness. At one point, she was living on the streets of Soho, surviving on almost nothing.
In 1969, she overdosed on sleeping pills and fell into a coma for six days. She later admitted she had been dependent on “every possible neurotic thing—heroin, coke, pills, alcohol, sex, money.”
She tried to make a comeback in the early ‘70s, but her voice had changed, roughened by years of drugs and neglect. By now, she was more famous for being a cautionary tale than a musician.
The Comeback
Then came Broken English (1979). It was unlike anything she had done before—dark, raw, and brutally honest. Her voice was now a deep, raspy drawl, filled with the weight of experience. The album’s final track, Why’d Ya Do It?, was a furious, profane rant about betrayal.
Critics loved it. It didn’t just bring her back—it redefined her. Marianne Faithfull was no longer just the girl who sang As Tears Go By. She was a survivor, an artist in her own right.
She kept recording, pushing her music into blues, jazz, and even spoken word. In 1987, she released Strange Weather, which featured a darker, bluesy version of As Tears Go By. It was her way of reclaiming the song on her own terms.
She also stepped back into acting. She starred in theater productions like Three Sisters and even played God in the British comedy Absolutely Fabulous.
Personal Struggles
Faithfull’s personal life remained complicated. She married and divorced Ben Brierly of the punk band The Vibrators. Then, in 1988, she married Italian writer Giorgio Della Terza, but the marriage lasted only three years.
For 15 years, she was in a relationship with her manager, François Ravard, before they split in 2009. By her own admission, drugs had ruined many of her relationships.
Health Struggles
Even after overcoming addiction, Faithfull faced one health battle after another. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, which she survived. She also battled hepatitis C for years, which she attributed to her past drug use.
In 2014, she broke her hip, and in 2020, she contracted COVID-19, spending over three weeks in the hospital. The virus left her with long-term lung damage, and she feared she would never sing again. “It’s like I’ve been covered in a blanket of fog,” she said at the time.
Her Final Years
Despite her health struggles, she never stopped creating. In 2021, she released She Walks in Beauty, an album where she recited the works of Romantic poets like Keats and Byron over atmospheric music.
“I really wish I had never had a cigarette, or any drug or alcohol in my life,” she admitted in one of her last interviews. “I always thought I would die young. I never expected to get to this age.”
A Lasting Legacy
Marianne Faithfull was never just a rock star’s girlfriend. She was never just a tragic figure, or a survivor, or a comeback story. She was all of those things—but she was also an artist who refused to be defined by anyone but herself.
Her voice, once soft and sweet, became a weapon of experience. Her music, once polished and pop-friendly, became raw and fearless. And through it all, she never stopped pushing forward.
“I know I’m not young, and I’m damaged,” she once said. “But I’m still pretty funny.”
Even in her final years, she never lost her edge.
