Sixties rock icon dies

According to statistics, women live longer than men, so there is some injustice in the fact that one of the icons of rock music of the last century, Marianne Faithfull, whose death at the age of 78 is urgently reported by the world media today, passed away so early. However, it cannot be ruled out that she was simply "caught up" with her lifestyle in her youth.

When Marianne's future husband, artist and collector John Dunbar, brought her to a party in 1964 to celebrate the launch of the Rolling Stones project, the young singer charmed Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the band's manager Andrew Loog Oldham so much that they gave her their song As Tears Go By, which she performed and which took 9th place in the British charts. (The Rolling Stones recorded their version later.)

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But that was only the beginning. In 1966, after giving birth to a son, Faithfull left her husband for Jagger, with whom she had been in an affair for four years. She sang, acted in films, was a shining light in the party scene – and turned her own life into a nightmare by becoming addicted to drugs. In 1970, already without Jagger, she was deprived of custody of her son, attempted suicide, and eventually became homeless, living on the streets of London and suffering from drug addiction and nervous anorexia. Friends tried to treat her and even helped her record a new album, but her voice had become so coarse (including from laryngitis) that not everyone accepted Faithfull's new singing style. And even when her music career was on the upswing again, her addiction problems continued into the mid-80s, which presumably led to her living with strange partners, one of whom was mentally ill and later committed suicide.

It wasn't until the 90s that Faithfull managed to pull herself together and began recording album after album, in 1999 she was ranked 25th on VH-1's Greatest Women of Rock 'n' Roll list, and in 2007 she was nominated for a European Oscar for her role in the (admittedly hooligan) film Irina Palm.

However, her turbulent past life took its toll - she was diagnosed with hepatitis C, breast cancer (in its early stages), she broke her hip and finally contracted coronavirus, although she overcame it. Later, she released the album She Walks In Beauty, in which the girl, who once performed albeit very good (even legendary, if we mean As Tears Go By) "pop", went through all the trials of life, and at 74 years old came to the poems of the British classic romantics Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson and Wordworth, which were set to music with the participation of Nick Cave and Brian Eno.

But in her capacity as an icon of rock music, she will forever remain Marianne Faithfull from the 60s.

Photo: Reddit