A note before we begin: What this tribute is not — it is not a full career retrospective; the early years of the girlish teenage ingénue and the arm accessory she was treated as — those have been covered to death and burned to ash — the phoenix that came out of those flames is what this tribute is about — that Marianne — the one who rose from the flames a woman, a survivor, a legend in the making.
Marianne Faithfull has been a force in my life for four decades, her music framing the eras of my life, both the good and the bad. We had commonalities: addiction, recovery, relapse, recovery, reinvention, some rough transitions, but also many good years. Throughout my adult life she has been there in the moments raw, real, and visceral. I knew she had been aging and in poor health for years. She survived COVID and lived with multiple age and smoking-related conditions, but none of that knowledge prepared me for the moment I learned she was gone.
A year ago today the world lost one of its great and singular voices — the revered icon Marianne Faithfull passed away on January 30th, 2025. When the news broke, I lost my shit in a way far beyond any other celebrity death; I broke down sobbing heavily and harder than the combined losses of Bowie, Carrie Fisher, and George Michael (2016 was a celebrity massacre). Even now, a year later, I still don’t fully understand why this loss struck so deeply. I’d loved her since my early twenties but never thought of myself as a hardcore fan. There were several album releases I’d missed entirely, a few I didn’t ‘get’ at the time but there were jewels I adored, and I longed to see her perform live, and never got the chance. Perhaps that’s part of it, the grief of a door closing.
I first saw the news on Facebook. First it was a photo of Marianne and Debbie Harry together posted by Blondie’s official page, but there wasn’t any context with the photo. A couple hours later I saw a post from Sunscreem on their official page lamenting the loss; they had a special connection to Marianne’s music having covered Broken English on their first album O3 and scoring one of their biggest hits in the UK with it, a version Marianne called “Interesting.” And in that moment, something in me broke. I let out a long, involuntary “Nooooooooooooooo!” and collapsed into heaving sobs, rivers of tears, and a sense of loss that felt deeper than I could understand.
And then the grief turned into a kind of devotion. I started listening to everything Marianne had ever recorded. I found the albums I’d missed, rediscovered the ones I hadn’t understood, and suddenly I got them, and deeply so. Before the Poison and Negative Capability are now among my favorite albums of all time, but it hasn’t stopped. I listened to Marianne almost exclusively for 10 months. The only other artist I listened to during that time was occasionally putting on an ANOHNI playlist I like to fall asleep to. When the surprise posthumous EP Burning Moonlight arrived in April 2025, it was added to the repeat list on my daily listening, with four tracks, two new songs Burning Moonlight and Love Is (written and performed with her grandchildren, the musicians Oscar Dunbar on backing vocals and guitar, and Eliza Dunbar on violin). One re-recording of She Moved Thru’ the Fair and one she’d always wanted to do, Three Kinsmen Bold. Recorded in 2024, less than a year before her passing, she still sounds unmistakably herself — fierce, tender, and utterly present.
Her interpretations alone could define a career. She had a way of inhabiting a song so completely that it became hers, even when the writing wasn’t. Her version of Jimi Hendrix’s Drifting, on Vagabond Ways, is a perfect example — she doesn’t cover it, she claims it. Few people could cover Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song and pull it off, but Marianne did, on the same album as the Hendrix track. Speaking of Cohen, Marianne also covered Going Home, which changes it from Leonard speaking of himself in the third person to a conversation between two artists who have seen and heard it all. When it came to Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, a ballet-chanté, Marianne wasn’t just playing a role, she had literally lived every movement of that work, and she brought it to life with the gravitas it deserved.
And then there are her own songs — numerous, piercing, and often overlooked. Across her albums she wrote or co-wrote so many lyrics, shaping the emotional architecture of her records. They Come at Night, her tribute to the victims and survivors of the Bataclan attack, is both beautiful and brutal, a furious indictment of cowardice and a lament for a world where “There’s no brave England, no brave Russia, no America.” No Moon in Paris is lonely, intimate, and devastating in its simplicity. That’s another place where Marianne shined; simplicity, plainly spoken or sung in a way that was clearly defined and absolutely stunning in its poetic beauty. The Stars Line Up is one such song, but there are many others as well.
Her long fight to reclaim credit for Sister Morphine, first released by the Rolling Stones, is a testament to her tenacity. She wrote that motherfucker, and she refused to be erased. She wasn’t going down without a fight. And, eventually, she won. Marianne’s tenacity was a lifelong trait. In April 2020 she caught a nearly fatal case of COVID that became Long COVID and while still recovering finished the recording of She Walks in Beauty (a spoken word album of her reading some of her favorite poetry set to original music). During the recording sessions Marianne was using oxygen canisters between takes due to being so short on breath. This leads us to the legends she worked with, on She Walks in Beauty alone she worked with Warren Ellis who composed the music and produced it, Nick Cave on piano, Brian Eno on “sound textures” and synthesizers, Renowned French cellist Vincent Ségal on cello, and Head on production and engineering.
Over her career she worked with many more legends and together they made much beautiful music. Her works with longtime songwriting partner Barry Reynolds, the artists Beck, Dave Stewart, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Angelo Badalamenti, and PJ Harvey, stand out and shine brightly. Her duet with David Bowie covering Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe is some prime comedic gold, hunt down the video on YouTube, it’s well worth the watch. They were both completely higher than fucking satellites, but still holding it together just enough to perform, and they both kept giving these shit-eating grins like they were about to break character and burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all – I’m intentionally not saying anything about the costumes because you just have to see it.
Marianne wasn’t just a singer — she had a lengthy acting career too, appearing on stage, in films, and on television, and she wasn’t always just some guest star appearing as herself, she had serious acting roles, and serious acting skills! Her role in Irina Palm, where she is the lead actor, is a stunning performance, understated and masterful. An ordinary suburban British grandmother turned sex worker to pay for her grandson’s medical care, the story is both heavy and funny, and she handled it with dignity and humor. Her small role in Sofia Coppola’s take on Marie Antoinette was well performed but minimal; she did, however, look positively regal in the period costume and wig, like she would have fit right in at the Royal Court in pre-revolution France.
She also played God on Absolutely Fabulous and was absolutely perfect. Delivering lines with a cigarette in hand, she radiated the kind of divine mischief only Marianne could embody; while being flanked by an angel rocking out with a guitar, played by Marcella Detroit (of Shakespears Sister, and Eric Clapton Band fame, which was another bit of perfect casting and pairing, if you know her voice & guitar work, you know why she was perfect for a rocking angel). All this is to say Marianne treated her acting roles like her songs, she didn’t perform them, she inhabited them, she became the song, the character, and the book. She was simply a masterful artist.
And just this week the documentary Broken English had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. I look forward to seeing it, by all accounts it is a unique documentary with Marianne being interviewed by the Ministry of Not Forgetting, there are also new music, clips, interviews and performances.
Her books the autobiography Faithfull, the memoir Memories, Dreams and Reflections, and the coffee table book of photos with handwritten notes A Life On Record (which, sadly, I’ve only seen glimpses of due to its hefty price), give an insight to her life, her upbringing, the fame, the drugs, homelessness, recovery, reinvention, her home in Paris, the life she led all written with her wit and charm. Her song, Sliding Through Life on Charm, yeah, she had that ability, but as she says in a one-word line of the song “Never!” Marianne worked her ass off to get where she was, where she deserved to be, a survivor, a legend, and revered icon of Rock and Roll.
She was a woman in the man’s world of the early years of rock — a teenager thrust into a spotlight she didn’t seek, who went through hell and back and emerged a battle‑worn, weary soldier. She persisted against the odds, reinvented herself, and relaunched a career that allowed her to do it her way, all the way to the end. She may not have sought the spotlight, but once she was in it, she outshone it. And in the process she became a legend, one of the most important artists of the 20th century and into the 21st, where she remains relevant and influential.
I’ve begun to understand the depth of my grieving as I’ve watched, listened to, and read Marianne’s works over the last year and the depth of my love for the amazing talent that was Marianne Faithfull has only grown deeper. The world lost a legend a year ago, and the world — and I — will never be the same.
But I’m thankful. I have sixty years of recordings to console me, numerous films (The Girl on a Motorcycle is up next), and TV appearances to try and hunt down, many live recordings and concert films. There will never be another like her; a true chameleon in a world of musical clones, reinventing herself again and again — Folk, Pop, New Wave, Punk, Alt Rock, Country, Electronica, Chanson, some backing ‘La, La, La’s’ for Metallica and that cinematic side-step with Badalamenti. Her voice, sometimes gentle, sometimes raging, whiskey soaked, weathered and wise, carried every era of her life inside it.
As I wrote this, I listened to a number of her albums: Before the Poison, Broken English, Negative Capability and Vagabond Ways were the most frequent with Horses and High Heels, Give My Love to London, Burning Moonlight, and Kissin’ Time also getting some attention. When reading her autobiography and memoir, her music from each era has played along as I read. I’m still listening to her works every day, but I’ve started to listen to other voices again as well.
Thank you for the music, Marianne. I love you. I adore you. And I will be forever grateful for every song, every word, every appearance you left behind.
To my fellow Marianne fans, I leave you with a quote not from Marianne but from Leonard Cohen, “Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.” Let the tears flow on this day and tomorrow let us laugh with joy at all that she left for us, so many songs, so many words, but only one Marianne Faithfull.
Peace be with you,
Chaz Barrett French
Author’s Note: This is the first piece of writing I’ve published under my lived name rather than the name I was given; the same name as my “father.” Designated as a “Junior” and called that, the name was thrust upon me. This is the name I have chosen to honor those who made a difference in my life, directly (Chaz, what my mother’s partner called me); and indirectly (Barrett after my grandfather, a WWII hero), rather than the name of the man who abused me and my family. This is the name that is about to become my legal name, and it feels right that it goes with this piece about an artist who lived as her true self, as I am doing now.
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