“I made an exception”: The band who coaxed Marianne Faithful into collaborating
Marianne Faithfull has lived a strange life with an odd career to match. In the 1960s, she was the ultimate it-girl, the chic singer and Mick Jagger’s partner, living a life women around the world dreamt of. But as that relationship collapsed and her addictions worsened, she found herself on the streets. From there, she’s lived through decades of comebacks, health issues, career reappraisals, and collaborations, but one connection stands out as a strange one.
From the start, Faithfull’s career has been supported by an ever-changing cast of collaborators. To begin with, it was Jagger and The Rolling Stones as her debut single, ‘As Tears Go By’, was written by Jagger and Richards and gifted to her to sing. She was within the in-crowd during the ‘60s, heard singing on The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ and making her early releases with the help of the era’s finest, recording covers of tracks by other legends.
After falling hard into intense addictions and anorexia that resulted in her being homeless for a period, she was again helped out by collaborators who not only got her clean and healthy but encouraged her to get back to music. Producer Mike Leander helped her make her album Rich Kid Blues, and Barry Reynolds supported her to make her comeback record Broken English. Later down the line, she worked with the likes of Roger Waters, Dr John, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Damon Albarn and many more. She’s even reunited with the Stones for projects decades after her connection to the group.
As the years went on, Faithfull’s career also received a major public reappraisal. After her split from Jagger and her fall from public grace in the 1970s, her talent and impact was often forgotten in the face of her dramatic life story. But in later years, her role as one of the key women of the ‘60s scene has been reestablished and largely, a sense of wider respect for her as a musician has finally prevailed, with countless musical icons recognising her as a peer.
That’s how one musician felt when he called Faithfull up to pitch a strange collaboration. Metallica’s James Hetfield was looking for a woman’s voice to add to their track ‘The Memory Remains’ and he knew that Faithfull and her “weathered, smellin’-the-cigarettes-on-the-CD voice” would be a perfect fit, despite them existing in two very different musical realms.
But as it turns out, Faithfull was a fan. “Lars literally rang me up, and they came over, and we did the song [‘The Memory Remains’]. I don’t really like singing with other people, but I made an exception for Metallica,” she said, willing to make an exception for her surprising favourite band.
“They’re a really good working band, they know what they’re doing. James was nothing like how I imagined, which is the raison d’etre of my life,” she said, declaring throwing out first impressions to give people a chance as her most important life lesson and biggest piece of advice. She added kindly, “They’re all nice boys, good to their mums and their wives”, as she vouched not only for their talent but their personalities too.
The result is a song that shouldn’t work, but strangely, it does as the 1997 track, sitting on their album Reload, sees the collaboration between the ‘60s it-girl and the hard rockers.
