This month will be released the next album of the British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, entitled Give My Love to London. From Paris, because she is living there.

Her life was pretty vicissitudes. She has begun her singing career as a folk music performer in coffeehouses in 1964. Her first hit was „As Tears Go By” was written by Jagger, Richards and then Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham. It was one of the first original compositions by Jagger and Richards, as until that point The Rolling Stones had chiefly been performing blues standards. Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in order to force them to write a song together: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.” The song was given to her. Later the Stones also recorded it.

As Jagger’s girlfriend in these years she made big impression on the Stones. For example she is co-author of Sister Morphine. First it was recorded by herself with Jagger, Ry Cooder, Jack Nitschze and Charlie Watts, and was released as B-side of her single in 1969.

„Things are not what they seem
Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams
Oh, can’t you see I’m fading fast?
And that this shot will be my last
Sweet Cousin Cocaine, lay your cool cool hand on my head”

The Stones’ version was released in 1971, but by this time she broke with Jagger, and became a drug addict homeless. She lived on London’s Soho streets for two years. Meanwhile she lost her custody on her son (who was born from her marriage right before her affair with Jagger). And there also was an attempt of suicide. She was enrolled in the drug rehabilitation programme of National Health Service, and would be one of the programme’s most notorious failures. In these hard years she was working as actress in films and theatres. She came back to the music life at dawn of the punk revolution with a country album in 1976. In these times she was living in a squat without electricity and hot water with his boyfriend, who was member of the punk band Vibrators. Her next album, the punk, new wave and reggae influenced Broken English would be her break through one. During the hard years her voice had been changed thoroughly.

In 1971 a producer wanted to help her, an album, the Rich Kid Blues was recorded, bur it was refused by the label, so it just released in 1985. At that time she was under rehabilitation in the US. There she started an affair with a fellow patient, who, beside his drug addiction, was mentally ill moreover. He jumped from a 14th floor window of the flat they shared. Her next album, the „Strange Weather” was dedicated to him with „love and thanks.”

Since her comeback she has been making records in very different styles. On her album she worked together among others with Angelo Badalamenti, Beck, Damon Albarn, Billy Corgan, Dave Stewart, PJ Harvey, Emmylou Harris, Bill Frisell, Antony Hegarty, Sean Lennon, Keith Richards and Lou Reed. She recorded albums with Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill songs, also with Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. She sang background vocals on Metallica’s song „The Memory Remains.” Her brand new album has been made in collaboration with Nick Cave, Roger Waters, Anna Calvi, Rob Ellis, Dimitri Tikovoi, Pat Leonard, Tom McRae and others.

In October, Rizzoli will publish Marianne Faithfull: A Life on Record, a collection of photos of Marianne from throughout her career, commented on by Marianne herself.

Oops. I have almost forgotten the title of this post! She is a half-English, half-Austro-Hungarian. Her father was a professor of Italian Literature, and English secret agent, her mother was Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, who was born in 1911, in Budapest, Hungary, and was grand-nice of the writer and journalist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs, spawned the word „masochism”. (Venus in Furs is based on real story: in 1869 Sacher-Masoch and his mistress Baroness Fanny Pistor signed a contract making him her slave for a period of six months, with the stipulation that the Baroness wears furs as often as possible, especially when she was in a cruel mood.) After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the family moved from Karánsebes to Vienna. The Baroness became a ballerina, went to Berlin, joined Max Reinhardt Company, and danced for productions of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill of course. She met with Major Faithfull in Vienna in 1945. In the next year Marianne was born.

Following the death of her cousin, Marianne Faithfull inherited the title Baroness von Sacher-Masoch. Well, Sir Mick Jagger is just a parvenu.

Euro Tour Oct 2014/ Feb 2015     Budapest Dec 15