Marianne Faithfull: Singer, actress and 1960’s ‘wild child’ dies aged 78 in London

Marianne Faithfull, the wild woman of London’s swinging ‘60s who survived drug addiction, homelessness, two comas, cancer and COVID-19, died at age 78, after a singing career that began as a teenager and lasted until her 70s, British media has reported.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” the BBC broadcaster cited a statement from her spokesperson as saying.

“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

The convent-educated daughter of a World War Two British intelligence officer, Faithfull had a front-row seat as drugs, alcohol and sexual excess enveloped the early years of the rock music industry.

Her slow, haunting voice in her first hit, As Tears Go By, in 1964 seemed to portend a darker side to the British pop sound that was winning hearts around the world with the breezy early tunes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

The former girlfriend of Mick Jagger, Faithfull fell casualty to heroin addiction and anorexia when the relationship ended, spending two years living on the streets of London’s Soho district in the early 1970s.

But no matter how hard she fell, Faithfull always bounced back. She released 21 solo albums, including the critically acclaimed Broken English in 1979 that won her a Grammy nomination, wrote three autobiographies and had a film acting career.

Her most recent comeback was in 2020 when she caught COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and fell into a coma during a three-week stay at a London hospital.

Her son Nicholas later told her the medical staff were so sure she would not recover that they wrote a note at the chart at the bottom of her bed recommending, “Palliative care only”.

“They thought I was going to croak!” Faithfull told the New York Times in April 2021.

In March 2022, Faithfull was moved into Denville Hall, a retirement home in London that houses actors and other professional performers, according to several media reports.

Faithfull’s formative years were in the swinging London of the mid-1960s when she was a budding folk singer.

In 1966, she left her husband, artist John Dunbar, and started a relationship with The Rolling Stones’ Jagger, forming the “It Couple” of London’s psychedelic scene. Faithfull contributed backing vocals to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine single and helped inspire the Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil.

But much of her fame came from her involvement in drug- and drink-fueled antics with the bad boys of rock.

She and Jagger were arrested in 1968 for possession of cannabis. Perhaps her most notorious caper was when police came across her, wrapped in a bearskin rug, during a drugs raid at Keith Richards’ country home in 1967.

She complained that double standards for women meant that she was slandered while the arrests helped boost the image of Jagger and Richards as rock outlaws.

Faithfull also took exception to her portrayal as no more than Jagger’s artistic muse.

“It’s a terrible job. You don’t get any male muses, do you? Can you think of one? No,” she said in 2021.