Dear listeners,
We lost one of the true greats last week when Marianne Faithfull died at age 78. A pop star turned punk rocker turned cabaret chanteuse, Faithfull was also a style icon, an actress with remarkable screen presence and a wonderfully unfiltered memoirist, among many other things. She will be greatly missed — but what a life she lived!
Today’s playlist is a celebration of Faithfull’s long and varied musical career, which began at 17 — when she was signed on sight by the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham — and stretched until her late 70s. I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing Faithfull in 2021, around the release of what is now the final album she released in her lifetime, “She Walks in Beauty,” which found her reciting Romantic poetry atop compositions produced by her friend and collaborator Warren Ellis. She was then recovering from a nasty bout of Covid-19 that had put her in a coma, but her resilience was something to behold.
That toughness and durability was a through line of her career, as she sprung back from multiple near-death experiences and returned with music that seemed supercharged by those struggles. She was a bold, intuitive and one-of-a-kind artist, as you’ll hear on the following 10 tracks.
Also, apologies for this newsletter going out a day late. My personal advice: Steer clear of that norovirus! Thankfully I’m now on the mend and The Amplifier will return to its regular schedule on Friday. Til then!
It is the evening of the day,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. “As Tears Go By” (1964)
Marianne Faithfull was just 17 when she released her debut single, this wistful-beyond-its-years British Top 10 hit written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, along with Oldham. As you’ll hear later in the playlist, it was a song she’d rerecord throughout her career, as she slowly grew into its ennui.
2. “Broken English”
Faithfull’s 1979 album “Broken English” is her masterpiece, and it’s also one of the great comeback records in rock history. Years of addiction, a stint of homelessness and a bout of laryngitis had transformed Faithfull’s once girlish voice into a defiant survivor’s croak that perfectly suited her bleak material, not to mention the concurrent rise of punk. This title track, along with the foul-mouthed groove “Why’d Ya Do It?” and the incantatory “Witches’ Song,” reintroduced Faithfull as an uncompromising icon for a new era.
3. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Faithfull was a brilliant interpreter of familiar songs, and this reimagining of a Bob Dylan classic, recorded in 1971, is an early example. It’s also not her only great Dylan cover — see also: “Visions of Johanna,” “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” as well as her poignant 2018 rerecording of this same song. (Naturally, she made multiple appearances on my Amplifier playlist of women covering Dylan songs.)
4. “Sister Morphine”
Though most people associate this song with the Rolling Stones since it appears on their 1971 classic “Sticky Fingers,” most of the lyrics were actually written by Faithfull. (The fact that she was not credited on “Sticky Fingers” and was only acknowledged as a contributor in 1994, after a lengthy legal battle, did not help that misconception.) Though she wrote it before she was in the throes of heroin addiction, as a kind of character study about a man given morphine in a hospital after an accident, she wrote in her 1994 memoir, “Faithfull,” that it ended up becoming an eerie precursor to her eventual struggles. “You have to be very careful what you write,” she noted, “because it’s a gateway, and whatever it is you’ve summoned up may come through.”
5. “Times Square”
Here’s a hidden gem in Faithfull’s catalog, from her lesser known 1983 LP “A Child’s Adventure.” The album’s producer Barry Reynolds wrote this haunting tune and released his own version a year earlier, but Faithfull really makes the song her own. Atop a bed of airy synthesizers, she delivers one of the most bracing vocal performances of her career — and that’s saying something.
6. “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”
Written by Shel Silverstein and first recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” became one of Faithfull’s signature songs when she recorded it for “Broken English” — and even more so when it appeared in the hit 1991 movie “Thelma & Louise.” Though Faithfull’s own life experience was quite different from the titular housewife’s, she tells her story with a quivering pathos and empathy.
7. “Give My Love to London”
A clear highlight of the final period of Faithfull’s career is her 2014 album “Give My Love to London,” which included this stomping tune that Faithfull co-wrote with Steve Earle. Earle plays guitar on the track, along with the Clash’s Mick Jones; the album also features contributions from Warren Ellis, who would become a close and prolific collaborator of Faithfull’s in her later years.
8. “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
“Strange Weather,” from 1987, was the first album that Faithfull recorded after kicking her long heroin addiction, and it represented a new chapter in her artistry. In a departure from her more rock-oriented work, Faithfull here reinvents herself — quite convincingly — as a dark cabaret singer, offering eerie, expertly interpreted renditions of old pop standards. (Which is to say that this is a cover of the 1930s traditional, not the Green Day song.)
9. “She”
This sorrowful ballad, anchored by Faithfull’s wrenching vocal performance, is a highlight from “A Secret Life,” the moody 1995 album that she made in collaboration with David Lynch’s favorite composer, the great Angelo Badalamenti.
10. “As Tears Go By” (2018)
On her penultimate album, “Negative Capability,” Faithfull returned to her debut single with the full force of her life’s experience — consider it her “Both Sides Now.” (She also recorded another version at age 40, on “Strange Weather.”) Accompanied by a lovely string arrangement, Faithfull sings of watching younger children “doing things I used to do, they think are new.” Sung like a true innovator.
The Amplifier Playlist
“A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull” track list
Track 1: “As Tears Go By” (1964)
Track 2: “Broken English”
Track 3: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Track 4: “Sister Morphine”
Track 5: “Times Square”
Track 6: “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”
Track 7: “Give My Love to London”
Track 8: “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
Track 9: “She”
Track 10: “As Tears Go By” (2018)
Bonus Tracks
Amplifier readers who watched the Grammys on Sunday night would have been well versed in all those best new artist performances, and they also know that I’m happy Doechii had such a breakout night.
But there’s plenty more to discuss about this year’s show, and luckily we have you covered: Ben Sisario was at the show and reported this piece about how Beyoncé finally won album of the year, while Jon Caramanica wrote a sharp notebook that put Bey’s long-delayed triumph into context; the whole pop music team stayed up late on Grammy night to highlight some of the show’s best and worst moments; and then we reconvened to record a Popcast episode breaking down some of the defining story lines. In the immortal words of the Grammy winner Chappell Roan, “my hat’s gonna fall and it’s gonna be OK.”
The post A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull appeared first on New York Times.
