Interview

Talking to Marianne Faithfull over the day’s first coffee is a bit like waking up for cocktails. She’s alert and energetic, but chicly world weary. Her conversation is direct but subtle, wry but sincere. Faithfull has been there, done that, and been there again and done that too—rock stardom, Mick Jagger, addiction, homelessness, cancer, and motherhood are just some of the episodes of her richly patinated saga—and while her voice is famously broken, her humor is unbent. Her unapologetic decadence and hard-won wisdom is refreshing to hear, especially since her fans have had cause for concern in recent years: In September of 2006, Faithfull was diagnosed with breast cancer; the following year, she announced that she had been treated for hepatitis C; and she took an extended break in 2008, despite having just recorded one of the best albums of her career. That album, Easy Come, Easy Go (Decca), has just been released in the States. In putting it together, Faithfull, 62, and her longtime producer buddy Hal Willner, went hipster hog-wild, scrolling through their address books to enlist musicians such as Nick Cave, Antony Hegarty, Sean Lennon, Chan Marshall, Rufus Wainwright, and Keith Richards, whom Faithfull first met in the ’60s when she began her long, tumultuous relationship with Jagger. And they picked an eclectic group of covers, from such classics as Billie Holiday’s “Solitude” to “Children of Stone” by the contemporary neo-folkies Espers. Faithfull says that all together, the songs tell her life story—a story she has told in book form in her 1994 autobiography, Faithfull, and in her 2007 memoir, Memories, Dreams & Reflections, but one that was made for singing about, and she does so brilliantly in her inimitable cigarettes-and-whiskey rasp.

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EVELYN McDONNELL: How did the idea for this record come about, of choosing these kinds of songs to record and working with Hal Willner and the other musicians?

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: Well, you know, Hal and I have worked together a lot before, and we’re very good friends. We always wanted to do another record in the studio, and I felt like part of my taking a break, really, was that I wanted to not write. So we started to look for songs. I started, and he started, and I found quite a few. Then he came over in October of 2007, and I played him the ones I found, and he played me lots of songs, and we went through them all, and we picked these. Have you got the 10 songs or the 18?

McDONNELL: I have the 12.

FAITHFULL: Oh, the 12, sorry, yeah. Well, we did a lot more than that. In Europe, I think, they’re releasing the 18 songs.

McDONNELL: We’re getting ripped off in America?

FAITHFULL: A bit . . . [both laugh] But maybe it’s better. Maybe they know their market. There’s a lot of money problems at the moment . . .

McDONNELL: Yes, indeed.

FAITHFULL: So I think it might be better. The 12, they’re lovely.

McDONNELL: Which ones did you find?

FAITHFULL: “Down from Dover” by Dolly Parton, “Sing Me Back Home,” which is the one with Keith [Richards] . . . I wanted to do “Ooh Baby Baby” [by The Miracles] as well. I’m not sure what else you got.

McDONNELL: You can also tell me the ones that are on the European version.

FAITHFULL: Yes, well, there’s a lovely version of “Many Miles of Freedom” by Traffic. And “Black Coffee.” It was recorded by Ella [Fitzgerald], of course, but everybody’s recorded “Black Coffee.” I love Ella, but she’s too technically perfect. I only like a few virtuoso voices, but I do like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. And the rest of the time I like slightly more quirky voices. Ella’s version overwhelmed me, so I listened to the Bobby Darin version. I like the Bobby Darin because I think it’s not such a perfect voice, but it’s very good. And the other songs . . . There’s a wonderful version of me and Jarvis Cocker -doing “Somewhere.”

McDONNELL: Oh, that’s not on the American CD version of the record either.

FAITHFULL: Well, they’re going to have to release the whole thing eventually. I’m sure they will.

McDONNELL: Right. And they’ll get the money from people twice. [both laugh] What were you looking for when you were picking songs?

FAITHFULL: Hal and I took a huge risk in picking the songs, which I think we liked doing.

McDONNELL: The risk being that the songs that you picked were these eclectic . . .

FAITHFULL: Well, also that we didn’t pick any one kind of music. There’s country, jazz, blues, rock ’n’ roll, and folk on this record. You don’t really realize that maybe with the 12 songs, but there are an awful lot of things on there.

McDONNELL: And songs by more contemporary artists like The Decemberists and Neko Case . . .

Listen "The Crane Wife 3"

FAITHFULL: I like The Decemberists one because it sounds like a folk tale, you know? Those kinds of strange love affairs in a folk tale. And the Neko Case one is just great. I can really understand what it’s about. But another song you haven’t got is “The Phoenix,” which is a Judee Sill song.

McDONNELL: No, I do have that one.

FAITHFULL: Oh, good, because she’s a very interesting songwriter.

McDONNELL: I don’t really know her work.

FAITHFULL: Well, she was a singer-songwriter—a folk singer, really—in the ’60s. And she was a heroin addict, and she died. But she wrote some lovely songs. I don’t know if I could have written “The Phoenix.” That’s Sean Lennon playing 12-string guitar, and then singing, too.