The moment Marianne burst into singing ‘As Tears Go By’
on the screen I involuntary joined in. I
knew every single word even though she first recorded it almost 50 years ago. (And
yet I cannot remember what I had for dinner last night!) I am a fan from way back but until I watched
this 1999 made-for-TV documentary on her I had simply never appreciated what a
wonderfully warm and extremely likable person this talented chanteuse is.
Daughter of a British Secret Service Agent and an
Austrian Baroness who divorced when Marianne was a young child as the Commune that Dad had started after he
retired from being a spy was hardly conducive to married life. Even though she wasn't a Catholic, Marianne
was educated in a strict Convent School where according to one of her friends
at the time, she tried so hard to be good and virtuous but failed miserably
because of the way she looked. Even at
that age with her long blond hair and stunning figure she was quite the beauty.
At a Party at Cambridge University she met John Dunbar
the future artist, and her first boyfriend.
Through Dunbar she met Andrew Oldham, the Manager of the Rolling Stones
who was a great believer in style over substance when it came to music and he
inveigled Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write a song for her even though no
one really knew if she could even sing. She
could, and this very first song that Jagger and Richards had ever written
together became a No 1 Hit for 10 consectutive weeks for Marianne. It was of course 'As Tears Go By.'
Very soon she becomes a successful pop star and a also falls pregnant, and so
John marries her. After the birth of Nicholas, Marianne juggles her new fame with being a wife and mother. In the end fame wins out and she and John
split. Shortly after she becomes Mick Jagger's girlfriend
and focuses fulltime on that forsaking her own career. And that’s when she starts experimenting with
drugs and quickly gets hooked. As she discuses that part of her life on
camera, she is disarmingly frank and very matter a fact about what turns out to be a very scary scenario.
Her ‘habit’ is the cause of the break up with Jagger
(she o’d in Australia where he was filming ‘Ned Kelly,’ and she was in a coma
for days) and very shortly after that she ends up as a heroin addict living on
the streets, a mere seven years after she had her first success as a singer.
She ‘resurfaced’ again in 1979 with what is still one
of her very best albums 'Broken English', but with her addictions still running
her life, it wasnt until 1985 after another near death experience that she
finally entered an aggressive rehabilitation programme.
Her excessive use of drugs is the reason why her voice
became the croaky raspy throttle it is, but it really suited the music that she
started making with songs that were based on her own life experiences. It is
also the reason why she subsequently had other health problems, none of which seem
to have curtailed her work or derailed her recovery.
This hour long profile is by no means a definitive
biography or a critique of the woman or her work (she was also a prolific
actress too) but it does give an intimate insight
to this articulate and intelligent woman
who makes no bones about the fact that she went to hell and back. Just like her throwaway comment on the fact that when
she met Mick Jagger she gave up everything “I went too far as usual’. But
she does however, have an enormous grin on her face when she says it.
And then there is the music. In 1987 she re-recorded ‘As Tears Go By’ and
now with her gravelly voice, and watching it on screen you can see that it look on a whole new life of its own.
I don't know if I'd go as far as Jennifer Saunders who cast her as 'God' in a couple of 'Absolutely Fabulous' episodes, but if Ms Faithfull ended up in heaven (eventually that is), it would be place that I would want to hang out too.
P.S. I still think of her as Marianne, but really I should be addressing her correctly. She is after all now Baroness Sacher-Masoch.
★★★★★★★★
P.S. I still think of her as Marianne, but really I should be addressing her correctly. She is after all now Baroness Sacher-Masoch.
★★★★★★★★
