Marianne Faithfull

London, 1979: the days of Swinging London were long gone, punk had already swept away plenty of certainties, and the long shadow of the Thatcher decade was about to fall over the whole of the United Kingdom. Wandering the streets and suburbs of the capital was a lone figure: few would have dared to recognize her, yet that face had once known great fame. Sweet, cheeky Marianne, the trauma of a difficult childhood kept locked deep in her heart... With a guitar slung over her shoulder and that silken voice, enough to make Shirley Collins and Vashti Bunyan envious, she had bewitched an entire nation. Who could blame Mick Jagger for wanting her by his side as muse and companion? And how could one not, when that magical connection gave rise to "As Tears Go By", one of the most indelible anthems of that extraordinary season?

Yes, that season now belongs to an almost mythical past, a fable swept away like the most unreal of lies. Other concerns had taken the place of that astonishing wave of optimism; new heroes had replaced, with little ceremony, the faded idols of an era already dissolved into dust. Oblivion, perhaps an even worse punishment than a deliberate damnatio memoriae, cast its oppressive shroud over most of the faces and voices that had symbolized a great period.

Sweet, cheeky Marianne... She herself became one of the most illustrious victims. A fading from the scene with the flavor of Greek tragedy: endless troubles, a son she had to give up early on, a heroin addiction spiraling out of all control, the alleys of Soho her only refuge. A curtain that fell far too suddenly, a step away from the most fateful of endpoints: a line constantly flirted with, revisited, perhaps even longed for, deep within an existence lacking meaning, lacking direction.

But deep down, that tenacity, that blessed tenacity, had never stopped burning. Beneath those embers, sweeping away the ash, still burned the pulsing fire of a soul hungry to make its voice heard, torn away too soon from its most natural context. If a fine, if inconclusive, covers collection from the mid-Seventies, "Dreamin' My Dreams" (which unexpectedly found success across the water in Ireland), offered the first glimmers of rebirth, life had an unhoped-for, extraordinary redemption in store for her. If we want to play with signs and symbols, it's not hard to believe that, given her surname, the whole thing takes on rather illuminating overtones.

And here comes the sudden jolt, the twist that overturns every expectation: new surroundings, new company (David Wilkie of Fleetwood Mac among others, but above all Barry Reynolds and Steve Winwood: the former's pen and guitar, and the latter's keyboards, would prove essential collaborators), and finally a revolution on the verge of exploding, shake a clouded consciousness out of its torpor, instilling passion where even the most misguided rehab programs had failed. Marianne herself would later say, in her celebrated memoirs, that punk saved her, pulled her out of her own misery. She lives through that season with tremendous intensity and abandon: already savored alongside some of the era's leading figures (Ben Brierley of the Vibrators at her side), taken like the most redemptive of medicines, it would be punk itself that catapulted her back into serious artistic conversation, lifting her bodily out of the nostalgic footnotes reserved for stars that once were.

A stage turned powder keg, then, a scandalous and fascinating pandemonium reinventing itself at unprecedented speed, throwing up new role models every week: the most stimulating backdrop imaginable for a comeback, with a brand-new contract with Island Records to shelve dusty, old-fashioned interpretations and throw herself into the fray with renewed enthusiasm. But above all, with a barely-mastered English, painfully spat out, courageously broken: it's as if her own bearing, her own suffering, is mirrored in the very title of the album that sealed Faithfull's definitive artistic rebirth. From then on, nothing would ever be the same.

Even that cover alone, that lit cigarette taking up all the available space, the gaze tucked behind an arm, that electric blue lighting up the profile of her face in a violent play of contrasts, rightfully belongs among the classics. Nothing more would be needed: compared to the baroque elegance of the late Sixties, Marianne presents herself in a tangibly different guise. After all, those slaps in the face, that tormented self-destructiveness, couldn't pass without leaving a mark. And what a shock, for anyone who rediscovered her years after her dazzling youthful appearances, to hear that voice.

Exactly, that voice: beginning and end of every torment, the arc of a life devoted to self-destruction, legacy of addictions and abuses that ruthlessly tore through that once-enchanting veil of silk. But what use is silk to someone used to the cold pavement? What use is it to someone who, against the religion of luxury, throws back a dry, fierce "What are you fighting for?" in an iconic, aggressive title track (hard to forget that guitar riff, courtesy of Barry Reynolds), lashing out at the wave of terrorism that haunted the whole of Europe for years? Nothing: she rejects it like so much waste paper. Her ruins, the wreckage of a past that once was, now speak an entirely different language. Drama is her constant companion, and the hysterical jabs of guitar, bass and synth are new arrows in her quiver. Let others build castles in the air.

Here she rides the new wave with unbroken courage, breathing in its thrill with full lungs. And no matter if that same wave keeps spasmodically chasing its next fix, turning all its attention to the eternal ritual of oblivion. It's no use reminding yourself that yes, there's no rush: "You want the power, you need the glory", you rasp to yourself, this is what you need. Pure, raw reality, backed by a stark and devastatingly effective punk arrangement: how many "Heroine"'s had already been written, passed indifferently under the bridges of memory. But here everything is different, with that cracked, raspy, biting voice lending a touch of feminine rawness to the theme of abuse.

A woman, yes: but there was no priestess-like aura of a Patti Smith, no timeless sacredness of a Nico, to redeem her from the surrounding squalor, to make her attacks on society, her scandalous personal experiences, more palatable. But it's precisely that sharpness that makes for, among other things, unrepeatable tirades against religion ("I feel guilt, I feel guilt, though I ain't done nothing wrong I feel guilt", she declares with dispassionate simplicity in "Guilt", the partnership with Reynolds producing another gem of top-class wave songwriting), sublimating the longing for escape of any given Lucy Jordan, making it coincide with her own past, her aversion to a world from which there seems to be no escape.

And it's this very song, this moving and heartfelt "Ballad Of Lucy Jordan" (a reinterpretation of a track originally performed by Dr. Hook), that would pave the way for the cult status of "Broken English". Released alongside the album, introduced by a strikingly modern, alluring synth-folk arrangement (and a reminder to Kate Bush that the seeds of her "Heads We're Dancing" had already been planted ten years earlier), the song was soon destined for endless reworkings and covers. Curiously, it was itself a new interpretation of the Dr. Hook original, and would go on to feature in a cult film like "Thelma & Louise". But in the end, her stature as an interpreter had never stopped shining through.

With that voice, magnificently worn down, having lost an octave but gained new shades of nuance, the weight of the former "North Country Maid", the eternal dreamer, took on an unusual, different vigor, one that made her almost a foul-mouthed riot-grrrl ante litteram. Emotional details take on new meaning, the swells and silences gain heightened importance, underlining the very themes of the lyrics. The Lennon-penned standard "Working Class Hero" becomes, in Faithfull's hands, far more than a "simple" protest anthem about class divides. That guitar swelling second by second, Marianne's voice now vanishing into its weave and a moment later annihilating it with sudden bursts of intensity, a tension that keeps falling apart and reassembling itself: not just a tribute to those roaring Sixties lived on the front line, but an era brought back to life, speaking to the present as an equal, challenging its conventions and approaches. The best revenge on anyone who wanted to write off the old glories as dead and buried.

Glories that time has made, if anything, more insolent, more brazen than ever: having successfully persuaded the poet Heathcote Williams not to hand his lyrics over to a Tina Turner who would never have agreed to expose herself to verses of such weight, Faithfull saves the most scandalous, most libidinous confession for the icing on the cake. Yes, a "Why'd Ya Do It?" whose effect was, needless to say, immediate: the track's reggae break softening the hard-rock edges of the guitar, the keyboards embroidering a vague psychedelic backdrop, were nothing more than the vehicle, the conduit for an explicitness that instantly outraged every woman in charge of production at Island.

Try explaining to them how it's possible to talk about fellatio and male infidelity with such ease, suddenly overturning every commonly accepted perspective; try explaining that certain models no longer made any sense to someone who had never given the fake propriety of the good girl even a fighting chance. But that alone was enough to stir up an enormous fuss: never before had such verbal insolence, such explicit sexual declarations, been heard from the fairer sex, who in the minds of many were supposed to stick to rather different subjects: in Australia, the record was even banned in print. Well before the provocations of Veronica Ciccone, other women had already set about critically upending common sensibilities.

And this is where the artistic success of "Broken English" is rooted. Even before being an excellent collection of songs, even before being an example of a formidable conversion to the new gospel of wave, the record is a manifesto for a different model of artist and performer, of a proud, combative woman who sees in her problems, in her anguish, an opportunity rather than an obstacle. The opportunity to present herself without filters, to lay bare her own experience in the most direct and truthful way possible, to make plain a more passionate, more unsettling approach to femininity. No matter if the respectable classes turned away in disgust. There is life in this record, first and foremost. Everything else follows naturally from that.

P.S. Thanks to Alessandro Liccardo for his valuable suggestions.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

22/12/2013