The singer, actress and '60s It Girl answers back about heroin, mortality and cheese souffles...
There are few more amazing stories in rock'n'roll history. A pop star at 17, a mother at 18, Mick Jagger's girlfriend at 19,and the queen of Sloane Square by the age of 20, Marianne Faithfull somehow contrived to spend much of her thirties living as a heroin addict on the street in Soho.
While most 62-year-old women would be quite happy to retire and dine out on a CV like that, Faithfull continues to pack in a prodigious work schedule. In the last decade alone she's released half a dozen acclaimed albums with everyone from Tom Waits to PJ Harvey, and toured the world performing Brecht and Weill songs. Hernumerous screen roles have included God (twice, in Absolutely Fabulous), The Devil (in William Burroughs' "musical fable" The BlackRider), Marie Antoinette's mother (in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette), a prostitute (in Sam Garbarski's Irina Palm), a club singer (in George Sluizer's Crimettme), and a working-class mum (in Hanif Kureishi's Intimacy).
Undaunted by a battle against breast cancera few years back, she's currently touring the world with readings of Shakespeare sonnets and bringing out what could be her best album yet, recorded with her old collaborator, the orchestral arranger Hal Willner. She's also, contrary to her reputation as a fearsomely intimidating interviewee, the very personification of charm. "Oh, I don't have time to be precious and diva-ish," she says. "I'm much too soft and joily for that..."
Do you think your voice has changed much in 40 years? Karen, Wimbledon
No, it hasn't and I'm sorry about that! Ha ha! I know 1 haven't got a great voice. I'm not a virtuoso singer, I know that. 1 couldn't listen to Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan singing "Black Coffee", it was too intimidating. I listened to Bobby Darin to learn the song. There are many, many ways to crack an egg! That's what I try to do. I like what we might call 'the strange voice', I always have. John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. All that stuff.
How did you end up living on the streets in the early 1970s? Dave Caplan, London Fields
I wanted anonymity. I wanted out of that world. It sounds very dramatic and stupid, I know. I'd read Naked Lunch, and I went with the idea that one should leave it all, be a junkie, live on the streets. Years later I talked to William Burroughs about it, and he was amazed by how literally I took it. I took it to extremes, which doesn't surprise me. I always tend to do that! I guess I wasn't happy being the consort to a great star. Being a muse is a very, very destructive role for a woman trying to be herself. You either sacrifice yourself on the altar ofthat oryou leave. I loved Mick [Jagger]. just as a person, but I didn't like the whole thing of being in a goldfish bowl. And the whole thing about the [Redlands] bust -1 just hated it!
What was the first gig you i went to? ' Katie, The Ting
IMMHh This would have been about 1963.That gig really was extraordinary. To see these two heads singing so close together. It almost seemed as if they were using the bones on their face to aid resonation - I'm sure they weren't, but it really looked and sounded like that at the time!
Was your cover of Lennon's "Working Class Hero" a conscious effort to undermine the idea you were a privileged child of the aristocracy? Gavin, Merseyside
I suppose it was. I didn't realise that I would get such a violent reaction! At the time, I'd meet people who'd say, "How can you sing that song? How dare you!?" I was like, "Fuckyou, man. I work!" I'm perfectly allowed to do that song. I understand exactly what Lennon means. This privileged background shit isn't really true. I grew up with my mother in a tiny little house in Reading. We had no money. What I did have was a very interesting, happy childhood, a good education, and I was clever. I suppose that's a privilege in itself. But the people who first met me on the pop scene thought I was terribly posh, and I probably indulged that abit!
When are you going to do that folk album? Donovan
I liked Donovan very much! I loved his "Ballad Of A Crystal I Man" which we used to sing with Keith. "Seagull I don't want your wings. I don't want your freedom in a lie". Wonderful. Apart from my pop hits, the thing I was most interested when I was young I was folk. I don't know about doing a whole album, but it was great to visit some songs written in that style on the new MLMM album."The Crane Wife 3"by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists is based on a Japanese folktale, and it's wonderful because it reminds me of an ancient Celtic folksong I heard many years ago, about a sealwoman falling in love with a fisherman. It has that same vibe.
Did you really get mistaken for Jane Asherinthe '60s? Hannah Squires, Glasgow
A few times. I definitely copied her, and desperately wanted to look like her. 1 even remember getting my hair cut exactly like Jane's! When I went up to London for the first time with my thenboyfriend John Dunbar and met Jane at a party, I thought that she was the mostbeautiful person I'd ever seen. I was also hugely impressed by her family: her brother, Peter Asher, who ended up opening an art gallery and bookstore with Paul McCartney, seemed like the coolest man on earth. This was when I was moving from being a little schoolgirl into making a record andbeing part of, ahem, 'Swinging London'. It took about eight months to get there.
Tell us about Serge Gainsbourg. Didn't you work with him? Sylvia, London
We met when I first started coming to Paris, in about 1965. There was a magazine called Salut Les Copains here I'd hang out with the photographer Jean-Marie Perierandhis sister Anne-Marie. And that's where I met Serge. I initially assumed he was some poet hanging out in the background, very Left Bank, always smoking, very charming, enormously funny. At the time, he was a jazz musician who was developing a reputation as a very good songwriter, writing for the likes of Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin. Could I have been his Birkin figure? Ha! I thinkit's better that Jane did it, really!
What's the appeal of heroin? Brendan, Surrey
It's an anaesthetic. That's what it appears to be the first time you take it. You don't feel any pain. And I guess I must have been in some pain. I'm all right now! Obviously, it's a big mistake, but sometimes people have to find that out for themselves.
I saw you in a karaoke bar with Kate Moss a few years ago. She sang, but you didn't! Why not? Alexia, Hitchin
Ha ha! I like watching karaoke, but singing - for me - isn't like that. It's much more serious, something to immerse oneself in. Kate used to continues over.
