The School of Hard Knocks

There's a lot of water under the bridge between these two photos of Marianne Faithfull. The top one was taken in 1964 (at the beautiful Salisbury pub on St. Martin's Lane) and the one below it in 1979.


In those 15 years she'd had a handful of light folk-pop hits, given birth to a son, been Mick Jagger's girlfriend, become hooked on cocaine, had a miscarriage, taken her kit off and romped with Alain Delon in the erotic psychedelic biker movie "Girl On A Motorcycle," written The Stones' "Sister Morphine," been in a drug-induced coma, split up with Jagger, lost custody of her son, become a heroin addict, spent two years living rough on the streets of Soho, suffered from anorexia, lived in a squat, and married The Vibrators' bassist Ben Brierly.

If that's all there was to the story Marianne would have been remembered mostly as a kind of English Edie Sedgwick, a beautiful party girl destroyed by drugs, more famous for who she was shagging than any actual accomplishments of her own. But she managed to drag herself out of the shit in 1979 and recorded the brilliant "Broken English" album which, given what she'd been through, was something of a human triumph as well as an artistic one. If I'd been through half the things she had I'd barely have the will to stick my head in a gas oven, let alone make such a vital, alive record. The album had a stark, edgy post-punk sound and in Marianne's voice you could hear the life she'd lived, with her previously wispy and delicate tones replaced by a snarling, throaty croak ravaged by booze, drugs and fags – it was like Vashti Bunyan turning into Tom Waits.

The punky-reggae track "Why D'Ya Do It?" really put the cat amongst the pigeons with it's explicit, x-rated lyrics written by the poet and playwright Heathcote Williams (who apparently wanted Tina Turner to sing it originally, the mind boggles at the thought.) It's a vicious kiss-off to an unfaithful lover full of language that would shock your Granny – hell, it makes me blush. This is a very grown-up song with an emotional anger that makes some punk band saying "fuck" on a record sound a bit juvenile in comparison. I'd hate to be the bloke she's thinking about when she sings this.

Download: Why D'Ya Do It? - Marianne Faithfull (mp3)
Buy: "Broken English" (album)