The Ballad of Marianne Faithfull

From rock star muse to pariah and even unto death, Marianne Faithfull's journey mirrors our own. Karla S. Bryant reflects.

“Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to

come out of it with a few good songs”.

~Marianne Faithfull

A ballad, according to definition, is a song or poem that tells a story. When it comes to Marianne Faithfull, the story tracks from my childhood interest to personal struggle to triumph. Her music and resilience formed a backdrop to my own story.

Growing up in the 60s with an older sister fine-tuned to all things pop culture, the name Marianne Faithfull was familiar. But what I knew about her was basic:

She was Mick Jagger’s girlfriend.

She recorded one of the first songs Jagger and Keith Richards wrote together, “As Tears Go By”.

At that time, my family lived in a large Victorian home in Buffalo, New York. My sister and I would sit on the hardwood floor of her second-floor bedroom and listen to “As Tears Go By”. We played it over and over on a small portable turntable.

To us, Marianne Faithfull was the female embodiment of the British Invasion, the 1960s, and of all things mod. She was bright paisley mini dresses, tall boots, long hair, pale pink lipstick, and black eyeliner. Everything. An issue of Teen Magazine had a photo essay about Carnaby Street, which formed a new image of London for me. It changed from the city that was the pretty backdrop of Mary Poppins to a buoyant place full of new music and adventures. Years later when I visited London for the first time, near the top of my goal list was to go to Carnaby Street and buy tights designed by 60s British fashion icon, Mary Quant. The goal was achieved.

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“To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorizing. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”

~ Marianne Faithfull

To say the early 70s were turbulent is a weak way of putting it. The Vietnam War polarized the country, race riots were erupting in major cities, and drugs were regularly showing up in schools. My father’s career moved our family to a high-rise apartment in Washington, DC. It was a difficult adjustment. My sister and I escaped, with hyper focus, to the alternate reality of Teen Magazine. But things had changed even within those pages. The cheerful Herman’s Hermits, with their matching suits and happy smiles, were replaced with The Who and Led Zeppelin. Pretty mini dresses made way for bell-bottoms and halter tops. Love songs were pushed aside by songs of rebellion.

Being older, my sister had the privilege of reading the magazine first.

I remember her looking shocked, then glancing at me, and announcing, “Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull broke up! It says she’s a drug addict and she lost custody of her son.”

I was genuinely sad. “But what happens now?”

It was the perfect sentence for the decade. Living in DC when the Watergate scandal broke meant hearing about it daily. The loud, angry arguments between my parents got quieter. I thought it meant things were getting better. I was wrong. They’d decided to get divorced. With almost no warning, my mother moved my sister and me to a small midwestern town where her parents had retired. The world kept spinning too fast. Everyone seemed a little dizzy. But in this quiet, remote place, I felt I could catch my breath and open my eyes again.

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“To be so young and so beautiful—I was 17 years old, a convent schoolgirl—and to be thrown into that shark world was really too much. Sexualized in a very unpleasant way,

and unable to say, “No, I won’t do that.”

~ Marianne Faithfull

Life in a small town was almost idyllic. The chaos of my pre-teen years calmed down. I made close friends, and I was head over heels about my boyfriend. Everything was as it should be. Until it wasn’t.

A well-respected, middle-aged man in my small town sexually assaulted me when I was seventeen. For months after the attack, he blackmailed me. He told me if I said a word, he would ruin me. He would destroy me. And I believed him. So I said nothing. I coped by trying to convince myself it had never happened. It wasn’t effective. Then I acted out. I drank too much, I dated inappropriate men. I was spiraling downward.

My father had recently moved to Philadelphia, and I asked him if I could move there. I never said why. All I knew was that I had to get out of that small town, and I would bury what had happened.

Months later, Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English album came out. Every time I listened to the track “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”, I would focus on the lines:

“At the age of thirty-seven,

She realized she’d never ride

Through Paris in a sports car

With the warm wind in her hair.”

The words encouraged me to live my life fully and without regrets. As I fought for years against trauma-induced panic attacks and generalized anxiety, I’d occasionally read about Marianne Faithfull’s ongoing battles with addiction. We were both fighting hard, very hard, against demons.

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All I have to do is what's right for me.

~ Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull and the author exchange notes on Twitter.

We both won our battles. I’m living a full, thriving life that has improved with each decade. I’ve had short stories and essays published in anthologies, and several short screenplays produced as indie films. I’m active on social media.

And one time, on what I still call Twitter, I saw Marianne Faithfull was posting on her account. Marianne Faithfull, herself – not her assistant. I asked a question, she responded, and I immediately sent a screenshot of it to my older sister, who was even more excited about it than I was.

On YouTube, you can listen to Marianne singing “As Tears Go By” in 1965, in 1987, and in 2018. And if you’re a woman of a certain age, you may hear the stages of your own life in the voice that changes from innocence to brokenness to fulfillment.

In January 2024, my sister passed. She’d had a number of health issues for some time. But that didn’t mean I was ready for it. I’d had no life before her, and it felt like an amputation. I allowed myself time to mourn, which seems unusual today, and I know I will always miss her. When I saw the news that Marianne Faithfull died, I immediately wanted to call my sister. At first, I thought it was such an odd reaction. Later, I realized it was an understandable response.

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Karla S. Bryant is a published author and essayist. She is also a produced independent

screenwriter. She focuses her work on people in midlife, exploring the richness of their layered

histories and how they play a part when their lives take unexpected turns.

Images:

Marianne Faithfull collage & tweet courtesy of the author.

Washington Monument courtesy of Unseen Histories