Marianne Faithfull
Appearances
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
and you made a recording you've done a lot of I've done two records of the Brechtweil Canon the first one was the Cabaret record which was 20th Century Blues which I love but my actual total favorite of all time is the Seven Deadly Sins but play something from 20th Century Blues play Pirate Jenny I like Pirate Jenny because it's so fierce
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Paul Trueblood is such a great musician, and I was so lucky to work with him. And I'm very fond of him.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
You lads see me wash the glasses, wipe the floors, make the beds. I'm the best of servants. You can kindly throw me pennies and I thank you very much. And you see me ragged and tattered in this dirty hotel. You don't know in hell who's talking. You still don't. yet one fine day there will be Ross from the harbour, and you'll ask, what is all that screeching for?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And you'll see me smiling as I dunk the glasses, and you'll say, what's she got to smile at for? And the ship, eight sails shining, fifty-five cannons wide, sir, Wait there at the key. You say, walk on, wipe the glasses, my girl, and just slip me a dance. Marianne Faithfull, how were you introduced to the music of Kurt Weill? I sort of grew up with it, you know.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Both my parents, I don't know how they did it. I don't know how my mother did this. But she brought 78s with her from Vienna. And a lot of the songs on 20th Century Blues are my mother's favorite songs or my father's favorite songs. Like my father's favorite song was Falling in Love Again. Okay. And he loved Cole Porter and he loved all sorts of things like that.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I had read that she... No, no, no, no, no, no.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
She was very young, of course. And she was only 24 when Mr. Hitler marched into Vienna in the Anschluss. But she was a dancer in Berlin. And she, as she would be coming into the theatre to rehearse the corps de ballet for Mr. Reinhardt, would see Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht staggering out in the morning, having been up all night writing the Threepenny Opera.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And they would all bob a little curtsy and say, Guten Morgen, Mr. Weill, Guten Morgen, Mr. Brecht.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Not much, no. I just have a very beautiful piece of chiffon and some beads. I have very little. She didn't bring any of that much with her. No, I don't know what happened to it. But that sense of theater was... It's as if she wanted to leave it all behind and have a new life. She'd had quite a hard time, I think, during the war. My grandmother was Jewish, you know, and my father was a spy.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I mean, it's so incredible, it's amazing. And she was his contact in Vienna. So it was really, I think she was really happy to marry my father and get out. Unfortunately, of course, the marriage was a disaster.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
You must leave now Take what you need You think will last But whatever you wish to keep
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Now, I want to mention another song that seems a little out of character for you on your previous CD, which was... Well, my previous CD, which I do love, you mean Kissing Time, was in fact a very experimental work. I wanted to learn about the new technology. That's what I did it. And so I went to the best people, like Billy Corgan, like Beck, like Jarvis Cocker, like Damon...
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And this is, you know, you've got to remember, when we did Kissing Time, the world was a different place. And we could have fun, and we did, and we loved it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I didn't fit in. I was completely out of place. And I actually believed that I would go back to school when the tour was over and pick up my life again. Were you like the only girl in the tour?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And what I was doing was reading my A-level books.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, that's what I thought I was, yes. But I do remember very well how kind the Hollies were to me. Really sweet.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
No, of course they didn't. I mean, I kind of, you know, I did learn the meaning of the word tour romance. I thought that was rather fun. Why not?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Good. I think it's charming. Me too. And, you know, now in this world, I could never do something like that again. That's why it's called Before the Poisons.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Yeah. But let's remember the days when we could do something like this.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Woke up this morning feelin' fine There's somethin' special on my mind Who's not too shy And I can tell He's my kind of guy He dances close to me Like I hoped he would Oh yeah Something tells me
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
No, I never did. It just seems to me you'd have connected at some point. Never, never, never, never, never. I went to New York once with Andrew. And what I did do was meet up with Al Grossman and Bobby Neweth. And it was the time when Bob Dylan had his motorbike accident. And I think I had my first joint with Bobby Neweth. And I was up all night being sick.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Mm-hmm. I was 18. Right. Wasn't able, didn't know anything. Just couldn't deal with it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Oh, I thought they were wonderful. Yeah. But I had a sense of self-preservation, which told me, do not go to New York. You will die. Right. Right, because you'd get so deep into it. It would have been another Edie Sedgwick. It was quite bad enough in London, if I may say so. But, I mean, it would have been too much for me. At least I knew London.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I didn't really think about it. I ask this in case our listeners are confused. My great-great-uncle was Baron Leopold von Sachemazoch, who gave his name to Mazochism and wrote a book called Venus in Furs. Yeah, I mean, I sort of noticed it, but didn't really notice it. There were other songs on the Velvet Underground that I thought were better. I didn't think that was one of the best.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I'm a huge and was always a huge fan of Andy Warhol. Before I got discovered and all that stuff happened, my mother took me to see a huge Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate. I went to see the Picasso retrospective. I went to see the Surrealist retrospective. It was wonderful. I had a wonderful life before all that stuff happened.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
My parents were extremely unconventional and I was brought up in a delightful bohemian manner. So I sailed right into swinging London with no problem.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, my father was a real idealist. After the war, he formed a commune, not like a 60s commune, a 50s or even a 40s commune, more like an Iris Murdoch kind of thing. And the purpose of this place, which was called Braziers Park, was to change the world. And to teach people, only Europeans, he couldn't really go further than that, to live together in harmony so that war would never happen again.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And that was my father's mission. My mother was also an idealist in a way, but not quite as serious as my father. And she didn't really like it at Braziers Park. She didn't like living in a commune. And it split up and it... She thought she was marrying an English gentleman, you know, and she thought she would have a much more conventional life.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
She didn't realise she was marrying this wonderful world-class loon. Did you live on the commune at all? I used to go at weekends. I had a wonderful time. What was it like as a girl? There was a farm. I watched calves being born. I had a friend who had a pony. I didn't have anything to do with the commune. I was just out from dawn till dusk.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And did your father talk to you about the philosophy behind it? No. Not till I got much older. And then I found it very interesting. You know, he used to give courses on Alexander Pope and things like that. Before I wrote my book, he did a course specially really for me on the writing of autobiography.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I think that's one of the saddest things in the book, that bit, where I'm in Hazelden and they ask me to tell my story. And I actually rang Ellen Smith, my publicist, and said to her, please send me up and down with the Rolling Stones because they want my story. Which was a book about the stuff. Yes. That's sort of very telling, you know.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
He really helped. He was a really great teacher, you know. He was a professor at Bedford College in London. He taught me a lot. For instance, I learned in his course about autobiography that it was absolutely essential to put dialogue in or it got very boring.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, you can't really, but you can make a rough guess. Mm-hmm. I wrote it from my perspective. I don't put thoughts and feelings into other people. I wrote about me and what I felt and what I did. And I remember everything. And I remember how I felt. I remember my motives. I remember what I did and what I thought of things I saw around me. And, in fact, I was very, very hard on myself.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I realize that now. But I didn't see any other way, any other honorable way to be.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Really. I know I was very lucky to get through it. It was obviously something I needed to learn. And in a strange way, I learned some very positive things, you know.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
No. Why so many other people don't? I guess no junkie dies in vain. Everybody who dies, for each one who dies, another survives. I don't really know why I survived. I survived. I tried incredibly hard not to. But finally, I did accept that I had to survive. And there must be some reason why I had to survive. And I might as well accept it. And when I did that, everything got a lot easier.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I do rock and roll. Sort of. With a lot of drama. I don't know what I do. I do what I do, you know.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, I didn't think I would. You didn't think you'd live that long? No way. I thought, I mean, I thought broken English was the end. I thought after that I would die. Yeah. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I had to make another record. And Broken English was, what, 1979? Yeah. Right. I thought that was it. I thought, go out in a blaze of glory. Off you go.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And why did you decide to stop after all these years? Well, I've been wanting to stop for about a year because I've got the beginning of emphysema. And my mother died of emphysema and alcoholism. So I kind of didn't really want history to repeat itself. So I did everything I could. I went to a hypnotist. I read Alan Carr. I did all these things. Nothing worked.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, I didn't know when I said that that I didn't have a story. I mean, I still thought that my story was the same story as the Rolling Stones. I didn't learn, I didn't figure this out for another year. I'm very slow.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Then just before I came to America, I got really bad bronchitis. Really bad. And I could not even think of smoking. So I didn't. I stopped. And I'm using a patch, of course. I'm beginning to not need the patch now. It's sort of getting easier. I've done this whole interview without a patch. They make me sick. They actually are rather like bad speed, the patches. But, you know, time went by.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
The bronchitis got better. I've had some terrible moments of craving. But my doctor in Paris, it's very like giving up drugs, you know. They don't last long, the cravings. They last about five minutes, so you just find something else to do. You talk to somebody, you put your makeup on, you do anything. You wash your knickers, anything you can think of.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
And the craving will pass, and then it's gone.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, the one I'm really worried about is face-to-face promo. Because in that, I wasn't using nicotine just as a drug. I was using it as a prop and as a smoke screen. That's going to be pretty scary. I've got to think of something else to do with my hands. And I've got to give myself a smoke screen. Joss sticks? I don't know. A candle? I've got to think of something. Dark glasses? No.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I think people should see my eyes. But that's not a bad idea. Dark glasses is a possibility. But, you know, I think that's been kind of covered by Yoko. God bless her.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull, thank you so much for talking with us. Thanks, Terry. It was a pleasure.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I walk along the street of sorrow The boulevard of broken dreams where gigolo and gigolette can take a kiss without regret so they forget their broken dream you laugh tonight and cry tomorrow when you behold your shadow scheme And gigolo and gigolette wake up to find their eyes are wet with tears that tell of broken dreams. Here is where you'll always find me, always walking up and down.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, I went along to a party with my first boyfriend, John Dunbar, who was a friend of Peter and Gordon. And Paul McCartney was going out with Jane Asher. It's so hard to remember all these things. And somehow, John was always up for a party. And especially then, when we were very young. I mean, I was 17. He must have been 19, 19, 20, no more. But, you know, it was just a party.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
But it was a dead glam party, I suppose, even for London. And it was a lot of fun, I suppose, yes. I mean, it's somewhat sort of... colored in my imagination now by the fact that I was discovered there. What do you mean you were discovered there? Well, that's where Andrew Oldham saw me. I was discovered by several people at that party, actually.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Andrew Oldham is the only person I gave my address to.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Yes, he managed the Rolling Stones, made their early records.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
No, no, no, he didn't know I sang. That was just a sort of bit of luck, I think.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Lots of alliteration in this press release, isn't there?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I thought it was a hoot. I remember taking it back to my mum. and sitting in Millman Road reading it to my mother and Chris, my brother, we just fell about laughing, you know. I never in my wildest dreams thought that people would think I was like that. Although I did dig Marlon Brando. That's true. And I was at a convent. And my mother was a baroness.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
But apart from that... But then again, you know, I can't be too sort of sticky about this because... it's quite obvious that none of us really see ourselves as others see us.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
It is the evening of the day I sit and watch the children play. Smiling faces I can see, but not for me. I sit and watch as tears go by.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I used it as a coping mechanism, I think. For coping with what? For coping with my life. Mm-hmm. And it worked for a while, but it did have a tremendous drawback, which was that it was addictive and it would kill you.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Ages. Very long time. But I did figure it out eventually, thank God.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I don't know. It's a very weird thing about Sister Morphine because it was knocking about the house for six months and Mick was playing it all the time. Playing the melody. Yes. The basic thing. That thing. All the time. So it went into my sort of whole nervous system, blood, bones, everything. I really had it in my head. I knew it by heart. Let's say that. And then I remember it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
I'm sure Mick does too. It was very peculiar. I just sat down, picked up a a legal pad and a pencil and wrote it out. And there it was. But I do that sometimes. I work on it in my head. And then when it's all ready, I do it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
The scream of the ambulance is sounding Tell me, Sister Morphe, how long have I been blind?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, there were many. The lyrics were very ahead of their time. It's one thing for Lou Reed to sing Heroin, obviously. It was completely... This is something I really didn't understand, that this thing about me being this beautiful little angel was real. I never really believed that. I couldn't believe it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
So I suppose for Decca, you know, the last thing they put out by Marianne Faithfull, I can't remember what it was, was Summer Nights, say. I think it was. That was in 1965. And then in 1969, they're given sister morphine. And they couldn't handle it.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, I hadn't wanted celebrity in the first place. I just went to a party and got discovered. And I hadn't had time to think about whether I wanted it or not. So the anonymity I got in the street was very valuable to me. Where were you living? How did you live during those years? Well, I lived on a wall. I lived on a wall in Soho. And it was an amazing time for me.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
When I really couldn't take it, I could always go back to my mother's. It wasn't like I had nothing. I wasn't exactly the same as the street people. But they didn't mind that.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, some people's voices change more than others. Mine was always, you know, I studied singing at school when I was young, and my singing teacher used to say to me in hushed tones, you know, you have a soprano now, but I think if you're very, very lucky... It will become a contralto.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Well, it's a very rare thing to have. It's Kathleen Ferrier. There are very few real contraltos. And I'm one of them.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Indeed, yeah, of course. But that's partly technical, like I told you, but it's also experience. In my case, I mean, thank you very much for comparing me in any way with my great heroines, Billie Holiday and Lottie Lenya. But in my case, and I'm sure in their case, you know, a lot of it is down to experience. You get the voice you really want.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
You get what I suppose a writer would call it finding my voice.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
You know, the high notes or that... Sure, yeah. I mean, if I hadn't been discovered by Andrew Oldham and gone into the pop business, I would have probably either become an actress or I might have gone to the Royal Academy of Music in London and I could have sung Mozart. I would have enjoyed that.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
But on the other hand, it was very exciting to be in at the beginning of a new thing, which is what was happening in London in the early 60s. And I was right there.
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
Yeah. And I suppose he was the producer, too. Yeah. So why did he want it uninflected? I don't know. I think he wanted me to sound like Mick. I really don't know. You'd have to ask Andrew. It's so interesting because there's so much drama in your singing now. Well, yeah, but that's my natural thing. Maybe I didn't have that yet. I was only 17. I don't think I had any. Any drama?
Fresh Air
Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull
No, and I was terribly, terribly nervous. So probably the natural thing thing I did was just sort of do what I do when I'm very frightened is pretend I'm very small and stay very still and do as little as possible.
Global News Podcast
Trump blames diversity policies for US air crash
I went to a party, the Rolling Stones were there, and I was looking very shabby. And they came up and said to the person I was with, and can she sing? And they had a conversation over my head, and then they arranged where I was to be, and I went there.