Photo: Marianne Faithfull | Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (December 29, 1946 – January 30, 2025) was an English singer and actress who achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her UK top 10 single “As Tears Go By”. She became one of the leading female artists of the British Invasion in the United States.
Born in Hampstead, London, Faithfull began her career in 1964 after attending a party for the Rolling Stones, where she was discovered by the band’s manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Her 1965 debut studio album Marianne Faithfull, released simultaneously with her studio album Come My Way, was a huge success and was followed by further albums on Decca Records. From 1966 to 1970 she had a highly publicized romantic relationship with Mick Jagger. Her popularity was enhanced by roles in films, including I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname (1967), The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and Hamlet (1969). Her popularity was overshadowed by personal problems in the 1970s, when she became anorexic, homeless and addicted to heroin.
During her 1960s musical career, Faithfull was noted for her distinctive melodic, high-register vocals. In the subsequent decade her voice was altered by severe laryngitis and persistent drug abuse, which left her sounding permanently raspy, cracked and lower in pitch. The new sound was praised as “whisky soaked” by some critics and was seen as having helped to capture the raw emotions expressed in her music.
After a long absence, Faithfull made a musical comeback in 1979 with the release of a critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Broken English. The album was a commercial success and marked a resurgence of her musical career. Broken English earned Faithfull a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and is regarded as her “definitive recording”. She followed this with a series of studio albums including Dangerous Acquaintances (1981), A Child’s Adventure (1983) and Strange Weather (1987). Faithfull wrote three books about her life: Faithfull: An Autobiography (1994), Memories, Dreams & Reflections (2007) and Marianne Faithfull: A Life on Record (2014).
Faithfull received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Women’s World Awards, and in 2011 she was made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.
Faithfull was born in Hampstead, London. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British intelligence officer and professor of Italian literature at Bedford College, London University. Her mother, Eva, was the daughter of Artur Wolfgang Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1875–1953), an Austro-Hungarian nobleman of old Polonized Catholic Ruthenian nobility. Eva chose to style herself as Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso.[2] She had been a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt Company during her early years, and danced in productions of works by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
Faithfull’s mother was born in Budapest and moved to Vienna in 1918. The family of Sacher-Masoch secretly opposed the Nazi regime in Vienna. Faithfull’s father met Eva through his intelligence work for the British Army, which brought him into contact with her family. Faithfull’s maternal grandfather had aristocratic roots in the Habsburg Dynasty, and Faithfull’s maternal grandmother was Jewish.
Faithfull’s maternal great-great-uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose erotic novel Venus in Furs spawned the word “masochism”. Regarding her roots in the Austrian nobility, Faithfull appeared on the British television series Who Do You Think You Are?, which discussed that the title used by family members was Ritter von Sacher-Masoch.
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Faithfull began her singing career in 1964. Her first gigs as a folk music performer were in coffeehouses and she soon began taking part in London’s exploding social scene. In early 1964 she attended a Rolling Stones launch party with artist John Dunbar and met Andrew Loog Oldham, who ‘discovered’ her. “As Tears Go By”, her first single, was written and composed by Jagger, Keith Richards, and Oldham, and became a chart success. (The Rolling Stones recorded their version one year later, which was also successful.) She then released a series of successful singles, including “This Little Bird”, “Summer Nights”, and “Come and Stay with Me”. Faithfull married John Dunbar on 6 May 1965 in Cambridge, with Peter Asher as the best man. The couple lived in a flat at 29 Lennox Gardens in Belgravia, London SW1. On 10 November 1965, she gave birth to their son, Nicholas.
In 1966 she took Nicholas to stay with Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg in London. During this period, Faithfull started smoking marijuana and became best friends with Pallenberg. She began a much-publicised relationship with Mick Jagger that same year and left her husband to live with him. The couple became a notorious part of the hip Swinging London scene. Her voice is heard on The Beatles’ song “Yellow Submarine”. She was found wearing only a fur rug by police executing a drug search at Redlands, Keith Richards’s house in West Wittering, Sussex. In an interview 27 years later with A.M. Homes for Details, Faithfull discussed her wilder days and admitted that the drug bust fur rug incident had ravaged her personal life: “It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorizing. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.” It was during this time that Faithfull lost three opportunities to appear in films. “I really thought I had blown my career.” In 1968, Faithfull, by now addicted to cocaine, gave birth to a stillborn daughter (whom she had named Corrina) while returning from Jagger’s country house in Ireland.
Faithfull’s involvement in Jagger’s life was reflected in some of the Rolling Stones’ best known songs. “Sympathy for the Devil”, featured on the 1968 album Beggars Banquet, was partially inspired by The Master and Margarita, written by Mikhail Bulgakov, a book that Faithfull introduced to Jagger. The song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” on the 1969 album Let It Bleed was supposedly written and composed about Faithfull; the songs “Wild Horses” and “I Got the Blues” on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers were allegedly influenced by Faithfull, and she co-wrote “Sister Morphine”. The writing credit for the song was the subject of a protracted legal battle that was resolved by listing Faithfull as co-author. In her autobiography, Faithfull said Jagger and Richards released it in their own names so that her agent would not collect all the royalties and proceeds from the song, especially as she was homeless and addicted to heroin at the time. In 1968, Faithfull appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus concert, giving a solo performance of “Something Better”.
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In 2016, she revealed she had emphysema, a lung disease induced by smoking, and needed to use inhaled medication daily. She continued to smoke, however, and was not able to quit until 2019, later regretting that she had not done so sooner.
On April 4, 2020, it was announced that Faithfull was hospitalized in London for pneumonia following a positive COVID-19 test. Her management company reported that she was “stable and responding to treatment.” On 21 April, following a three-week stay, she was discharged from the hospitalization. In a brief statement, she publicly thanked the hospital staff for, “without a doubt,” saving her life. She initially thought she would be unable to sing again after the effects of the coronavirus on her lungs, and she continued to suffer memory loss because of it. She worked on her breathing and undertook singing practice as a part of her recovery.
Faithfull died in London on January 30, 2025, at the age of 78.
Go here to read the full bio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Faithfull
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OTHER NOTABLE MUSICIANS’ DEATHS
‘The Voice’ Alum Ryan Whyte Maloney Dead at 44
Country singer Ryan Whyte Maloney has died. Maloney wowed judges on Season 6 of competition show, ‘The Voice.’ On ‘The Voice,’ Maloney was on Blake Shelton’s team, a professional relationship that continued after his time on the show. In 2024, Maloney and his band started a Las Vegas residency, playing in a venue co-owned by Blake Shelton. On January 29, the Clark County Coroner said Maloney died by suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Ryan Whyte Maloney was 44 years old.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/the-voice-alum-ryan-whyte-maloney-dead-at-44/
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Warning Signs of Suicide – National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or if you want to discuss, call the old numbers at 800-273-TALK or 800-273-8255 for English and 888-628-9454 for Spanish. Learn the signs of someone who may be contemplating suicide.
If you want to know more about any of the musicians we lost, please check them out at http://www.wikipedia.com
February 2025
5: Irv Gotti, 54, American record producer and executive; Mike Ratledge, 81, British musician (Soft Machine).
3: Stéphane Picq, 59, French video game music composer (Dune, MegaRace, Lost Eden); Paul Plishka, 83, American operatic bass.
2: Gene Barge, 98, American saxophonist, composer and actor; John Crosse, 83, British disc jockey and television presenter; Barbie Hsu, 48, Taiwanese actress (Meteor Garden, Mars), singer, and television host (100% Entertainment), pneumonia.
1: Peter Bassano, 79–80, English trombonist (“Hey Jude”) and conductor; Boss in Drama, 37, Brazilian DJ and record producer; André Ducret, 79, Swiss singer and composer; Sal Maida, 76, American bassist (Milk ‘N’ Cookies, Roxy Music, Sparks), complications from a fall; Peter Schmidl, 84, Austrian clarinetist, principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
January 2025
31: Susan Alcorn, 71, American composer and pedal steel guitarist; Kärt Tomingas, 57, Estonian actress (Those Old Love Letters, Zero Point), singer and educator.
30: Marianne Faithfull, 78, English singer (“As Tears Go By”), songwriter (“Broken English”) and actress (The Girl on a Motorcycle); İlhan Usmanbaş, 103, Turkish composer; Ben Vaughn, 49, President & CEO of Warner Chappel Nashville.
29: Bruce Howe, 77, Australian bassist and singer (Fraternity); Ryan Whyte Maloney, 44, country singer (The Voice), suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2025