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Interview
by SashaS
2-4-2002
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More on: Marianne Faithfull
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| La Faithfull, a dame of grace |
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The original ‘Posh’
Marianne Faithfull is a lady singing about vagabond ways with distracting sexology
In the iconoclasty of pop Faithfull is a goddess (in black leather)
Afternoon after her shambolic gig at the London Barbican, Marianne Faithfull faces questions and handles them like a… seasoned survivor. She’s lived a life that, according to Sartre, having not killed her (although she worked very hard at it) has made her stronger. One of the most famous icons of the 60s is ‘ruling’ with demeanour, attitude and language no-one gets even near this 55-year-old woman.
She’s promoting new album ‘Kissin Time’, co-written and recorded with the likes of Blur, Jarvis Cocker, Billy Corgan and Dave Stewart. Elegant in all-black outfit, she appears open but there are topics she circumnavigates as well as moments when she misunderstands questions and dismisses them as “stupid” and usage of f-word provides her with another excuse to throw unwanted topics out of the conversational court. Marianne is the “thinking person’s femme fatale” (© Will Self)…
All the time being a lady; yeah, Marianne Faithfull is a posh totty, a genuine and original one. Born in London’s upper-class to an eccentric English academic, Glynn, who translated Michelangelo’s sonnets and an Austro-Hungarian baroness descendant from the man who is credited with the term ‘masochism’, Eva, the Baroness Erissa, who came from a family that dates back 800 years to Charlemagne. MF is still well-spoken in that well-accented voice that sounds huskier, more tar-y and sexier than when she commands stage-centre.
“I love collaborating with younger artists,” Ms Faithfull comments, “because they come without any baggage. Most of the time they don’t even have any idea about my past… To them I’m not an icon and, honesty, they are mostly children of my contemporaries and I’ve known them ever since they were bundles… People who see me as a celebrity, that’s not me, that’s not my movie, that’s their movie. I am just a working artists who is trying to do the best she can.”
Something good
Figuring out Faithfull is very difficult, as she’s really become a master of giving media what they want without actually revealing much. Her reputation is based on rumours, innuendos and fabrications, the best example being the Mars chocolate bar between her legs while she was draped in a fur rug only during the police raid on Keith Richards’s home in West Withering, Sussex, in February 1967. The then girlfriend (and most feted beauty in town) of Mick Jagger got excommunicated by the Vatican and denounced by the Archbishop of Westminster Cathedral. It destroyed her good-name, “Which meant so much to me,” she confesses but – it added Doric columns to her legend.
A myth toying with perceptions, one being a reworking of Herman’s Hermits (the 1960s hit-makers from Manchester) debut chart-er ‘Something Tells Me I’m Into Something Good’, kept off the UK version of the album, that gave her a hit in France. What was she looking for in listening to Peter Noone’s long-forgotten combo?
“They were great,” she jumps at the enquiry, “and I was flying to Los Angeles, 11 hours without a cigarette (the tobacco addicted Faithfull shudders at the thought) and the song came on at the Dublin Airport’s ‘muzak-system’. I thought it would be nice to write something like that, or do something like that, so up… It is a great song, it has a great uplifting message, sounds positive…”
That was one of the rare instances she’s looked back because nostalgia has no place in her life. To the extent that even some material she recorded just over five years ago, such as for the ‘20th Century Blues’ disc, is considered out-of-date. Marianne Faithfull might be perceived as the original rock-chick but she is a head-strong lady who knows what style is and it’s always been right on the RPM. So, expect not to hear her sing ‘As Tears Go By’ or ‘Sister Morphine’ or any songs from her 1997 album of Kurt Weill‘s covers, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’, nor the title cut from her comeback album ‘Broken English’ (1979)…
“I’ll never again perform these songs,” Faithfull states categorically, ”it’s so last century. After we got to the new century, I knew that would be it… Even to do (Kurt) Weill and (Bertolt) Brecht when I did it, it was risky… But, it was the last chance, I reckon, and I really enjoyed it… But, cabaret is finished, for me personally and finished, finished for good. It is the end of a genre, it belongs to the past… I don’t compete with it, I’m too grand for that.”
* Part Deux of the ‘Grand dame of Timbre’ will be published on Thursday, the 4th inst. *
SashaS
2-4-2002
Marianne Faithfull’s album ‘Kissin Time’ is out now on Hut/Virgin
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