Marianne Faithfull, singer and pop icon, dies at 78

Marianne Faithfull, the British pop singer, muse, and free-spirited icon who inspired and helped create some of the Rolling Stones’ greatest songs, and who was known as a torch singer and lifestyle survivor, has died at the age of 78.

Faithfull died today in London, according to her music promotion company, Republic Media. “It is with the deepest sadness that we announce the death of singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, surrounded by her loving family. She will be deeply missed.”

A blonde, full-lipped beauty, Faithfull was famous before she was 17, homeless by her 20s and, by her early 30s, her album "Broken English" had earned her the same kind of raw and frank acclaim as the Rolling Stones, becoming an inspiration to peers and younger artists alike. Over the next several decades, her admirers would include Beck, Billy Corgan, Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, though her history remained closely tied to the Stones and her years dating Mick Jagger.

"As Tears Go By," one of the first songs written by Jagger and Keith Richards, and her breakthrough hit from 1964, marked the beginning of a complicated and often painful relationship with the band. She and Jagger began dating in 1966, becoming one of “Swinging London’s” most glamorous and notorious couples, with Faithfull declaring that if psychedelics “weren’t supposed to happen, they wouldn’t have been invented.” Their rejection of conventional values was embodied in a highly publicized drug arrest in 1967 that led to Jagger and Richards’ brief imprisonment, while Faithfull was branded by tabloids as “the naked girl at the Rolling Stones party,” a label she found humiliating and difficult to shake.

Jagger and Richards often cited blues musicians and early rockers as their primary influences, but Faithfull and her close friend, Richards’ longtime partner Anita Pallenberg, also opened up new ways of thinking for the band. Both were more worldly than their boyfriends at the time, and whether as muses or collaborators, helped transform the Rolling Stones' songwriting and image. Faithfull inspired such Stones songs as "She Smiled Sweetly" and "Let's Spend the Night Together." It was Faithfull who lent Jagger the Russian novel "The Master and Margarita," which became the basis for "Sympathy for the Devil," and she also first recorded and contributed lyrics, notably the opening line "I'm lying on my bed," to the Stones' song "Sister Morphine."

Faithfull’s drug experiences informed such jaundiced views of the London rock scene as "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Live with Me," while her relationship with Jagger coincided with him writing one of his most vulnerable love songs, "Wild Horses." In her own work, the London-born Faithfull initially focused on gentle folk ballads, including "Come Stay With Me," "Summer Nights" and "This Little Bird." But even in her teens, Faithfull's fragile mezzo-soprano hinted at a knowledge and burden far beyond her years.

Her voice later became raspy and ravaged, and her life and work after her 1970 split with Jagger were a look back, and a push forward through emotional and physical pain. She became addicted to heroin in the late 1960s, suffered a miscarriage seven months into her pregnancy and nearly died from a sleeping pill overdose. Meanwhile, Jagger had an affair with Pallenberg and fathered a child with actress Marsha Hunt. By the early 1970s, Faithfull was living on the streets of London and had lost custody of her son, Nicholas, with her estranged husband, gallery owner John Dunbar. She also struggled with anorexia and hepatitis, was treated for breast cancer, broke her hip in a fall and was hospitalized in 2020 with a COVID-19 infection.

She shared it all, unreservedly, in her memoirs and her music, notably her 1979 release "Broken English," which included her angry "Why'd Ya Do It" and the conflicted "Guilt," in which she sang "I feel guilty, I feel guilty, even though I know I've done nothing wrong." Other albums included "Dangerous Acquaintances," "Strange Weather," the live album "Blazing Away" and, more recently, "She Walks in Beauty." Her interests extended to theater, film and television. Faithfull began acting in the 1960s, including an appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's "Made in U.S.A" and stage roles in "Hamlet" and Chekhov's "Three Sisters."

She would later appear in such films as "Marie Antoinette" and "The Girl from Nagasaki," and the TV series "Absolutely Fabulous," where she was cast, unflinchingly, as God. Faithfull was married three times and in recent years had been dating her manager, François Ravard. Jagger was her most famous lover, but other men in her life included Richards (she once said their "one-night stand was very great and memorable"), David Bowie and early rock star Gene Pitney. Among those rejected was Bob Dylan, who was so smitten with her that he was writing a song for her until Faithfull, then pregnant with her son, turned him down.