Heres a toast toMarianne Faithfull, a true rock & roll legend.
Nobody was ever better at being an old rock star, except maybeLeonard Cohen.
But she was the Ophelia who rose up and outlived her gravediggers.
Faithfull performing at the Dominion in London, 1982David Corio/Redferns
The ultimate rock & roll bad girl grew into a magnificently bad woman.
Im not any era,she saidin 2013.
I just go on and on.
She knew her way around the dark places, and she felt at home there.
She started as the It girl of the Swinging London scene,Mick Jaggers muse, a fashion icon.
By the 1970s, she was a burnout, a homeless junkie on the streets of London.
But her greatest work was ahead of her, starting with her 1979 post-punk hitBroken English.
She got more playful and experimental as the decades went by.
But her voice never sounded more eerie, with her vampire-queen rasp over Ellis eerie electronics.
Where are the songs of spring?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.
Keats died young and pretty; Faithfull lived to be old and weathered.
She cant even pretend to sing anymore.
Yet she refuses to go quietly, making her art with the broken instrument she has left.
Nobody else could have made such magnificent music such punk rock out of this Keats poem.
People always wanted to duet with Marianne, because she made everyone sound cooler.
She did an awesomely bizarre duet withDavid Bowiein 1973 for his TV special,The 1980 Floor Show.
Not shown on the tele, natch.
Mick and Keith wrote her the winsome ballad that made her famous, As Tears Go By.
My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend, she famously said.
I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet.
She and Jagger were Londons prettiest couple from 1966 to 1970, turning heads everywhere they went.
Nothing was the same for the Stones after these women arrived.
She had her own charisma, her own style.
He wrote the best songs of his life under her influence.
She gave Mick the Mihail Bulgakov novelThe Master and Margarita, which he turned into Sympathy for the Devil.
(Everyone but Charlie, who folds his arms and rolls his eyes.
God bless Charlie.)
Marianne wears a big floppy hat and shades, which she never removes.
She looks like a woman whos already met too many devils to be impressed by this one.
In the U.S., it was retitledNaked Under Leather.
She co-wrote Sister Morphine, yet also lived it as a junkie.
For years, she was living on the Soho streets.
Nobody would have guessed her lifes work was just beginning.
Im going to show you bastards who I am.
This was a new adult voice, going somewhere unprecedented.
As she said at the time, 40 is the age to sing it, not 17.
She had her biggest U.S. hit withMetallicaonThe Memory Remains,their 1997 smash fromReload.
Say yes, she whispers at the end, staring into the camera.
Or at least say hello.
But she brought that presence wherever she traveled.
Marianne played God, Anita Pallenberg the Devil.Sofia Coppolaput her inMarie Antoinette, as Empress Maria Theresa.
When Roger Waters stagedThe Wallin Berlin in 1990, he cast her as Mother.
Its fairly obvious, isnt it?she saidat the time.
I was a clever girl, a pretty girl, and I thought they were all about me.
Shes way past weeping for lost autumns, much less lost springs.
Its a perfect song to remember her by.
A fearsome presence to the end, and a unique artist who always remained defiantly herself.
Rove on forever, Marianne Faithfull.
