Marianne Faithfull, Legendary U.K. Pop & Rock Singer, Dies at 78

Marianne Faithfull, British singer, songwriter, actress and iconic figure of the 1960s, 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 statement shared to BBC reads. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

A cause of death has yet to be revealed. 

Faithfull was born in the Hampstead area of North London, the daughter of an Austrian aristocrat and a British intelligence officer. Starting a career as a folk singer in the early ’60s, she made the acquaintance of Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, who introduced her to the band’s circle, and offered her “As Tears Go By,” a composition co-penned by the band’s Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The sparse, acoustic ballad hit the top 10 in the U.K. in 1964, and also crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 22.

“As Tears Go By” made Faithfull a star, and further hits followed the next year: “Come and Stay With Me,” “This Little Bird” and “Summer Nights,” all of which hit the U.K. top 10 and the Billboard top 40. Faithfull also became a British tabloid fixture, particularly after she began an affair with Jagger in 1966, ultimately leaving her first husband John Dunbar to live wth him. Early the next year, she made headlines for being at the scene of a drug bust at Richards’ house, dressed only in a fur rug at the time of the arrest.

The hits dried up for Faithfull in the late ’60s, but she continued to be a pop/rock presence, singing backing vocals on The Beatles’ No. 2 hit “Yellow Submarine” and co-writing the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers classic drug ballad “Sister Morphine.” However, her drug addiction ended up consuming much of what should have been her prime years, particularly after she split with Jagger and lost custody of her son Nicholas (with first husband Dunbar) in 1970. After 1967’s Love in a Mist album — her last on Decca Records — she would not release another album until 1976.

Faithfull would make her first and most resounding comeback in 1979, with the new wave and disco-influenced Broken English set. The singer/songwriter’s voice had transformed into something lower and more weathered with her drug usage, and the set drew rave reviews for its modern sounds and brittle energy. Substance abuse sapped the momentum the Grammy-nominated set earned Faithfull’s career, until a 1987 reinvention as a jazz and blues singer on her Strange Weather set.

She was a sporadic presence in the mainstream for the rest of the 20th century, with high-profile guest roles on Roger Waters of Pink Floyd’s 1990 live tour of his band’s best-selling The Wall set, and as a featured vocalist on Metallica’s 1997 single “The Memory Remains.” She experienced another critical resurgence in the early 21st century with 2002’s Kissin Time set — including songs written by popular alt-rock figures Beck, Blur and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins — and released further albums of originals and covers for the next two decades, most recently with 2018’s Negative Capability, her highest-charting set on the U.K. albums chart since 1965.

Outside of her recording career, Faithfull also had a successful run as an actress, appearing in theatrical roles on the stage, in television and in film. She holds the distinction of being the first person to ever say the word “f–k” in a mainstream movie, doing so in the 1967 Michael Winner film I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname, and had small 21st century rules in the hit British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (as God), and in the Sofia Coppola-directed biopic Marie Antoinette (as Empress Maria Theresa). For her starring role in 2007’s Irina Palm, as a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker out of necessity, she was nominated for a European Film Award for best actress.

Faithfull also endures as one of the defining popular figures of ’60s Swinging London, iconic for her voice and her fashion, and for being a muse to many of the musicians in her orbit, primarily of course The Rolling Stones. She was ranked 25th in VH1’s 1999 list of the Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and in 2009, she was named icon of the year at the U.K.-based Q Awards. “‘I’m glad you can hear the experience in my voice,” she told Time Out New York in 2016. “I should think so, after 50 years.”