Marianne Faithfull, ‘As Tears Go By’ Singer, Dies at 78

Marianne Faithfull, ‘As Tears Go By’ Singer, Dies at 78

Marianne Faithfull, the British singer who scored hits including “As Tears Go By” and “Broken English” as she went from a highly publicized romantic relationship with Mick Jagger to worldwide fame in her own right, died Thursday. She was 78.

Faithfull’s death in London was announced by her family in a statement to the BBC.

Faithfull also appeared in such films as I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname (1967) and The Girl on the Motorcycle (1968) and on the stage in Three Sisters and Hamlet, though her career was curtailed in the 1970s by heroin addiction, alcoholism and homelessness.

She forged a dramatic comeback in 1979 with the album Broken English, which landed her a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance. In 2011, she was awarded the Commandeur of The Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres, one of France’s highest cultural honors.

Born on Dec. 29, 1946, in Hampstead, London, Faithfull was the daughter of a British Army officer and Austro-Hungarian mother with aristocratic roots. They divorced when she was 6, and her childhood was marred by bouts with tuberculosis.

Faithfull began her singing career in 1964, performing folk in coffeehouses in London, where she attended a Rolling Stones release party and met the band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Her first hit, “As Tears Go By,” recorded when she was 17 in 1964, was written by Jagger, Keith Richards and Oldham and peaked at No. 22 in the U.S.

She followed with such songs as “This Little Bird,” “Summer Nights” and “Come and Stay With Me.”

Faithfull was famously photographed wearing just a fur rug at a drug bust at Richards’ estate in 1967 and arrested.

She had married artist John Dunbar and had a son, Nicholas, but shortly after left her husband in 1966 to live with Jagger. They broke up in May 1970 after she had a miscarriage and lost custody of her son, all of which led to a suicide attempt.

She was influential in the development of the Stones — “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was reportedly written about her, as were the songs “Wild Horses” and “I Got the Blues” — and she was given co-writing credit on “Sister Morphine.” She also appeared in the Stones’ 1968 Rock and Roll Circus concert movie, singing “Something Better.”

Faithfull’s Broken English album was influenced by punk and her marriage to Ben Brierly of The Vibrators in 1979. The LP also included “Why D’Ya Do It,” a punk-reggae song that was a forerunner of rap, with lyrics adapted from a poem by Heathcote Williams about sexual betrayal.

Faithfull moved to New York after the release of 1981’s Dangerous Acquaintances, and, while still suffering from addiction, had a disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live in which her vocal cords seized up.

Her 1984 double-album set, Rich Kid Blues, was a collection of unreleased work and new recordings. In 1985, she performed “Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife” on the Hal Willner tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill.

Faithfull reinvented herself as a jazz and blues singer on the 1987 Willner-produced Strange Weather, an album of cover songs that received critical kudos for her new version of “As Tears Go By.” It also included versions of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” and tunes once recorded by Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith.

Faithfull played Pink’s overprotective mother in Roger Waters’ all-star The Wall, performed live in Berlin in July 1990. Her subsequent live album, Blazing Away, recorded at St. Ann’s Cathedral in Brooklyn, offered definitive versions of “Sister Morphine,” “Why D’Ya Do It?” and Edith Piaf’s “Les Prisons du Roy,” featuring accompaniment by Barry Reynolds, The Band’s Garth Hudson and Dr. John. 

In 1994, the first of her three memoirs, Faithfull: An Autobiography, was published, accompanied by A Collection of Her Best Recordings. The latter included a version of Patti Smith’s “Ghost Dance,” which featured Charlie Watts and Ron Wood and Richards co-producing.

In 1997, she contributed background vocals to Metallica’s “The Memory Remains” from their album ReLoad and appeared in the song’s music video.

Faithfull’s “Kissin’ Time,” released in 2002, featured songs written with Blur, Beck, Billy Corgan, Jarvis Cocker, Dave Stewart and French pop singer Etienne Daho and a tribute to Nico. “Before the Poison,” a collaboration with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, came out in 2005.

Around this time, she appeared in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2004) and Gus Van Zant’s Paris, I Love You (2006). In 2007, she was back on tour with Songs of Innocence and Experience.

More recent albums included Easy Come, Easy Go in 2008, Horses and High Heels in 2011, Give My Love to London in 2014 and She Walks in Beauty in 2021.

Survivors include her son.