Faithfull: An Autobiography

by Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull singer, dope addict and lover of Mick Jagger and other rich and famous people tells us her story, in a frank, revealing autobiography.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, Pop Culture

337 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull was an English singer and actress who achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her UK top 5 single "As Tears Go By" and became one of the leading female artists of the British Invasion in the United States.
Born in Hampstead, London, Faithfull began her career in 1964 after attending a party for the Rolling Stones, where she was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham. Her 1965 debut studio album Marianne Faithfull, released simultaneously with her studio album Come My Way, was a huge success and was followed by further albums on Decca Records. From 1966 to 1970 she had a highly publicised romantic relationship with Mick Jagger. Her popularity was enhanced by roles in films, including I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and Hamlet (1969). But her popularity was overshadowed by personal problems in the 1970s, when she became anorexic, homeless and addicted to heroin.
During her 1960s musical career, Faithfull was noted for her distinctive melodic, high-register vocals. But, in the subsequent decade, her voice was altered by severe laryngitis and persistent drug abuse, which left her sounding permanently raspy, cracked and lower in pitch. The new sound was praised as "whisky soaked" by some critics and was seen as having helped to capture the raw emotions expressed in her music.
After a long absence, Faithfull made a musical comeback in 1979 with the release of a critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Broken English. The album was a commercial success and marked a resurgence of her musical career. Broken English earned Faithfull a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and is regarded as her "definitive recording". She followed this with a series of studio albums including Dangerous Acquaintances (1981), A Child's Adventure (1983) and Strange Weather (1987). Faithfull wrote three books about her life: Faithfull: An Autobiography (1994), Memories, Dreams & Reflections (2007) and Marianne Faithfull: A Life on Record (2014).
Faithfull received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Women's World Awards, and in 2011 she was made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.

Reviews

[Petra X]

I'm mostly reading this because of the 'character assasination' of Mick Jagger. I needed a light book for a long day's travelling back from Miami to my little island in the Caribbean, and thought this might work. It's a beautifully-written book by a woman whose love object is really herself, or if not love object, then obsession. Marianne is beautiful, clever - self-taught, as she left her convent school at 17 to become a pop star - and quite witty. At best you could call her amoral - she sleeps with anyone, male or female, for any reason, and worst, immoral, since that includes other women's boyfriends and husbands and she really doesn't care how they might feel. Sex is her currency, almost everyone gets it who wants it from her.

The book is an endless litany of names, of all the famous people she knew and often how much they wanted her, how she likes spending money, hers or when she stops earning, Mick's, and loves an extravagant life style fueled with drugs. The excesses of jetting off with child, nanny and anyone else who wants to come along for a weekend in Marrakech, a couple of months in Positano, and how they all take drugs as soon as they get wherever they are going, does mean the book comes across as slight and shallow, but Marianne isn't. She has insight.

I haven't finished it yet, it's a light read, a bit wearing on all the name dropping, interesting to read of which songs were written about which person - 19th Nervous Breakdown was about Mick's ex. Chrissie Shrimpton's nervous breakdown, Mick apparently liked writing scathing put downs of people in his songs. Actually you could see why Chrissie had a breakdown. Mick and Marianne were a number before he had ended his relationship with Chrissie.

Now I'm home part of me wants to abandon this useless saga of 'who I fucked and who wanted to fuck me and what drugs we all took and those were the times. Weren't they great' book, but it's light, it's kind of amusing, so I won't.

[Alex is The Romance Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished Faithfull…for the 3rd time!! And each time I am fascinated by this woman.
One of the most unique and original female singer-songwriter.

An iconic singer, actress, songwriter and trendsetter, whose career has spanned over 50 years.

First reviewed in 2012

I love this book – first read when it was first published in 1994 and for me it’s a book that I can read again and again and still be touched and astounded by this extraordinary woman’s life.

Faithfull tells her story in a candid, hard-hitting and gritty way and one of the things I really liked was that she never looked for sympathy or made excuses for her mistakes but that she was honest and not shy to admit the mistakes she made.

”When you are 18, 19, 20, you're used to being photographed all the time, in a certain way. So, the narcissism becomes almost out of control. And the way that young women are photographed, they become addicted to this feedback of the image.”

There’s so much I want to write about my feelings and perceptions about this book..but it would fill pages and pages, so I am going to keep it as short as I can.

From a gawky, vivacious, ethereal and beautiful 17-year old, she soon became part of the Swinging 60”s London, after being discovered by the Rolling Stone’s manager and recording her first single, As Tears Go By, ironically written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, reaching No 9 in the British Charts.

By the age of eighteen, she was married and had a child, toured the country with well-known English bands, began hanging out with the Rolling Stones which soon led to her much-publicized relationship with Mick Jagger , which included the famous not so true “Mars Bars” episode,

the drug busts, her attempted suicide in Australia,
losing her baby at 8 months. A muse, fashion trendsetter…..

Her spiral into a world of drugs, drink and homelessness was fast, furious and unrelenting and complete by the age of 23.
Obscurity, shooting heroin into her veins, drinking, squatting, losing her child, going days without food so she could get drugs, living in the streets was her life for the next couple of years.

I felt really sad as I read about this young woman whose life could or may have been so different and to actually experience what she did at that age.

How many people out there could ever pick themselves up from the pitiless bottom she found herself in?

One asks the question of why would a woman who was loved and loved a rock star walk away and choose the life she did for the next decade.

Yet, she was able to comeback…after being rejected by most of her friends and lovers, her family….the fact that she was able to emerged from that dark and painful period in her life is truly astounding.

And how sad it is that she is most famously known as Mick Jagger’s beautiful and drugged girlfriend and not for her own singing, song writing and acting talents. She was already a pop star before meeting the Rolling Stones, she acted as Ophelia in the movie Hamlet, she had done stage plays and yet not enough credit or recognition. Even had to fight Mick to get him to give her credit for the lyrics she wrote for the song Sister Morphine, Wild Horses…..when Marianne woke up after her six-day coma from her attempted suicide, the first words she said to Mick Jagger were…“Wild horses couldn't drag me away” and they wrote the song Wild Horses together and she never received any credit for her contribution.
Keith Richards tells us in his autobiography, Life, that Marianne was the inspiration behind many of the Rolling Stones songs and even helped Mick writing a lot of the lyrics……and to date she has never received any mention or given any credit for being the early Rolling Stones muse.

There are some fabulous parts in the book that were humorous…her sense of wit and humor comes across so well, especially when she first meets Bob Dylan at the Savoy Hotel in the 60’s,

and later when she talks to him about her album Broken English.

Life was certainly not kind to her even after her comeback there were so many set-backs and excruciating times for her. But you know what? Despite the knocks and beatings she has had in her life, she’s still around, still singing, still reading and LIVING.

I love her voice and her 1979 comeback album, Broken English, totally blew me away.

It was like listening to her talk about her life and all that despair heartbreak...I felt it I felt it... and when she does The Ballad of Lucy Jordan - is she talking about herself? And I can never forget her version of John Lennon's evocative and so hauntingly beautiful song, Working Class Hero.

Read her book and you decide if she’s a survivor – an EPIC one or not.

For me, she will always be remembered as someone who had something in her that said…DON’T GIVE UP. In her own words….

:”'Never let the buggers grind you down.'"

And hey, if you want to see this incredible and iconic performer live…..this is where she will be in 2016…..I am booking my tickets RIGHT NOW!!!!

Tue, 02 Feb Roundhouse, London, UK
Fri, 08 Jul Jardin Public, Cognac, France

Check out some amazing shots of the beautiful and talented Marianne Faithfull:
http://www.vintag.es/2011/06/beautifu...

And if you want to hear some of her music…..check it out….
https://youtu.be/S7oTqILoLns?list=RDS... as tears go by
https://youtu.be/3N_rNz2oAGA?list=RDS... working class hero

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In families there's always one person - almost always a woman - who is designated to be the mad one. In my circle I was the one elected, and since we lived our lives on the pages of the tabloid press, I became famous for it."

I'm implementing a new personal rule: from now on, no more memoirs by white dude rockers (my backlog of to-write reviews includes the Moltey Cru memoir and hooooo boy, that one's gonna be a doozy). From now on, we only read rock n' roll memoirs written by the women who slept with these dudes. And Patti Smith.

I'll admit freely that before I read this, I had no idea that Marianne Faithfull was a successful musician in her own right before she fell in with the Rolling Stones crowd, and became most famous as the on-and-off-again girlfriend of Mick Jagger. Which just goes to show, really, how the women who surround famous men are pushed to the side of the narrative, and only ever described in relation to the famous dudes they used to fuck. Marianne Faithfull, in telling her story in her own words, gets to give her own side of events (especially the infamous Redlands drug raid and trial, which Faithfull - fascinatingly - frames as the circumstances where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards developed their rock star personas) and show the readers that she was doing a lot more than just sleeping with a bunch of famous dudes. I mean, she also sleeps with a lot of famous dudes, but can you blame her? She fucked 1960's-era Keith Richards and turned down Bob Dylan, for Christ's sake! The woman deserves a statue!

As is the norm with memoirs from this era, there are a lot of drugs. But Faithfull's memoir is in a class by itself, because Faithfull wasn't just a drug user, she was (by her own admission) a full-on junkie. Reading about drug addiction in books like Life by Keith Richards or I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp by Richard Hell, there's something almost...performative about the way these men talk about their drug use. It sometimes reads like they're trying to prove something, to live up to their rock star image. Faithfull's memoir is unique because of how far she really fell into drug addiction, and her descriptions of drug use are some of the most interesting I've read. She also goes into the time she overdosed and went into a coma and had a near-death experience where she had an entire conversation with recently-deceased Brian Jones. It might be total bullshit, but it's fascinating.

Part of what's fun about this memoir is getting to watch the crazy rollercoaster that was Faithfull's life - she careens from child of aristocrats, to pop star, to globe-trotting rock n' roll girlfriend, to housewife, to junkie, to homeless junkie, to film and stage actress...one wonders why anyone would ever bother reading a memoir by Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. I mean, all they ever did was play in a band. Marianne Faithfull has lived at least ten different lives, and what's possibly even more impressive (especially considering her near-death experiences and heroin addiction), she's still alive. There is something very powerful inside Marianne Faithfull that has enabled her to survive her own life, and the best part of the memoir is seeing her put aside her Manic Pixie Dream Girl Groupie persona and tell us about her life with unblinking, blunt honesty.

I criticized the groupie memoir I'm With the Band by Pamela des Barres for its complete acceptance and forgiveness of the garbage men in her life. Des Barres's book was 100% breezy tolerance of being used and abused by various men, all for the privilege of surrounding herself with famous people. I wanted anger, and des Barres either didn't have it, or recognized that publicly airing her dirty laundry with most of the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame wasn't the smartest long-term plan.

Faithfull isn't angry, exactly, but she's certainly not pulling her punches when it comes to calling out the toxic behavior of the men in her life. She's honest about her own failings, and she also sees others' motivations clearly. She describes running into Bob Dylan and happily telling him that she's off heroin, in treatment, and very happy.

"He just acted as if I was lying. All I got from Bob was 'What? You? Nah!'
His reaction was fairly typical of the rock contingent. They liked me better on heroin. I was much more subdued and manageable. It's very common with rock stars. They surround themselves with beautiful and often brilliant women whom they also find extremely threatening. One way out is for the women to get into drugs. This makes them compliant and easier to be with."

Like I said - she's not angry at these men, exactly. But whereas Pamela des Barres was utterly uninterested in applying a critical lens to her past, Faithfull isn't afraid to question the behavior and motives of the people from her past.

"It was a nightmare for Mick, the whole experience of me getting into smack. But he never did anything to stop me. The most he would say was, 'Don't you think you're doing a bit much of that stuff?' I would lie to him and tell him I was only chipping and he would believe me. Mick is the classic codependent. He gets his energy from being around drug addicts. Like Andy Warhol. He'll do drugs with addicts if he has to, to get their trust and affection. Like an undercover cop."

Also, just because I couldn't resist quoting it, here's Faithfull on Keith Richards (who, it's important to note, Faithfull had a massive crush on before she agreed to start dating Mick instead):

"I run into Keith a lot at airports lately. He's no longer the Byronic lad I once knew. More a Shakespearean character, a combination of Prince Hal and Falstaff. It's always very reassuring to see him. I feel, when I'm with him, as if we are the last remaining compatriots of a long-vanished kingdom who have not entirely renounced the old ways (although we do differ on the interpretation of the alchemical creed).
...Apropos of yet another casualty in our ranks, Keith volunteers, 'It's always baffling when somebody commits suicide. Not you, in Australia, of course, yours was a perfectly valid reason.' Thanks, Bud."

Dear Pamela des Barres even makes a brief appearance in the book. It was pretty funny to read about her self-described passionate affair with Mick Jagger in her own memoir, and then read Marianne Faithfull's version:

"Mick had been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles, where bevies of wahinis fawned over him and catered to his wildest fantasy. These girls would do anything. He was the rock star par excellence - the point was to please him. So when he came back to Cheyne Walk he quite naturally wondered whether he couldn't get some of the same stuff at home! Unfortunately for Mick, I'd only recently read Germaine Greer's Female Eunuch, from which I had discovered that the whole point was the orgasm. Mine, not his.
One night shortly after he got back, Mick suggested that I start using ice cream-flavored douches. I'm not stupid. I realized that this must be the sort of thing that American chicks did. But I didn't put two and two together till I read I'm With the Band (Pamela has a whole rap about strawberry- and peach-flavored douches)."

If I had to sum up the entire thesis statement of this book, and Marianne Faithfull's casual approach to her own fame and colorful past (as well as her air of total, genuine coolness), it would be this passage:

"Being with Madonna is a bit like being with royalty, you know. Actually, cocktails with Princess Margaret was a little bit more relaxed. It was fun, though. especially looking back on it. Anyway, all my friends' kids were terribly impressed."

[Lynx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wife, mother, muse, popstar, punk diva, ethereal English rose, homeless junkie, recovering addict... those are just a few words one could use to describe Marianne Faithfull but I think 'Total Badass' sums her up nicely. This inspiring woman has had one wild life and candidly shares her experiences in this awesome autobiography.

I talk in-depth about Marianne's life on Muses and Stuff, a podcast which celebrates the women who inspired the men and the music we all love. Please click the link and listen, rate, and share! And remember, the devil's in the details, if you like what you hear go pick up Marianne's book and hear it straight from the wonderful woman herself!!

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this, I have been struggling to come to terms with who this person is and what I'm getting from her autobiography, beyond the voyeuristic kick one gets from looking into someone else's life, particularly the (sometimes) rich and famous.

Ms. Faithfull is hard to pin down: she strives to be a "ghost", she hates her former beauty for the attention it brought her, but she wants to be acknowledged and noticed. She makes foolish mistakes and errors in judgment and excuses herself by saying it was the times, or the drugs, or she was young, and is angry when someone holds her accountable. She lived her life almost completely for herself and rarely considered the consequences of her actions or the effects they will have on others, particularly her child who she insisted on keeping, yet abandoned throughout his life. She says that Mick Jagger was a considerate and involved companion, who stayed with her longer than she deserved,and then she complains about his narcissism, self-indulgence and the fact that he finally had had enough of her. She mocks the boring "upper crust" types with whom she felt forced to socialize, yet she proved to be a rather dull companion herself during her many years in a drug induced haze as she made half-baked pronouncements about life and the world before doing a face-plant in the soup. She is incensed when someone tries to categorize her, yet she does it constantly with everyone in her life; when she discusses one of her managers for example: "He was good at his job but in every other way quite awful. Just a draggy, English, middle-class, pop-music person." Pronouncements like this abound in this autobiography, and there is never a moment when she truly accepts what a self-aggrandizing, pain in the butt she really is. She does admit to self-loathing, particularly at the nadir of her drug years, but it comes across as a rather lame excuse to continue making bad choices rather than a true expression of angst.

I'm not sure I understand or like this person, but I did find her story an interesting one - not necessarily because of her but because of her experiences, the people she knew, and the times she lived in. I do admire the sheer strength and determination it must have taken to live through that era and, as always, I'm amazed at the ability of drug addicts to keep going and to recover from what is a horrible illness.

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long been a great fan of Ms Faithfull, but now I can safely say she is my other living idol along with Stephen Fry. It takes a lot for me to seemingly worship people still living, and she is my female living idol. Talk about someone who knows who she is and can look back on her life with a brilliant sense of humor! She is brilliantly intelligent, dazzlingly witty, and unapologetic about her past. Also, how many people end their autobiography with a recipe?

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been 23 years since publication but Marianne Faithfull’s look at her life in the vortex of the 1960’s and the crash of the 1980’s holds up. This book is perceptive, literary and far beyond my expectations.

Clearly, her drop dead beauty brought Faithfull into the decade’s music explosion and an incredible physical fortitude helped her survive drugs, alcohol, exposure and malnutrition. Her openness to new experiences and her lifelong reading (she is not a high school graduate) add dimension to this book that you don’t get in many rock memoirs.

There is an inside view of life in an entourage. Glamour, energy and money seem to bring out competition and jealousy. She writes of the landmarks of the times, for instance, for many of those close to Brian Jones, his death was merely an incident of convenienience. There are two scenes with Bob Dylan that are worthy of wider note in the canons of the era. Mick Jagger, while totally self-involved, manages to be more sober and humane than the others. Faithfull speculates that the only person Mick loves is Keith.

She gives a fuzzier view of the life of an addict. She notes the hierarchy of street life: drug addicts are better than alcoholics. While she lives on “the wall” she has resources the others don’t. She can visit her mother who is raising her son in the house Mick Jagger bought them. She maintains enough lucidity to keep her contacts in the music industry which eventually result in an album.
The narrative on rehab is clearer. Faithfull’s childhood was no more stable than her life in the maelstrom of celebrity which she joined, arguably, as a child. While it was Faithfull who left Mick, it took her almost 20 years to vanquish the experience.

I’d like to know more about her mother, father and son. While this book shows the dismissive nature of male rock stars towards women, I’d be interested in, as the talking heads say, “more color” on her observations on the role of women in this period.

There is a lot here. It is a must read on the era.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

The one and only Marianne Faithful recently passed away January 30th 2025 at 78 years old.

Marianne Faithfull recorded and released "As tears go by" her hit song as a single in the United Kingdom in 1964.
I was a teenager when it hit the charts in the US.

We all wanted to be Marianne. She was always in the magazines a beautiful fair blonde in the most stylish Mary Quant designer clothing. Walking on the arm of Mick Jagger.

The autobiography she released was the sum of an amazing life. She faced drug and alcohol addictions, going from the top of popularity, losing her voice, and headed to rock bottom, but still managing to prevail and survive.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marianne is just not as interesting as she thinks she is.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years I've had a fascination with Marianne Faithfull - the girl who looked like an angel and sang like a waif, who then became a woman, with a strength that belied her broken voice.

This book was very evocative of the 60s. Not the typical sunshiny portrayal of the 60s, which I love too, but the darker flipside. In fact, it was so evocative, it inspired me to write a story, which I'm still writing now and living amidst in the back of my brain.
This autobiography is definitely not for those who can't handle, well, darker and more explicit details of 60s livin'. I really liked it, though my upbringing kept tapping me on the shoulder saying things like, "Shouldn't you be shocked?"

Anyway, I found that reading parts of this whilst in the grips of lack of sleep made me sometimes feel like I was tripping along with Marianne. And by tripping I don't mean frolicking. :P

[Ian Mapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't often read biographies but the few facts that I had about Ms Faitfull's life meant that I wanted to find out more.

I knew about the Stones and the 60s, but what always interested me was how she ended up living on the streets of London in the late 70s. How could someone fall from grace so far.

The book is entertaining for various reasons. 1) the sex. I knew she had slept with two of the stones. Turns out this should be three. And some women. And Gene Pitney. And Alex Higgins. 2) The drugs. This is relentless as she goes through all the drugs you can think off. Especially LSD. 3) Just how young she was. The major part of the book concentrates on the 60s where she was a pop star, married, with child and embroiled with the Stones. At the end of the sixties, she was only 23.

Crammed a lot into here years. Also makes you realise how close Punk was to the birth of Pop Music. From having Jagger write songs about you to being married to the bass player of the Vibrators in 8 short years.

I'd love to know what her son Nicholas makes of the book. He gets scarcely a mention. You'd like to know who was looking after him whilst all these scenanigans were taking place.

Interesting read that evokes the spirit of an era. We will never see those days again.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deliciously written from someone who was smack in the eye of the storm of the 1960’s British music scene, who then crashed and survived her own sojourn in the 1970s/1980s. Dishing on everyone from Donovan to Tom Waits, Faithfull’s encounters with Bob Dylan — and oh yeah that boyfriend of hers in the late 60s — all of it makes this a wonderful and often very funny read.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was eager to read this book as I had heard so much growing up what an icon Marianne Faithfull was, but I didn't understand why or what she had really done to achieve that status. So this book finally solved the enigma for me!
I am going to give a two-part review: the first part will be an evaluation of the book itself - the quality of the writing, the craft, etc. The second part will be about my thoughts on Marianne Faithfull as a person.
The writing style is very open and conversational. You feel like Marianne is actually telling you the story while hanging out in the living room, relaxed and casual. She will tell a bit of a story and then punctuate it with a comment that really makes you feel like she is engaged and present rather than distant from something that happened so long ago. She especially has a talent for detailing the hedonistic era of acid tripping and decadent adventures. I loved reading her journey into the psychedelic world and the sense of magic and power that welled up inside and around her. The book is pretty well stitched, without a lot of jumping around, although there are a few minor fragmented stories. Overall, it's a wild ride that Marianne has taken and her life seems charmed in a tragic way.
Marianne does seem to take for granted that the reader is familiar with the Rolling Stones' discography and musical eras (as well as other musicians and artists of the time). There's a lot of name dropping and assumptions which I found hard to relate to, but I just glossed over those references since I really wanted to know about Marianne more than anything.
And now my thoughts on Marianne Faithfull. I think she is brutally honest in portraying her self-centeredness and weaknesses in this book. I found it kind of sad how much of the time was spent where Marianne defines herself in terms of her relationships to other people. Sometimes it seemed that there was more about other people in this book than Marianne - and I think her identity is very tied to the external. I found her personality to be a little pathetic. Extremely self-centered and a bit of a hanger-on. And the depths of her descent into drug use, as with many addicts, is like being on a never ending carousel. Oh here we go again, round and round, same scenery, same excuses, same tragic cycle.
I feel extremely sad for her son, who she hardly mentions - she spends much more time in the book describing her drug and music buddies than she does her child (who she can't even care for because she's so involved with drugs.)
After reading the book, I was at a loss to understand her cult status. What is all the hubbub? So I thought I would listen to her music and find the brilliance of her art and truly appreciate her. Nope. Maybe Broken English has some redeeming qualities, but I'm just not seeing what all the hype was about. I did see her perform in the play The Black Rider some years ago but wasn't terribly impressed by it, either.

So, the book does a fabulous job of revealing the iconic Marianne Faithfull. And I am not really a fan.

[Spad53 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember liking Marianne Faithfull when I was 10, I thought As tears go by was a terrific song. What I didn’t realise was that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote it, it was the first song they wrote together, and didn’t suit the Rolling Stones image at all, so Marianne got it. Then she sort of disappeared, but never completely, one of the earliest films I saw was The Girl on a Motorcycle where she starred. I was blown away by her comeback with Broken English, a fantastic LP. If nothing else her autobiography shows how important she was as a musician, actress and trendsetter. She is intimately associated with the Stones, so unsurprisingly a lot of the book circles around them. She was together with Brian, Mick and Keith (in that order); she’s very frank and insightful. Even more so than Keith’s book Life. After this character assassination Mick doesn’t even need to write his biography, she’s done it for him! Though to be fair she does say some very nice things about him too. There is so much that is new to me in this book, for instance a complete education in drug abuse, I really don’t need to know anything more.
Marianne Faithfull reads a lot. There is a good story where she was on a train in India, reading Howards end, her boyfriend tired of her reading all the time, and threw it out of the window, it was a library book too. That was the end of that relationship. She is a very good writer, and also very funny. The only thing in this book that I found a little less interesting were her admittedly very well written descriptions of various dreams and hallucinations. She was in a coma for six days after an overdose, and describes talking to the ghost of Brian Jones before she wakes up to a lovely (real) conversation with Mick Jagger. You can’t make this up. It’s a strange mix of tragic and funny, and completely fascinating.
I'm beginning a new regime, no more overrating, so this was to get a four, even though I really liked it. But the more I write about it, the more I remember how good it was, so what the heck, a five.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

April (who just got married) gave this book to me in early summer 1999. It is a good companion piece to Pamela Des Barres' I'm with the Band (which MF mentions several times--they both did Mick), but MF has a much more jaded view of things (drugs will do that to you, kids, or is it just Being the Descendant of Sacher-Masoch living in England vs. Growing Up Beatlemaniac in Reseda, California?).

Not to miss is one of the last photos--it's just her cleavage.

In fall 2004, Marianne Faithfull was starring in The Black Rider in San Francisco.* The tickets sold quickly, and unfortunately the matinee I saw starred the "alternate" (not understudy, as it was all part of her contract). The morning before the show, I went to Kabuki Springs and Spa (very nice place for shiatsu and a bath in Japantown), and lo! There was Marianne Faithfull undressing in the locker room. I waited until she was in her bra and I was fully clothed before approaching her. She was very gracious, but of course it wasn't an appropriate time for autographs. Man, those San Francisco days when I was "writing my dissertation" were good times.

*Also in this play was Janet "Mrs. Bale" Henfrey. Awesome!

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marianne Faithfull's personal journey through privilege, addiction, poverty, and the long climb back up after the fall is a smooth as silk reading experience. and, yeah, there's juicy insider bits aplenty about the Stones and other '60s music, art, and social scene luminaries, doncha worry 'bout that.

fun, engaging, occasionally heartbreaking, and well-written

[Rupert · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far I have learned that Marianne loved Mick and Keith but not Brian or John, even though she married John, and she liked Bob and slept with him but then his fiancee came home so she took some acid and smoked some hash and had sex with some other people.

[chucklesthescot · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that this was going to be an interesting look at the sixties scene through the eyes of an icon but to be honest I just found it pretty boring. I didn't think it really had anything different to offer the reader. I didn't get too far into it before I decided that it wasn't for me.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great 60's rock n' roll memoir from one of the great artists of that period. Gossipy, but never mean spirited, but a great inside look in the Rolling Stones psyche and organization.

[Kizer · Rating 5 out of 5]

More lives than a cat, dahling.

[Marti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I knew a fair bit about Marianne Faithful (most of it gleaned from Rolling Stones and Robert Fraser biographies). However, I had no idea that she was literally homeless for years, living on a wall in bomb site in Soho and later, a squat from about 1971 - 1979 when she released Broken English.

I enjoyed her comparisons of the Sixties art scene to previous epochs in history and she certainly seemed to believe she had lived previous lives (her ancestor, a great, great uncle was the Baron Sacher-Masoch to whom we owe the term "Masochism"). She's also had a few perfectly-remembered near-death experiences, one of which was days after Brian Jones died (she claims to have witnessed him leaving a sort of earthbound "limbo.") She also had a lot of great stories about people as diverse as Bob Dylan and Gene Pitney.

Surprisingly she did not trash Mick Jagger; saying many good things about him while admitting he is a control freak, a social climber, and "too normal." I also learned that Anita Pallenberg was not the monster she is usually made out to be. Of course Keith Richard (always my favorite Stone) came off the best in this bio.

I think this book would make a great double feature with the Nico: Songs They Never Play On the Radio by James Young. You will definitely have a lot of very strange dreams if you read those back to back.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Rolling Stones girl memoir for you this time. What a morbidly fascinating character Marianne Faithfull is! What I was most struck by in this book was the image creation and press-hounding that never let her alone. That fame machine was so one-dimensional and manufactured, especially for women. From the get go, upon being discovered at seventeen, Andrew Loog Oldham spins this PR story about her being this virginal little waif, aristocratic and bohemian and ethereal. Later, she becomes the wayward child overtaken by the satanism of the Rolling Stones and drugs, which she scoffs at in the book. Later still, she's the hopeless junkie, branded as Mick Jagger's Fallen Ex-Girlfriend forever and ever. She's an innocent, no she's a slut. The press can't seem to make up their minds. Upon finally (finally) making it to rehab in the 80s, she realizes she has no story of her own. When asked to tell their story at the program, she offers up a copy of a tell-all book by a Rolling Stones handler ,hilariously nicknamed Spanish Tony. " 'You want my story? Read that.' Because in those days I really didn't know I had a story of my own. I was just part of their story and I saw my own only through these books." Good thing she got to write down her story in this book. And boy is it unflinching.

To get it out of the way, I'll just give a quick run-down of the Rolling Stones' story, as seen through Marianne's lens (sorry Marianne, I'll get to you and your own agency in a sec.) I loved Keith Richards' account of all this stuff in his autobiography, but it was interesting and maybe even truer from the perspective of someone not in the band. Marianne saw the Brian-Mick-Keith relationship as a battle for dominance, and specifically, as a Brian-Mick competition for Keith's attention. It's like the Kardashian sisters' pettiest fights! In Keith's autobiography he writes with still-brimming resentment towards Brian's irritating demeanor at the end of his life. Marianne feels badly for him, and sees how desperately he craves Mick and Keith's attention. She says he was just uncool. They cruelly make fun of him, which Marianne notes must have been hellish for sensitive, insecure, paranoid Brian. Marianne says that in the Stones, someone always had to be "it." First it was Andrew Loog Oldham when they fired him for Allen Klein, then it was Brian. She teases it will eventually be her (dun dun dun!) Marianne thinks Brian never fully recovered from the first time he took LSD. She says he was totally paranoid and sickly in the last years of his life. And obviously rageful and abusive towards Anita.

After Anita leaves Brian for Keith, it's all over for him. The rest of the group is cemented into the two couples (with some girlfriend-swapping going on too obviously--the sixties!!) In one rather heartbreaking anecdote, Mick feels guilty and calls up Brian for a dinner date with him and the girlfriends. Brian is so stoked and delighted but prissy bitch Mick immediately complains about the food and he and Marianne leave to go to a restaurant in the middle of the dinner party! Which effectively devastates Brian. After Brian's death, Marianne goes on an LSD bender of her own, and has a bit of a psychotic break. Staring into the mirror and looking out at the hotel pool, she thinks she *is* Brian and gets it into her head she should be dead too. An absolutely chilling scene. She comes to and if this precise dialogue in this autobiography is to be believed, gives Mick the lyric for Wild Horses: "Marianne, you're alright!" "Wild Horses couldn't drag me away."

The other Stones move right along after Brian's death. Marianne writes about their career and elevation into (second) best of the best (editorial my own, sorry Stones. You know my allegiance.) Understatement, but they really had some good stuff! So much of it inspired by Marianne herself: Let's Spend the Night Together, Wild Horses, You Can't Always Get What You Want, Sister Morphine obviously. Marianne doesn't seem bothered by the credit-sharing war for the last one. Even though it is quite obviously her song lyrics and her story to a tee, Allen Klein told her it was some bureaucratic tie-up. Oh well! She writes about the Stones' songs and talent with the adoration of a fan and the knowledge of the inner circle. From blues and rock beginnings to Byronic, LSD-infused, mysticism (wonder who they got the mysticism from? Rhymes with Schmorge Schmarrison.) That mysticism stuff was kind of funny to me. Anita Pallenberg truly believes she is a witch, Brian too especially in their most trippiest trips. They all wear these very Baroque, sixties, frilly ruffled shirts and drape themselves in scarves and dance around (Mick especially.) It's all very gender-bending in a sixties, drug-addled way. And the press is all over them, fear-mongering their alleged satanism calling to wayward youths. At the famous drug bust at Redlands, Marianne was naked and wrapped in a fur rug, and that image stays with her forever. Some of the pills the police confiscates are actually hers and she begs Mick and Keith to let her take the fall for it. They won't hear of it and do their few months time to try to save her, but the press rakes her through the coals anyway. Upon visiting a scared and weeping Mick Jagger in prison, Marianne says she was honestly a little turned off by his display of vulnerability. "Straighten up and fly right!" and then a little kinder, "Use it to write a song dear." Here is a great example of how different she was from her sixties image. She could be very no-nonsense and blunt. She was up for literally anything and had no qualms. She was a complete hedonist which would obviously be her downfall, but in the decadence of the Swinging Sixties, she's still able to be on her own two feet and insult Mick Jagger.

Except not totally. By the end of that relationship, she feels totally trapped and can't seem to find a way out. She is sick of Mick's controlling nature, she's no longer in love with him. She may never have been really in love with him. She gets a kick out of him in the early years certainly, his softer, feminine side, but she freely admits she was in love with Keith Richards, and says the best night of her life -- best!-- was when she slept with Keith shortly before getting with Mick! " 'Y'know who really has it bad for you, don't you?' 'No darling, who's that?' 'Mick!'... I was speechless. He was telling me that I shouldn't bother with him. I should pursue Mick instead. He set me up and I simply accepted it as a fait accompli. Incredible isn't it? It's all these funny things you do when you're very young (and on acid!)" The whole impetus to her infamous relationship with Mick Jagger was a gentle rejection from Keith Richards!

Boy, Mick Jagger. What a complicated personality that one is. Controlling doesn't even begin to describe it. Marianne says ultimately Mick hates women, which is pretty evident in some of his songs. There's literally a song called, hilariously, Stupid Girl directed at his ex-girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton who he left for Marianne. It's all about her being too vain--rich coming from you Mick--and there is literally a line that says "She's the worst thing in the world." Not very poetic. And all of this after dumping her! (Great song though.) She also writes wittingly about Mick's affairs with men and his fluid sexuality. She says she never minded it, but interestingly draws a line from that to his hatred of women too. Women, ugh! You just have to sleep with them sometimes! Apparently, he had the hots for Keith and he said as much to Marianne, audibly when Keith was in the next room! She said he had a "dolly fascination," and mentioned the theory that he really wanted Julie Christie but settled for her. Later, he marries Bianca, who Marianne calls just another version of himself. Ha! Mick's persona at this time was the foppish little prince, with his Baroque clothes and sexual promiscuity. Later in the seventies I guess is when you get the rooster-face, hopping-around Mick who wears headbands. But he definitely always had a yearning to be a part of the aristocracy. But you know what, he wrote Wild Horses about the end of their relationship and losing her to drugs and I have to say listening to it honestly brings a tear to my eye.

Alright, drugs. There were a lot of trippy descriptions of the various trips she's been on. (Quite a good memory actually for the minutiae of Mick's dancing with scarves during an acid trip... I'm always skeptical of hyper-detailed scenes like this one in autobiographies, but it was all very atmospheric.) Then of course, she tries heroin and it's all over. Those parts were so rough. Mick did try to help her but she didn't want the help, she just wanted to feel nothing and do nothing. Just like Anita actually. After finally breaking it off with Mick she takes up with some minor English aristocrat, oddly getting engaged but not living with him. She's in and out of her mother's house, a complete ghost. She lives with her friend Pamela for a time, playing the role of Worst House Guest in History. She leaves her dirty needles in plain view of Pamela's kids. She shoots up one day, draws a scalding hot bath, passes out, and requires Pamela to yank her out of the tub, which causes her to slip and hit her head, knocking her out cold. Jesus. Then she goes off to join the other "junkies and winos on the wall." The Wall. She just shoots up and sits on the wall for like two years, barely eating. So bleak. In her addict mind, all she wants is to do take drugs. She has no understanding of how it affects the people who love her. She finds a glamour in it, even on the wall. What a terrible existence. "If I can't stand it, I'll just kill myself."

After the wall, she takes up with a few more boyfriends, all of them deep into drugs too. She keeps going with heroin and cocaine for a few decades, somehow able to make a few comeback records and act in a play or two in that time. I listened to her comeback album Broken English while reading. Not bad. The rest of the 70s and 80s go by rather repetitively until she gets herself into rehab FINALLY and takes sobriety a little more seriously (with the occasional relapse.) At the time of writing this book, she says she is completely uninterested in having a relationship again. Probably smart. Every one she had before was predicated on scoring together.

I was fully engrossed in this book. This time period will never not be fascinating to me.

[Tajana Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Baroness’s Daughter, Pop Star Angel, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Miss X, and the fallen angel are all images, fantasies and headlines that were ready-made for Marianne Faithfull. By the howling press, industry managers, and record labels looking to sell. Hell, during her years homeless and addicted on ‘the Wall’ in Soho, a record-label named her album Rich Kid Blues.

As if I’m sitting with Marianne over tea she begins to describe swinging London in brutal honesty and humour, openly admitting to her hedonistic, self-centred and narcissistic ways. A schedule of heavy touring (despised by Marianne), shopping addiction, and parties in Chelsea began at a mere 17 years old after her single ‘As Tears Go By’ was released in 1964. Suddenly we’re meeting Dylan and his group of ‘elite Bohemians’ at the Savoy Hotel and peering through the acid-haze of her wonderful night of sex with Keith Richards (her child at home with the nanny or then-husband). The picture of her and Anita Pallenberg high as a kite wearing feather boas, with nothing but a sari and trinkets packed for a trip to Tangier remains rent-free in my mind even now, days after finishing Faithfull.

A continuous theme of Faithfull, was the stark contrast of experiences that were created in the aftermath of Redlands, shining a light on blatant sexism empowered by the industry, press and ‘Boys Clubs’. Whilst her reputation as a woman was shunned and vilified to the public, the drug bust only fuelled the Stones dazzling and gritty profile. I admire Marianne’s total willingness to question the actions of men in her life and draw these experiences into the big picture.

The 70’s rolls on and the pursuit of heroine reaches new heights, with Marianne mixing entertaining anecdotes with hauntingly dark and raw recounts of her hallucination of Brian Jones during her 6-day coma after attempting suicide, her passionate and barbed-wire marriage with Ben Brierly in their Lots Road squat, and time on ‘the Wall’ which I felt was glamourised with the relief of having no address, phone number and therefore identity. Touching on loosing custody of her child, I finished Faithfull with unresolved curiosity about her relationship with Nicholas and mother, Eva. I guess as one does after opening the front door on another’s intimate life story.

A long-awaited, glimmer of anticipation leapt off the pages when Marianne first referenced Broken English as her very own Frankenstein in 1979. Finally (I sigh), the art, work and image she seems to want and desire for herself. Far from the It Girl, child-woman, waif-like identity that Stones manager, Andrew Log Oldham, created in 64’. Yet, it’s not until 1985, strung out after years of access to all the drugs New York could offer that she is admitted to Hazeldene. After reading 300 pages of Marianne’s uncensored, extraordinary life I was shocked when she referenced a Rolling Stones biography at rehab, as her only history.

Concluding by referencing the layers of mask she peeled away after getting clean, I closed the spine feeling that Marianne had cast her story in stone, for none to alter, since publishing Faithfull in 1991. Having grown up idolising Marianne, I’m left with an insiders scoop on ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’, a hilarious Donavan story, countless literary recommendations, confirmation that Keith is the best Stone, and a reminder that glamorous pictures and tales aren’t always what they seem.

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The unmanagable woman has been seen as a very dangerous quantity from the dawn of time, or at least since patriarchal religion clamped down on us."

There's a noticable sexism which tends to manifest itself when it comes to the women of rock n' roll. When others tell their stories, they're either painted as victims or viragos (sometimes both). When the women themselves tell their stories (such as Pamela Des Barres I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie) there's an unapologetic and unabashed reveling in a crazy life well-lived on the edge, and most people just can't handle sex, drugs and rock n' roll from an unrepentant woman's perspective.

That's why I LOVED Marianne Faithfull's Faithfull: An Autobiography. Her album 'Broken English' is one of my faves, sung with all the raw, gritty power of a punked-out Big Mama Thornton. This is a woman I'd love to sit down and just let her talk and never be bored. She tells an unflinching and totally rock tale complete with all the cliches of excess and insanity, but also of possibilities. The big differences being the sixties pretty much wrote the book and that Faithfull pulls no punches. She doesn't apologize nor agonize. She's as forthcoming with her addictions as she is with her pansexual escapades. There's no blame game or attempts at "getting even". There's a candid maturity to her writing, even as her past behavior sometimes came off as immature. Still, it was the Swinging Sixties, a time of upheaval and hedonism, clashes with the "old guard", where the young and wealthy nobility wanted to be a part of "the scene", acid trips were 'gateways' and gender identity seemed to become more fluid. Of course, all is never right in Wonderland as the exploration turned into slowly turned into destruction.

The most startling aspect of this book was the British government being so terrified of The Rolling Stones, believing that they were ground zero for the societal changes rocking the country (pretty much the same thing was happening here in the U.S. with Civil Rights) and that the band needed to be "brought down", hence the infamous bust of Keith and Mick and the Mars Bar story. Alas, if rock n' roll really had the power to change the world, and back then it seemed to. There was definitely a sense of sorrow at the death of Brian Jones.

Also what stood out was Faithfull's refusal to be a "victim". That initial image of her as the delicate sylph from "As Tears Go By" was an image she hated and tried to get away from. Ha, even before the Cyruses and Lohans, the world of pop music was shaping the image of women. No wonder they had kittens over Janis Joplin. Faithfull is no victim, but a willing participant in her slow destruction then redemption. She's unflinching and honest.

All the luminaries of this era are here and they are quite human: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Anita Pallenberg, Alan Ginsberg--the whole creative and crazy crew of misfits who for awhile were a part of a larger tribe.

An enjoyable read from an incredibly fascinating woman from a time that still resonates.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is seeing Marianne Faithfull as an artist and individual in her own right. Her reputation as "rock-star girlfriend" and junkie really is the most common narrative found, particularly in biographies about the Stones. That is such a dismissive view of an interesting and important artist. It really points out how we dismiss female musicians while lionizing and mythologizing male musicians for identical behavior. God forbid a female artist portray weakness or drug addiction, less she be villainized mercilessly (Courtney Love comes to mind). Yet the same behavior in a male artist just mythologizes him even more. In this book Marianne finally gets her say. As is common with this type of book, the writing is a bit shaky, but that's not why I personally read them. It provided a great first-hand impression of the bohemian 60s and an important time in music. Additionally, it made me curious about her music, which I then explored and enjoyed, particularly "Broken English."

[Patti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marianne's life can be defined by the men and women she had sex with and the drugs that she did. She likes to think of herself as being very cerebral, but then gives no evidence to support it. It's interesting to read about the rock stars she had sex with, but when the rock stars go away, so did my attention span.

Fun cameos from Ginsberg and Burroughs, though. Those guys are everywhere.

[Althea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Marianne Faithfull is possibly the most self-centered, self-involved individual I have ever read about. But, at least she seemed to be totally honest about her life and times; she certainly did not sugarcoat anything. And, of course, it's always fun to read about the rock legends of the sixties and their drug habits and bed hopping escapades.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forever Faithfull

My second reading. Don't remember the first time through, but with time comes, a wish you'd never started smoking. If it weren't for Marianne I would have never learned how to properly wear black by 16. By 54 she's taught me that NA is almost as cool as Keith. I don't know what she'll teach me by read three.

[Sarah McMullan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always Faithfull

[Zofia Domagalska · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads as if Marianne knew that her story is only appealing to people because she was close to Mick Jagger, and she wants to give readers what they want.

Unlike most reviewers of this book, I read it because I was enthralled by Marianne Faithfull herself, not Rollings Stones. And if you do not care about them, then this book becomes disappointing. Marianne admitted that she struggled to find her identity outside being close to the Stones and other important figures of the 1960s. That's why I am sympathetic, but it still leaves me unsatisfied. Maybe her later work will give me more insight to who she was.