Some artists sing like angels, some voices float on moonbeams and reach for the stars. From debut to last breath their song remains the same. Not so Marianne Faithfull. She began in the realms of the ethereal and then in her descent found a voice that was laced with the grit of experience, raw and unpitying. And then her voice soared.
Faithfull, who has died, aged 78, called this turning point meeting her Frankenstein, indeed becoming her Frankenstein. The creature came into existence as the album Broken English. She had made her masterpiece, as she referred to it.
Marianne Faithfull found a turning point with Broken English.
It was 1979. Faithfull had been in the public eye for more than a decade, shimmering and, as it turned out, melting from the searing searchlight and flames of pop stardom and notoriety from her association with the cream of the pop world, notably Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. She had her own hit in As Tears Go By, written by Jagger and Keith Richards, and other hits followed. She co-wrote the song Sister Morphine, only acknowledged years later after a legal battle. She trod the theatre boards, starred in films. And then it all changed entirely. She was homeless, destitute in London, an addict, disappeared from sight.
She made her way back into music with the country album Dreamin’ My Dreams in 1976, which became a hit in Australia for Colleen Hewett. She saw herself, possibly, as an English honky-tonk angel, in her words. It didn’t last.
Marianne Faithfull performing at the Forum Melbourne in 2010.Credit: Justin McManus
Of that time, Faithfull wrote in her autobiography Faithfull: “The Baroness’s daughter, Pop Star Angel, Rock Star’s Girlfriend … even after the brutal bashing I’d given them, these demon dolls of myself would not go away … I was now the tarnished Pop Star Angel, Baroness’s Daughter on Public Drunkenness Charges, Jagger’s Ex Says Drugs Are Behind Her Now. By the mid-seventies I had reluctantly come to the conclusion that if I was ever to obliterate my past I’d have to create my own Frankenstein and then become the creature as well. The reconstitution of Marianne began with a song Dreamin’ My Dreams.”
This was in the years of the punk explosion. There were detonations in music and society, unheard before. The Sex Pistols had smashed and bludgeoned their way down the streets of London, kicked at the gates of Buckingham Palace and then spectacularly self-exploded.
By the time of Broken English, the scene resembled a churning wash of mainstream/disco, rock and punk. The Bee Gees and YMCA were mixing in the charts with Blondie, Sister Sledge and the Boomtown Rats.
Said Faithfull, “We mixed a lot with the punks and I took that energy and ran it through my own circuits, waiting to see what would happen. It was punk nerve that fed, like direct current, right into the rage of Broken English. Sid Vicious and I shared the same dealer, and I was once actually cast as Ma Vicious, Sid’s mum, in Russ Meyer’s Sex Pistols film.”
There was no fiercer rage than Faithfull’s singing of a Heathcote Williams poem Why D’Ya Do It? Indeed, the fury of the song is unmatched. It not only smashed down the doors of what was permissible to sing of, it channelled anger and art into a river of molten notes, seething and raw, of sexual jealousy.
And she almost didn’t record it. Denny Cordell, founder of Shelter Records, had contacted her to say Williams had a poem he wanted turned into a song and he was thinking of giving it to Tina Turner or Mick Jagger. Cordell told her to see him and persuade him to give it to her. She did.
Faithfull writes: “Heathcote read me his poem, which was called Why D’Ya Do It? and he had not spoken more than two lines before I knew this was going to be my Frankenstein. This was the very likeness of my anguish. Here at last was the text that would translate my hieroglyphic inner life into words … the following morning, flushed with the knowledge that I found my Rosetta Stone, I made my way to the dingy little rehearsal space we used in Acton. With great zeal I read the lyrics to the band, enunciating each word. Dead silence. You can’t imagine the look of horror that came over those supposedly hip, liberated guys when I came to the line ‘Every time I see your d--- I imagine her c--- in my bed.’ ”
Broken English was the aural version of cinema verite. The title song, which was inspired by the German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof (“I identified with Ulrike Meinhof: the same blocked emotions that turn some people into junkies turn others into terrorists. It’s the same rage”), along with Brain Drain, Guilt, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan and an incendiary take on John Lennon’s Working Class Hero, took Faithfull in a new direction.
“With Broken English, I had at long last, my Frankenstein. Broken English dispelled the cobwebs and established me as an artist in my own right. It was a lifeline so crucial to my very being that I think had I not made it I would surely have gone raving mad or cut my throat. With my trusty, murmurous band I was now ready to conquer the world.”
This was the start of her voyage. By the mid-’80s, she was off drugs and the horizon was hers.
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