{"id":1079,"date":"2007-12-19T00:34:29","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T05:34:29","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-01-09T11:17:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-09T11:17:15","slug":"please-explain-marianne-faithful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-marianne-faithful\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Explain: Marianne Faithfull"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any young Rolling Stones fan ready to move onto a deeper exploration of the Stones&#8217; saga will soon confront <strong>Marianne Faithfull<\/strong>: sweet young thing of noble breeding, girlfriend of Mick Jagger, protege of Mick, Keef, and Andrew Loog Oldham&#8230; This early clip demonstrates the &#8220;gimme&#8221; in this story: beatiful, young woman with the ability to barely carry a tune and backing from one of the world&#8217;s greatest acts.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ndCT1VHEF9g?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Soon thereafter, she would descend into a hellish world of drugs, free sex, and <strong>Mars Bars<\/strong>. She&#8217;d hit rock bottom and then heroically rebound with a voice that made Tom Waits sound angelic and barely a trace of her youthful beauty. Next is a clip of her in mid-fall, still wearing an evening gown but looking much more like one of the women from the final scenes in <em>La Dolce Vita<\/em> than Julie Christie in <em>Darling<\/em>.<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/44qEgxRn1AU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This piece gives a nice summary of the descent and slow rise toward the comeback album, <em>Broken English<\/em>.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eR1QaQWwYQA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You wouldn&#8217;t be visiting Rock Town Hall if you didn&#8217;t know that she wrote a good deal of the Stones&#8217; <strong>&#8220;Sister Morphine&#8221;<\/strong> during these worst of times. The bastards tried to rip her off! Personally, I never <em>got<\/em> the thrill over the Stones&#8217; version of &#8220;Sister Morphine&#8221;, but this version by Marianne Faithfull doesn&#8217;t help matters.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/caveeoOiKZs?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That brings us to the big comeback album, <em>Broken English<\/em>, and the title track, which was a minor hit right around the time I&#8217;d been reading about this curious woman of Stones lore. The reviews for this album were fantastic. Then I heard the music. I didn&#8217;t get it.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EUT9V3EhC2w?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s anther track from that album. To be honest, the music&#8217;s almost cool enough for me in that &#8220;I&#8217;m getting into <strong>Townsman Geo&#8217;s head<\/strong>&#8221; kind of way. Geo, were you big on this album?<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0KV-PTK0UZ4?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Revisiting &#8220;Broken English&#8221; after all these years I&#8217;m still puzzled. Do any of you actually like this music, or do you identify with her personal tale of triumph, kind of the way I suspect the mainstream of downtrodden and emotionally scarred music fans went head over heals for that big comeback record by <strong>Tina Turner<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>She can&#8217;t sing, can she? I don&#8217;t mean she can&#8217;t sing in a &#8220;Bob Dylan doesn&#8217;t sing in a conventional way&#8221; style of not being able to sing, but that she doesn&#8217;t hit many notes or project a pleasing or otherwise engaging vocal tone. Does she? &#8220;Broken English&#8221; sounds like a blah <strong>Yoko Ono<\/strong> track from <em>Double Fantasy<\/em> with a 3rd-rate <strong>Bonnie Tyler<\/strong> (making Faithfull a 5th-rate Rod Stewart) on vocals.<\/p>\n<p>Is the love for Marianne Faithful all about the fanboy backstory and the triumph over her mostly self-inflicted wounds? The girl had it handed to her on a silver platter and she stuck that Mars Bar where the sun don&#8217;t shine. Trust me, I&#8217;m not an insensitive type, but give me the Dusty Springfield story any day of the week &#8211; or the Tina Turner story for that matter. At least they could sing.<\/p>\n<p>I can see how she serves as a <strong>den mother<\/strong> to a certain type of delicate rock flower, but please explain her musical appeal.<\/p>\n<p>This is amusing and heartwarming.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0cn8-TjXNuU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is not. Even huge fans of Marianne Faithfull may be bummed out by the following collaboration.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4e71ZJPhHNY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Certainly I&#8217;m missing something. I&#8217;m always missing something, and that&#8217;s why I rely on you. <em>I look forward to your explanations and enlightenment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any young Rolling Stones fan ready to move onto a deeper exploration of the Stones&#8217; saga will soon confront Marianne Faithfull: sweet young thing of noble breeding, girlfriend of Mick Jagger, protege of Mick, Keef, and Andrew Loog Oldham&#8230; This early clip demonstrates the &#8220;gimme&#8221; in this story: beatiful, young woman with the ability to <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-marianne-faithful\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}