Singer who found pop fame and tabloid infamy in the 60s but returned to music in the 70s with Broken English, a statement of bloody-minded survival. Faithfull, who has died aged 78, released 22 solo albums and collaborated with many big names in music. She also had some success as an actor. All of it was achieved against a backdrop of addiction and personal struggles that she did not hide.
Her upbringing had equipped her for the bubbling social laboratory of the mids. Her father, Glynn Faithfull, a major in British army intelligence, met Eva in Vienna and brought her back to postwar Britain. Born in Hampstead, north London, Marianne spent her early years at a commune with which her father had become involved at Braziers Park in south Oxfordshire.
Her pop career lifted off immediately. However, her progress was impeded by her marriage to the gallerist and cultural scene-maker John Dunbar in The couple had a son, Nicholas, when Faithfull was 18, but the union was short-lived. Faithfull took her baby and sought refuge with the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and his girlfriend, the model Anita Pallenberg , in London. Her relationship with Jagger disintegrated in , the year she suffered a miscarriage.
When she also lost custody of Nicholas, she attempted suicide and fell into heroin addiction. In she had written the song Sister Morphine, later recorded by the Stones for the album Sticky Fingers, apparently before she had ever tried the drug. Now she spent two years as an addict, living on the streets of Soho.
In she married the musician Ben Brierly, the same year in which she recorded her highly praised comeback album, Broken English. The disc introduced a startlingly transformed Faithfull, singing songs of rage and disgust. As a statement of bloody-minded survival from a woman written off by many as beautiful but doomed, it was hard to beat.
