Portrait: Yann Orhan
Lonely, bereaved, in pain, Marianne Faithfull began work on her penultimate album Negative Capability with a mission to transform her trials into beautiful catharsis. In 2018, she invited MOJO to join her on the journey. Read how Nick Cave, Yoko Ono – even Keith and Mick – lent support and why Warren Ellis was in tears by the end. “It’s the most honest album I’ve ever made,” she told Kris Needs...
“Good morning, darling...”
Marianne Faithfull is on the phone from her Paris apartment. The husky voice is grained with experience of a life lived, the personal battles she’s fought and, now, the physical pain that challenges her daily. It’s also an instantly recognisable part of the fabric of the pop culture revolution whose aftermath we still inhabit.
Your correspondent first met Faithfull at a Soho restaurant in 1979 for her first interview after completing Broken English, the album that brought her in from the cold after periods of addiction and homelessness. Once the crown princess of the ’60s, the Redlands bust “Miss X” who co-composed The Rolling Stones’ Sister Morphine and inspired her boyfriend Mick Jagger to write Sympathy For The Devil, she carried a luminous charisma all of her own, funny and clever and tough as the ancient leather jacket she huddled in. Always more than Jagger’s muse, she could rightly declare, “Boy, was he lucky to have me around.”
But it’s been a rough few years for Faithfull; her health has been poor and her spirits beset by the deaths of close friends. Four years ago, Give My Love To London, her 20th solo studio album, testified to continuing creative vigour. Collaborations with Nick Cave, Steve Earle, Anna Calvi, Pat Leonard – even Roger Waters – made for a dramatic, unique listening experience that drew on Faithfull’s rich and rarefied life and outlook, but it was beginning to look like her last.
So it’s a surprise – a good one – to learn that Faithfull is planning on writing and recording her 21st, and more thrilling still that she intends to keep MOJO informed, at key intervals, of her progress. Along the way, we’ll be afforded a uniquely intimate insight into a record that reflects on departing old friends – especially fellow Stones accomplice Anita Pallenberg – Faithfull’s loneliness living in Paris and hopes that love can still come around. The results, framed by ornately sensitive musical backdrops by musical familiars including a returning Cave, will beg comparison with the late-life works by Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen.
“It’s the most honest album I’ve ever made,” she’ll admit. “I’ve always tried _not_to reveal myself. But there’s nothing like real hardship to give you some depth.”
I was desolate when Anita died. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.
November 2, 2017
Marianne is on the blower again, with news of a recent afternoon tea with the Richards family after the Stones’ No Filter tour hit Paris.
“It was just magical, with Marlon and Lucy, Angela and all their children,” she says, still elated. “Then Keith turned up! It was very moving because we were in mourning for Anita really. It was a great loss to all of us. I was so moved by how kind the Richards family were to me after Anita died. I felt like I was part of the family.”
Meanwhile, work has begun on the album which, says Faithfull, will be produced by Bad Seed Warren Ellis and PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis (who both worked on Give My Love To London) with help from keyboardist-composer Ed Harcourt and Faithfull’s live band guitarist Rob McVey.
“I would have gone mad without Rob Ellis,” says Faithfull. “As I’m writing I really need someone to talk to. I used to talk to Anita but that’s over now. Rob just was there, helping me, finding me people to work with.”
It’s intended that the bulk of the recording will take place at La Frette studios just outside Paris, where Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree and parts of Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino were cut. “It’s a live-in situation,” says Faithfull. “It’s going to be great fun to be with the band. It’ll be very different, this record. It’s very acoustic, almost folky.”
Still, pain in all its guises will be a major factor and a major theme.
“I’ve got this terrible arthritis,” says Faithfull. “It’s in my left shoulder, arm and hand. I recovered from all those awful things, like the broken back and the hip and bone infection. That was bad enough, then I got this terrible arthritis. My mother had it too so it’s genetic I think. I’m left-handed. That makes it hard for me to write or type. It’s awful, man, but I get through. But I’m much more willing now to go out. I’ve been in retreat, I think.”
Pain, too, is in Faithfull’s latest writing – reflections on the void created by the deaths of “dear old friends” including Pallenberg, publisher Richard Neville, writer Heathcote Williams, guitarist Martin Stone, and Australia-based artist Martin Sharp, who designed the ’60s Cream album sleeves.
“I always write about what’s happening with me and that’s what has been going on,” she says. “The songs are so sad, because it’s been so hard. Don’t Go was the first one I wrote, about Martin Stone. He was in a band called Mighty Baby and became a great friend who I got to know through AA meetings. I didn’t know anything about his music career. It wasn’t the sort of music I liked! He had to stop the music business because of the drugs and drink, then had a second career as a rare books dealer. Ed Harcourt wrote the tune and it’s beautiful. Don’t Go is about Anita too. I was desolate when she died. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.”
Yoko sent a postcard with an eye on it that said, ‘Don’t let your eyes dry.’ I thought, ‘That’s a song...’
Pallenberg ended her days living back at Redlands, making paintings that now adorn Marianne’s apartment walls. Faithfull wonders if her old friend ever truly escaped the Stones’ orbit.
“She was much more wrapped up in that world than I was,” says Faithfull. “I got out very quickly. I was the first to go and thank God; not that I don’t love and admire them, but I know I couldn’t have handled it. Much as I love the Rolling Stones, they’re not my life.”
Back on the album front, songs and song ideas are piling up. In fact, it’s already clear that Faithfull won’t be able to fit them all in. Mark Lanegan has contributed one called They Come At Night. “It’s about the [2015] killings in Paris,” she says, “a terrible business. I sang it at the Bataclan and they’d just wiped the blood off the walls. We were the first people to go there and do a show – an extraordinary experience. I got this idea from [producer] Hal Willner that every 70 years it’s like the Nazis have come back: Trump, Isis and the whole Brexit thing is part of it.
“Then there’s a song I’ve always loved by the Pretty Things called Loneliest Person In The World – but it’s incredibly sad! And a lovely one called Don’t Let Your Brown Eyes Dry. I got a postcard from Yoko [Ono], who’s been wonderfully supportive through this last six years of terrible shit that’s happened to me. She sent a postcard with an eye on it that just said, ‘Don’t let your eyes dry.’ I thought, ‘That’s a song.’”
Faithfull wants to record two traditional English folk songs she remembers her linguist father singing when she was a little girl: Three King’s Men Bold and Long Years Ago: “We used to go camping in the New Forest and I would sit at his feet and he would play songs on his guitar.” Rob Ellis has been to Cecil Sharp House to get the lyrics.
And she’s just written another new song with Ed Harcourt called No Moon In Paris. “It’s beautiful but also very sad. So now I can see what’s needed – something a bit more positive, and not so sad. I’m coming out of my sadness now. There’s a lot more to do and we’re gonna do it. We’re not recording until January.”
Rob Ellis, who’s worked with Marianne for five years as what he describes as “collator and archivist”, says Warren Ellis wants to revisit Witches’ Song from Broken English but he’s yet to put the idea to Marianne.
“What’s so interesting is that she’s looking back to her childhood,” he says, “at the same time dealing with getting older and her friends dying. Every time we speak she’s keen to get more uptempo songs in there but however much we try they don’t seem to be coming. There’s this very thoughtful, melancholy thing going on. She’s really struggling with her arthritis, especially as the weather’s getting cold. But everyone’s getting excited about starting work.”
November 28, 2017
Despite a recent bout of bronchitis, Marianne has recorded early Tyrannosaurus Rex song Organ Blues for a Marc Bolan tribute album produced by her friend and former producer Hal Willner, that will also feature contributions from U2, Nick Cave, Marc Almond and JG Thirlwell. “I knew Marc when he was Mark Feld,” says Marianne. “He was a sweetie.”
It’s Faithfull’s first recording session since 2014, and for her convenience Willner’s team brought the studio to her Montparnasse apartment. “I was nervous but it turned out well,” she says. “It was very informative. I got a clearer idea of what I’ve got to deal with on the stamina level; how long I can go before I have to rest or go for a walk. Those kinds of things.”
In other business, she enthuses about Fleur D’Ame (Flower Of The Soul), the recent Faithfull documentary directed by Sandrine Bonnaire. “It’s turned out very well but I had a nightmare doing it. I hate those things really. I find them so invasive. She had a preconceived idea of me as a rebel. That’s not what I’m doing. All that’s over and finished. I have surrendered. She was very disappointed. It was like a terrible kind of fencing game to the death, but I won. She kept trying to make me lose my temper and I wouldn’t. I suppose she thinks that makes good cinema! I stayed charming the whole way through and it drove her crazy. In the end this documentary turned out as I wanted it. I won.”
December 20, 2017
Writing continues apace. Faithfull has penned new ballads of an intensely personal nature, including Misunderstanding and My Particular Way. “I wrote some at the last minute, almost on the hoof. My Own Particular Way is my call for someone to come and love me; please send me someone to love. That’s for Warren really. It’s not a love affair, of course, but Warren and I fell in love. Our whole relationship is all about music. I just love working with him.”
There’s another heartbreaking tribute to Pallenberg, Born To Live, which contains the line, “To die a good death is my dream / Born to live and die forever loving you.” There’s also a Nick Cave co-write – The Gypsy Faerie Queen – although it took some wrangling. “It’s a little miracle,” says Faithfull. “I asked him if he would put music to it and he wrote back saying, ‘I’m so busy.’ I said, ‘I understand, sorry to bother you.’ Then he just wrote back, ‘Thank you so much for understanding; here’s the song.’ It’s just gorgeous; sung by Puck and the gypsy faerie queen who walks the land with her black thorn staff, wears moleskins and a crown of rowanberries, and is followed by Puck everywhere. She doesn’t speak any more, she sings.”
Faithfull also has a title for her album. Negative Capability is taken from a letter written by John Keats to his brother about William Shakespeare. “It means the ability Shakespeare had of being able to look at something from all points of view.”
Marianne will turn 71 in nine days’ time.
January 15, 2018
Recording takes place over two weeks at La Frette. Producers Warren and Rob Ellis, guitarist Rob McVey and Ed Harcourt spend a week recording backing tracks before Marianne arrives to sing her vocals; usually two tracks a day. “She just goes in and sings, has one or two shots at it and that’s it; you’re not getting any more,” says Warren.
“In spite of my terrible pain, it was lovely to be with everybody,” says Faithfull. “I realised that what really helps me is being with people, especially them. I love my band more than anyone has ever loved a band. The recording was wonderful. The studio was this old, old house – beautiful. For me, it was very hard but something magical was going on.”
Nick Cave arrives to join the band, singing backing chorales and playing piano. “If there’s anyone I can depend on, it’s Nick Cave. I don’t know what it is but we are so lucky that we can write such beautiful songs together and I love his voice.”
They revisit As Tears Go By, Marianne’s first single, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1964 and re-recorded on 1987’s Strange Weather. “It’s the third time I’ve done it and it will be the last time,” she declares. “I wanted it to be better than both other versions and it is.”
“It’s such an extraordinary song for teenagers to write,” reflects Warren Ellis. “To hear her singing it now was really something. Rob and myself were really keen that she try it. And she wanted to do It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. It just felt really right to revisit those songs.”
Witches’ Song – Warren’s idea – has become a psychedelic mantra, with Cave on backing vocals, and there’s a heavy irony (at least, on this album) in the line “death is far away and life is sweet”. But Marianne is not initially convinced. “They’re all raving about it,” she reasons. “I haven’t understood why yet. It takes me a bit of time to get these things. This bloody little album has its own life. It’s like a book; the songs go their own merry way and there’s not much you can do about it.”
Some tracks fall by the wayside, including the Yoko postcard (“I couldn’t get that quite right; it’ll have to be on the next one”) and Nick Cave advises against the childhood folk songs. “My voice just isn’t up to it now – sad but true. It would have been lovely but Nick said, ‘Don’t bring yourself down by trying to do these because it’s gonna hurt you.’ He was right.”
Marianne makes up for it with a devastating take of No Moon In Paris, a beautiful bare bones confessional in which she sings with fragile honesty, “What can I do but pretend to be brave and pretend to be strong when I’m not.”
Recalls Warren Ellis, “She came down to the studio and said, ‘I want to do No Moon In Paris.’ The way she does it is in the control room, with the backing track coming through the speakers. She was sitting in the corner on a chair with a microphone. She did that vocal and there was silence. The whole place was in tears. Everybody was hanging on to anything they had their hands on. I was so overcome I had to go up to my room for half an hour. Then I went down and she said, ‘Was that alright?’ It was quite funny; she’d absolutely destroyed the whole room.”
It happens again with Born To Live, except this time it’s Marianne who feels the emotional blow. “All these memories came back hard. When I sang that, Anita appeared, right there in front of me. That’s the thing about all these songs. They’re not just about these people; they’re about everybody who’s been going through this stuff. It’s so hard to lose your loved ones.”
February 19, 2018
While recording vocal drop-ins at her apartment Faithfull insists on redoing As Tears Go By. Ultimately, it’s her signature song, so she wants to get it right from her current perspective.
“It just wasn’t good enough,” she insists, “and that one has to be as perfect as it can be. I am 71. My voice is not what it was the first time I did it and it’s wasn’t as sad and tragic as the second time when I did it with Hal Willner.”
The latest version passes muster, however. “It’s in full possession of all my understanding and faculties. I really understand the song and that’s good.”
March 1, 2018
“It’s ten degrees below zero here and I’m feeling it,” shivers Marianne on the phone. “Even in the flat I’ve got on a coat and a scarf. It’s like after the Second World War.”
She’s still concerned about the high melancholia quotient on Negative Capability and thinking Don’t Go – her memorial to Pallenberg and Martin Stone – “might be just one tragic death song too far.” She will design the running order before the album’s mastered (“One of my great talents is sequencing”) but she’ll still take convincing of the quality of what she’s just achieved.
“Warren is the first person to tell me ‘This is awesome!’ and I couldn’t understand him! Didn’t believe him, thought he was mad! But now I’m starting to see it… It’s turned out fantastic. The person who really can’t believe it is me!”
May 19, 2018
I mention to Marianne that it’s almost exactly 50 years since I witnessed the Stones return to the stage at the NME Pollwinners Concert at the old Empire Pool, Wembley. At their penultimate live performance with Brian Jones in the band, they played the soon-to-be-released Jumpin’ Jack Flash; Faithfull was in the front row. “I was there with Anita,” she remembers. “We were trying to be nice to Brian. We felt sorry for Brian.”
The latest on Negative Capability is that she’s decided not to include the Pretty Things song. “There’s too much loneliness on this album!” she announces. “That’s a very nice song but it was written by very young people and it doesn’t fit the rest of the album. A lot of people liked it but I just knew it wasn’t right.”
June 24, 2018
Marianne is overjoyed that Mick Jagger checked out her grandson Oscar Dunbar’s band Khartoum at Camden’s Dingwall’s and charmed the dressing room. The youngsters were consequently drafted to play the after-show party at one of the Stones’ London gigs. “The war is over,” she declares.
Now, with Negative Capability completed, she can reflect upon her recent journey.
“I’ve had terrible accidents and I’m really damaged,” she says. “It’s changed my life forever. I’m in a lot of pain and worked really hard to get strong so I can do my work. The great miracle is I was able to make this record. All I have to do now is get over my fear that people won’t like it. It’s loneliness, but actually love is what it’s really about.
The new album coincides with Come And Stay With Me, an Ace Records collection of her first run of Decca singles, gathered chronologically, A-sides and B-sides, for the first time. At the end of the ’70s, as she fought to grasp the reins of her career, Marianne would reflexively dismiss her ’60s releases. Now they encapsulate the era she once embodied. But that’s almost beside the point. Faithfull is still creating music, on her own terms, and it’s the most moving of her career.
"I know, it’s funny isn’t it?" she says. "Everything is a complete coincidence. It's like something greater than me is directing this. The universe or something. Seems to be my time, doesn't it?"
This article originally appeared in MOJO 299.