Review: Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull, David Dalton

Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just finished Faithfull…for the 3rd time!! And each time I am fascinated by this woman.
One of the most unique and original female singer-songwriter.

An iconic singer, actress, songwriter and trendsetter, whose career has spanned over 50 years.

First reviewed in 2012

I love this book – first read when it was first published in 1994 and for me it’s a book that I can read again and again and still be touched and astounded by this extraordinary woman’s life.

Faithfull tells her story in a candid, hard-hitting and gritty way and one of the things I really liked was that she never looked for sympathy or made excuses for her mistakes but that she was honest and not shy to admit the mistakes she made.

”When you are 18, 19, 20, you're used to being photographed all the time, in a certain way. So, the narcissism becomes almost out of control. And the way that young women are photographed, they become addicted to this feedback of the image.”

There’s so much I want to write about my feelings and perceptions about this book..but it would fill pages and pages, so I am going to keep it as short as I can.

From a gawky, vivacious, ethereal and beautiful 17-year old, she soon became part of the Swinging 60”s London, after being discovered by the Rolling Stone’s manager and recording her first single, As Tears Go By, ironically written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, reaching No 9 in the British Charts.

By the age of eighteen, she was married and had a child, toured the country with well-known English bands, began hanging out with the Rolling Stones which soon led to her much-publicized relationship with Mick Jagger , which included the famous not so true “Mars Bars” episode,

the drug busts, her attempted suicide in Australia,
losing her baby at 8 months. A muse, fashion trendsetter…..

Her spiral into a world of drugs, drink and homelessness was fast, furious and unrelenting and complete by the age of 23.
Obscurity, shooting heroin into her veins, drinking, squatting, losing her child, going days without food so she could get drugs, living in the streets was her life for the next couple of years.

I felt really sad as I read about this young woman whose life could or may have been so different and to actually experience what she did at that age.

How many people out there could ever pick themselves up from the pitiless bottom she found herself in?

One asks the question of why would a woman who was loved and loved a rock star walk away and choose the life she did for the next decade.

Yet, she was able to comeback…after being rejected by most of her friends and lovers, her family….the fact that she was able to emerged from that dark and painful period in her life is truly astounding.

And how sad it is that she is most famously known as Mick Jagger’s beautiful and drugged girlfriend and not for her own singing, song writing and acting talents. She was already a pop star before meeting the Rolling Stones, she acted as Ophelia in the movie Hamlet, she had done stage plays and yet not enough credit or recognition. Even had to fight Mick to get him to give her credit for the lyrics she wrote for the song Sister Morphine, Wild Horses…..when Marianne woke up after her six-day coma from her attempted suicide, the first words she said to Mick Jagger were…“Wild horses couldn't drag me away” and they wrote the song Wild Horses together and she never received any credit for her contribution.
Keith Richards tells us in his autobiography, Life, that Marianne was the inspiration behind many of the Rolling Stones songs and even helped Mick writing a lot of the lyrics……and to date she has never received any mention or given any credit for being the early Rolling Stones muse.

There are some fabulous parts in the book that were humorous…her sense of wit and humor comes across so well, especially when she first meets Bob Dylan at the Savoy Hotel in the 60’s,

and later when she talks to him about her album Broken English.

Life was certainly not kind to her even after her comeback there were so many set-backs and excruciating times for her. But you know what? Despite the knocks and beatings she has had in her life, she’s still around, still singing, still reading and LIVING.

I love her voice and her 1979 comeback album, Broken English, totally blew me away.

It was like listening to her talk about her life and all that despair heartbreak...I felt it I felt it... and when she does The Ballad of Lucy Jordan - is she talking about herself? And I can never forget her version of John Lennon's evocative and so hauntingly beautiful song, Working Class Hero.

Read her book and you decide if she’s a survivor – an EPIC one or not.

For me, she will always be remembered as someone who had something in her that said…DON’T GIVE UP. In her own words….

:”'Never let the buggers grind you down.'"

And hey, if you want to see this incredible and iconic performer live…..this is where she will be in 2016…..I am booking my tickets RIGHT NOW!!!!

Tue, 02 Feb Roundhouse, London, UK
Fri, 08 Jul Jardin Public, Cognac, France

Check out some amazing shots of the beautiful and talented Marianne Faithfull:
http://www.vintag.es/2011/06/beautifu...

And if you want to hear some of her music…..check it out….
https://youtu.be/S7oTqILoLns?list=RDS... as tears go by
https://youtu.be/3N_rNz2oAGA?list=RDS... working class hero

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