Nadine Williams

Forever Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull must surely be feline because she has lived many lives to emerge in her later years a revered musical artist.

Six years ago when I was the celebrity columnist at The Advertiser in Adelaide, I interviewed Marianne Faithfull, who was in Adelaide for a one-night performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

I was honestly astounded at how she had resurrected herself from her decade of heroin addiction in the 1970s to arise and return “startlingly to life’’ as a mature singer.

I remember writing about her sheer survival from innocent convent girl to girlfriend of Mick Jagger, her failed suicide attempt, her heroin addiction and to rise up to pop star.

She lured her audience with a repertoire of  song which reflect on the life she has led. Her words were laced with such sadness and loss and I was truly disappointed to have to leave to write her review performance for the next day’s paper just as she was hotting up as an erotic chanteuse.

As I left, I noticed that her long black gown failed to cover her very sensible flat shoes – and gone, too, was the young whippet of a woman, who almost died in Mick Jagger’s Australian tour when she overdoesed.

In a recent article in the British Bazaar, the writer, her old friend James Fox captures the same sentiments when he writes.

“France is where Marianne has some of her greatest fans, particularly from its intellectual population, who like the way she carries the burden of her experience and her survival on her sandpapered voice,’’ he wrote.

And he quoted her as saying: “I have lived several lives in Paris.

“First of all, just going s alittle –girl 17-year-old pop singer and doing photo sessions for Salut les Copains with that great photographer Jean-Marie Perier, who of course I fell for, and meeting Serge Gainsbourg and things like that. Then another with Mick Jagger and Donald Cammell and Deborah Dixon and going to Castel’s and the Whisky a Gogo, and then being on drugs in Paris, which is another thing again, and now I live there not on drugs, as a musician.’’

And now Marianne, who Nick Cave says is “a true singer’’ has returned with a new album, taking another growth step including four songs of her own along with works from American singer-songwriter Dr John. 

Horses and High Heels (Naïve), recorded at the Piety Street Studios in New Orleans, was released in March.

Again she calls on memories in Dublin and of Paris and of “the girls in high heels running along Rue d’Anjou.

None other than the famous Nick Cave reckons “she’s a true singer’’ with her “beautiful racked chainsaw of a voice’’.

I didn’t find those words at the time, but I, too, remember a husky, hacked voice dripping with sadness and loss, to also reflected years of abuse. As she herself admits “The alcohol and the drugs and the smoking changed my voice.’’  But she also reckons its “the real me in there and I’ve had to find a voice to express it.’’

There was a recent hiatus, too, from which she has recovered.  There is a new optimism in the new album, produced three years after she went into drug rehabilitation – not for heroin or alcohol, but for addiction to sleeping pills, which affected her just as severely as being on heroin.

Borrowing from James Fox: “I do have regrets,’’ says Mariann. “On the whole, it’s all been great stuff. There’s nothing like it, having everything one minute and losing absolutely everything the next.’’

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