R.I.P. Marianne Faithfull, musician, actor, and icon of the British Invasion

Marianne Faithfull, musician, actor, and poster girl of rock and roll, has died. She was 78 years old. “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull,” a representative said in a statement to The BBC. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.” The outlet did not offer a cause of death, but noted that Faithfull had experienced numerous health problems in her life, including surviving COVID-19 in 2020.

Musically, Faithfull may be best remembered for songs like “As Tears Go By” and “The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan.” Over the course of her nearly 60-year career, Faithfull released 22 studio albums, with her most recent, She Walks In Beauty, bowing in 2021. But many know Faithfull for the various triumphs and trials in her personal life, particularly her relationship with The Rolling Stones. 

Born in London in 1946, Faithfull was just a teenager when the Rolling Stones’ manager discovered her and gave her “As Tears Go By,” one of the first songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. “I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life,” Faithfull told The A.V. Club in 2011. Before long, she had entered into a romantic relationship with Jagger. “I didn’t know anything about men, certainly nothing about drugs, and nothing about sex, none of that. I really didn’t know.” 

In 1967, Faithfull was caught in a drug bust at Richards’ house. “The perception of me changed completely, but it was wrong,” she recalls. “I think I actually said, I wish I hadn’t, but I said that, ‘Might as well be hung as a sheep as a lamb.’” Faithfull became a tabloid fixture, and fell into addiction, at one point living homeless on the streets of Soho. In 1969, she performed in Hamlet in London, taking heroin before performing Ophelia’s mad scene. “All this stuff isn’t relevant really now at all, and hasn’t been for years, and it’s that that lends the tragic element to my life,” she said in 2011. “I mean, I got off drugs and stopped being so tragic.”

She musically reemerged in the late 1970s, earning a Grammy nomination in 1981 for her album Broken English. Over the next decades, she evolved into a legacy artist, collaborating with artists like PJ Harvey and Nick Cave. Her final album, She Walks In Beauty, was recorded as she recovered from COVID—a recovery doctors didn’t expect her to make. "It's been my dream [to do this record] for a long time,” she told Newsweek in 2021, “and I can't tell you how happy I am that we managed to do it, and then that people seemed to really like it."