Marianne Faithfull Corrals Young Rockers for Album
Billie
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Her famous friends still consider her a silly little
girl, her fans cannot believe she's still alive and journalists only want to
ask about her boyfriend of three decades ago, a certain Mick Jagger.
It's not easy being Marianne Faithfull, once the sexiest starlet in Swinging
London and now a 55-year-old grandmother who has truly earned her wings as a
rock 'n' roll survivor after overcoming scandal, drugs, a suicide attempt and a
breakdown on live TV.
In the 1960s, the former convent schoolgirl became a major pop star, beginning
with her 1964 cover of the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By." She became best
known as Jagger's girlfriend, and the beautiful couple was the toast of the
town.
Faithfull spent the ensuing two decades in a drug haze, often sleeping on the
streets, but she still managed to release some fine albums, notably 1979's
"Broken English." Now she is hip enough to sing with Metallica and appear in a
commercial for the Gap. She swears and smokes and has a tattoo.
And when she rings, you pick up the phone, which is what some edgy young
musicians did last year. In the strictest secrecy, Faithfull recorded
(separately) with Beck, former Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan, English rock
bands Blur and Pulp, as well as her old friend Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics.
The resulting album, titled "Kissin Time" (Virgin) is her first release in
three years. Faithfull calls it her "happy record" and she seems to mean it.
This time she's targeting her younger fans, having reluctantly accepted that
she will always be viewed as "a rather beautiful, very silly girl" by close
friends like Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger and fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards.
"Keith has even said that. 'To me, Marianne, you're just a silly little girl,"'
she recalled during a recent interview with Reuters in the Virgin Records
parking lot. "And that's how it's always going to be, and I understand that.
When you know people very well and you knew them at a certain point in your
life, they're always going to see you like that."
Rather generously, Faithfull still sees one-time lover Richards as a "dashing,
handsome cool guy," while her infrequent private chats with Jagger make it seem
as if 1967 was only yesterday.
Jagger once sang, "Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face."
Faithfull may no longer be the virginal chanteuse who was every male's fantasy,
but she still has a certain allure -- including a generous bosom and
come-hither eyelashes. The Dublin resident is grounded in a long-term
relationship with a man she refuses to discuss, swims regularly, takes long
walks and doesn't drink much.
Admittedly, she was high on mushrooms as the clock struck 2000, the so-called
new millennium, but if she had been sober this album may not have happened.
"As the millennium came in, I realized that the past really was over. And I
didn't have to write about it, think about it, worry about it ... I was
completely free, and out of that came this record."
The past is indeed murky. Infamous highlights include being present during a
drug raid at Richards' place in 1967, when she allegedly sported just a fur rug
and a Mars bar. In 1980, she croaked her way through a riveting performance of
"Broken English" on "Saturday Night Live," her voice wasted by a cocaine binge
the day before.
Faithfull does not "do" nostalgia, but the album seems to boast plenty of it.
One track, "Sliding Through Life On Charm," is based on her 1994 memoirs. The
song was written by Pulp vocalist Jarvis Cocker, but Faithfull gave herself a
credit since she was the subject and came up with the title.
"I am a muse, not a mistress, not a whore," she sings defiantly in one of the
song's less vulgar moments.
"Because of what has happened to me in the past," she said, "I would have been
too frightened to say all that. So what he really did was, like, mind-to-mind
transmission, just figure out what I probably really thought and write that."
Faithfull collaborated with Stewart on "Song For Nico," about the late German
singer. The song also refers to late Rolling Stone Brian Jones, former Rolling
Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed and makes a crass
comment about French actor Alain Delon, her co-star in the 1968 film "Girl on a
Motorcycle."
There are plenty of tender moments, such as the Beck collaboration "Like Being
Born," which she says is the first love song she has ever written. One of the
standout tracks is the gospel song "I'm On Fire," which was co-written and
recorded with Corgan.
Faithfull said the entire recording process was drama-free, though she notes
she has spent her life around "very talented, weird people," so it's all
relative.
"They seem like normal people, who are quite ruthless in getting what they
want. But so am I."
Indeed, Faithfull is preparing to battle her former record labels in search of
unpaid royalties. But first she has to raise some spare cash to pay for an
audit.
"I don't own a thing! I have nothing," she exclaims.
Her goals in life are simple: make enough money to buy a house and have a
garden.
Another goal is to show people that her range extends beyond writing dark
songs. "To me the feeling from this record is joy, love of life. ... I'm now
working with a real palette of many different colors."
"STUPIDITY IS NOT A HANDICAP. Park elsewhere!"
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