The singer and actress Marianne Faithfull died. To report the news, given by its spokesperson, is the BBC. He was 78 years old. “It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of the singer, singer -songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull”, reads a press release, “Marianne went away serenely today in London, in the company of her loving family. We will miss a lot”.
The protagonist of the ‘Swinging London’, discovered at a party by the Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, reached fame in 1964 with the song “As Tears Go By”. Between ups and downs, he was Mick Jagger’s partner and muse from 1964 to 1970.
To write for Faithfull ‘as Tears Go by’, then also engraved by the Rolling Stones, it was Jagger, together with Oldham and Keith Richards. And their relationship was dotted with successes in which the music was inextricably linked to feelings. It was the singer who made Jagger known the novel ‘The Maestro and Margherita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, who will inspire’ ” ‘Simpathy for the Devil’. While the ‘you can’ you can’t all’t Always Get What You Want ‘would have been dedicated to the blonde and slender companion (you can’t always have what you want …). The popularity obtained as a singer opened the doors of cinema to Faithfull: among others, in 1968 he was the protagonist with Alain Delon of the iconic ‘The girl with the motorcycle’. But beauty and fame were not enough to give her happiness. For a long time, at the turn of the seventies, he had problems of anorexia and drugs that left a mark on his voice, from Angelica to Roca, hard and profound, like some songs of his maturity. The latest album is from 2021 – She Walks in Beauty – where more than singing, Faithfull recites poems of his myths, from Lord Byron (whose operars to the album) to Shelley and Keats, with the musical accompaniment of First size stars including Brian Eno and Nick Cave.