The musician Marianne Faithfull wished she’d chosen over Mick Jagger: “It is my biggest regret”
It’s perhaps too harsh to think of the wonderfully talented and creatively minded Marianne Faithfull and think instantly of her connection to Mick Jagger. The late Faithfull was such an entity in the cultural world of the 1960s that her impact, not just as a singer or actor but an art leader, that reducing her legacy to simply being a one-time girlfriend of Jagger is far too reductive. However, there is a churlish thrill that the age of free love and rock ‘n’ roll excites in all of us.
The ‘Swinging Sixties’ weren’t called that for nothing. Although the decade almost certainly saw an increase in cheeky couples planting pampas grass in their gardens, the title is a double entendre that better accounts for the general spirit of the time. For many of the booming baby generation, it was a time of reckless abandon, where the shackles of the past were cast off thanks to advancements in music, art, fashion and technology. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were in the air, and the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix would party harder than ever thought possible.
In fact, the Stones were such party animals that this reputation threatened to overshadow their musical efforts. Led by the songwriting duo frontman Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, they rose early in the decade to become one of the world’s biggest bands, fusing blues and R&B with a modern, taboo-busting edge.
One aspect of The Rolling Stones that was frequently reported on then was their love lives. The most high-profile romance was, of course, Jagger’s long-term relationship with singer and actress Marianne Faithfull. She met the band through her first husband, artist John Dunbar, with whom she attended a Rolling Stones launch party in 1964 and met their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. He is credited with launching her career since she soon shared her first major release, ‘As Tears Go By’, written by Jagger, Richards and Oldham.
Faithfull and Dunbar were married in 1965, and she gave birth to their son, Nicholas, later that year. However, shortly after, she left Dunbar for Jagger. The couple were together for four years, between 1966 and 1970, with the relationship playing out in the public eye and the duo becoming a rock and roll royal couple that millions could love.
However, that wasn’t always the case and the duo were routinely hounded by the press who knew the pair offered up guaranteed column inches. Things intensified when she was found wearing only a fur rug during a drug bust at Keith Richards’ West Sussex home, with her left damaged by headlines such as “Naked Girl At Stones Party”. The fact that the rumours that were reported as fact were wholly untrue mattered very little to the tabloid press, and Faithfull was lambasted.
For a creator like Faithfull, such a line was deeply demoralising. Regarding the incident, Faithfull later reflected: “It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”
By 1998, Faithfull was in the throes of cocaine addiction and miscarried a daughter, Corrina, when recouping at Jagger’s country estate in Ireland. Compounding matters, Jagger had numerous affairs, with rumours that he even cheated on her with her best friend, Anita Pallenberg, the partner of Keith Richards.
Faithfull eventually broke off the relationship in May 1970, with a dark chapter to follow that saw her lose custody of Nicholas. It resulted in a suicide attempt and a two-year stretch on the streets of Soho as a heroin addict. Despite everything she went through and the intense relationship she had with Jagger, in a 2022 interview with Classic Rock, Faithfull revealed that her “biggest regret” was not being with the late Jimi Hendrix instead of The Rolling Stones man.
She recalled watching the ‘Purple Haze’ musician play at The Bag O’Nail’s in London and that she was the only person in the audience. She labelled it “magical”. Hendrix was able to captivate audiences with the connection of his guitar to his amplifier, and Faithfull was as beguiled as anybody.
Of Hendrix, Faithfull told the publication: “I went to see him at his first show in a club in London called The Bag O’Nails. I was the only person there, apart from the roadies and Chas Chandler [Hendrix’s manager]. He saw me there, and he did this whole show to me.”
She then revealed that she encountered Hendrix numerous times and that he was always flirtatious: “It was magical. I met Hendrix quite a few times, and he always came on a bit strong to me. I couldn’t do anything because I was with Mick. I would have loved to. If I hadn’t been with Mick, I would’ve gone off with him. Jimi is my biggest regret.”
