The regrettable project Marianne Faithfull thought Kenneth Anger tricked her into: “He fancied Mick”
You can say what you like about The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, but there is no escaping the fact that the man had impeccable vision.
When he first came across The Rolling Stones, they were a bunch of long-haired wannabe rockstars churning out Muddy Waters covers and dreaming of making music akin to their R&B heroes. Any other manager would have probably dismissed them as a bunch of idle dreamers, but Oldham saw something special, so much so that he took them under his wing and guided them towards success.
This meant pushing an image which he knew would resonate with fans, but it also meant forcing them to start writing original material. They could play those R&B covers all day long, but if they intended to be a real successful band, they would need to put out some brand new material.
When the band seemed reluctant to start putting pen to paper and become proper songwriters, Oldham took drastic measures, locking Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in a kitchen and not letting them come out until they had finally finished a track, and the result was ‘As Tears Go By’, a song which ended up reaching number one. Praise The Stones, and praise Oldham’s vision, as this song wouldn’t have worked were it not for another relatively unknown artist he saw potential in.
Lending her stellar vocals to the track was Marianne Faithfull, someone else with whom Oldham had begun working. This single marked the first time a lot of people had heard Faithfull, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last, as she would wind up having a career filled with great music and some excellent acting performances. Faithfull passed away in 2025, but she left behind some truly exceptional work, including the likes of ‘Strange Weather’, ‘With You In Mind’ and ‘In My Own Particular Way’.
Of course, it would be unfair to suggest that Faithfull’s life was one purely made up of creative highs. There were also some lows dotted about both personally and professionally, as Faithfull struggled with addiction earlier on in her life, which led to stagnation in her career, and some projects that she regrets. One of them was her appearance in the Kenneth Anger film Lucifer Rising, which Faithfull looked back on and realised she only did because of her addiction.
“I don’t think I would have bought the whole Lucifer Rising thing if I hadn’t been so fucked up at the time,” she admitted. “Drugs seem to give you that immediate wanting of people to be nice to you, and you’ll believe anything, because your self-esteem goes. So I thought Kenneth liked me. I can see now he didn’t. He was just like all those queens – he fancied Mick.”
It became apparent to Faithfull almost immediately that she had made a mistake by agreeing to take part in the movie, and this wasn’t necessarily a piece of fiction, those who worked on the picture genuinely believed in the occult nature of its narrative, but Faithfull, ironically, didn’t have faith in such things, and as such, she knew she had made a mistake by agreeing to be in the movie, and it remained a regretful decision.
“Kenneth wanted me to be Lilith in Lucifer Rising. I’ve never been attracted to black magic,” she concluded. “I realised quite soon that I’d taken on something that I didn’t believe in and didn’t like. I should never have done it.”
