Music icon Marianne Faithfull dead at 78
The beloved As Tears Go By singer Marianne Faithfull has passed away peacefully surrounded by her family at age 78.
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Marianne Faithfull, the actor, fashion and music icon who made headlines with her turbulent relationship with Mick Jagger, has died aged 78.
The sad news was broken by a spokesperson for the legendary artist on Friday morning.
“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family.
“She will be dearly missed.”
Faithfull shot to fame in 1964 after she was spotted at a party for the Rolling Stones, and she was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham.
RIP Marianne Faithfull the iconic singer and actress has passed away aged 78 🌹
— Far Out Magazine (@FarOutMag) January 30, 2025
She's filmed here explaining how she was discovered.#MarianneFaithfullpic.twitter.com/iFJzO7bbXf
With Mick Jagger and Keith Richards she wrote her hit As Tears Go By, and rose to prominence in London’s Swinging Sixties and beyond.
The Stones’ members lead tributes.
On Instagram, Jagger posted a series of vintage photographs beginning with one of himself and Faithfull from 1967, when they were dating.
“I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull,” he wrote.
“She 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.”
Richards posted a recent photograph of the pair together, with him clinking a wine glass against Faithfull’s tea cup.
“My heartfelt condolences to Marianne’s family! Im so sad and will miss her!! Love, Keith,” he wrote.
My heartfelt condolences to Marianne’s family! I’m so sad and will miss her!!
— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) January 30, 2025
Love, Keith
.
.
.
Photo: J.Bouquet pic.twitter.com/shgcKmQPkf
Their bandmate Ronnie Wood added on his own Instagram: “Farewell dear Marianne.”
Faithfull proved to be a talented survivor, with a long and distinguished career that spanned a remarkable performance as Ophelia in the 1969 film version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to smoky voiced cult record albums and cabaret performances - not to mention an addiction to alcohol and drugs.
Long known for her tempestuous relationship with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Faithfull transcended the stereotypical role of girlfriend muse to become a unique performer in her own right.
Born on December 29, 1946 in Hampstead to a glamorous aristocrat family in London - her mother was an Austro-Hungarian baroness and her father an erudite British spy.
Faithfull made her first tentative appearances on the folk scene before being drawn into the swirling orbit of the Stones.
She brought bohemian sophistication and an innate sense of style to the suburban Jagger after being introduced to him by the Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who famously dismissed her as “an angel with big tits”.
“I was treated as somebody who not only can’t even sing, but doesn’t really write, just something you can make into something,” she later said.
By the time she moved in with Jagger aged 19, Faithfull had already been briefly married and had a son.
As well as co-writing Sister Morphine, she has been credited with inspiring the classic songs You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Sympathy for the Devil.
The pair were the king and queen of Swinging London, and Faithfull was also best friends with Anita Pallenberg, the artist and actress - and sometime girlfriend of two other Stones members, Brian Jones and Keith Richards - who would become another icon of the Sixties rebellion.
Everyone wanted a piece of her, with Faithfull appearing in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Made in USA, where she sang As Tears Go By. She also starred opposite Glenda Jackson in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at Britain’s National Theatre.
But Faithfull was also becoming addicted to cocaine and she felt “destroyed … and judged as a bad mother” after the police gloried in revealing that they found her wearing nothing but a fur rug in a highly publicised drugs raid in 1967 that saw both Jagger and Richards convicted.
She left Jagger three years later as her life spiralled out of control and ended up living rough for nearly two years in London.
Addicted to heroin, she lost custody of her child and attempted suicide. When she next appeared in public on a US television show in 1973 dressed as a nun to sing I’ve Got You Babe with David Bowie, her fine, faltering voice had gone, to be replaced by a deep whisky-soaked rasp that would later become her trademark.
Six years later her album Broken English was a revelation, not just because of the change in her voice and the way she unsparingly exposed the depths to which she had sunk, but because it was a musical tour de force.
It revived her career. But her drugs demons had not been tamed, and now living in the United States she hit the wall again in the mid-1980s.
Having come out of rehab, she moved back to Ireland - a refuge for her throughout her life - and began reinventing herself as a jazz and blues singer.
It was there that she began to hone her musical talent, inspired by her interest in pre-war Weimar Germany, and revive her acting career, playing the mother in Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall in 1990.
In the mountains south of Dublin, she also wrote the first volume of her autobiography, which was published alongside A Collection of Her Best Recordings, featuring her old friends Richards and Stones drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ron Wood.
Her reputation continued to grow with a string of albums featuring collaborations with Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and PJ Harvey and Nick Cave.
She was now a living legend, playing herself as God in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous - Pallenberg played the devil.
Faithfull appeared on tour and in concert in Australia multiple times, including at the Sydney Opera House.
Sofia Coppola cast her as the Empress Maria Theresa in her 2008 film Marie Antoinette.
And she was a guest singer on a host of songs including The Memory Remains by the US heavy metal band Metallica.
Her final album, Negative Capability (2018), which she wrote and produced in Paris, where she spent most of her last years, was a hugely acclaimed meditation on loss and loneliness.
She had two brief marriages.
“I get married, you know, when I don’t know what else to do. It’s one of my panic things,” she wrote in her memoir, Faithfull, later telling British Vogue that “the thing that always ruined my relationships was drugs.”
Dogged by bad health for decades, she escaped several brushes with death, beating both breast cancer and hepatitis. She contracted Covid-19 in 2020 and battled long-term side effects.
Only weeks before the end, she caused a stir when she appeared in her wheelchair in the front row of a Paris fashion show.
Remembering Marianne Faithfull.
— ABKCO Music & Records (@ABKCO) January 30, 2025
December 29, 1946-January 30, 2025 pic.twitter.com/U6jJDOtbH1
Tributes are pouring in for Faithfull, who was an influence to many.
Rolling Stone magazine called her “pioneering.”
Variety said she enjoyed a “striking punk-era artistic rebirth.”
RIP Marianne Faithfull. 💔Was lucky enough to work with her on Ab Fab. She was absolutely lovely… pic.twitter.com/j8Xe6Z2UGi
— James Dreyfus (@DreyfusJames) January 30, 2025
Actor James Dreyfus, who worked with her on AbFab, said she was “absolutely lovely.”
Paying tribute, Harry Potter author JK Rowling wrote on X: “One of my favourite albums of all time. RIP Marianne.”
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