It is difficult to think of a moment in pop history less receptive to a 1960s icon relaunching their career than in 1979. At that point, British rock and pop resolutely inhabited a world shaped by punk: it was the year of 2-Tone and Tubeway Army’s Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, of Ian Dury at No 1 and Blondie releasing the bestselling album of the year. And it was a central tenet of punk that the 1960s and their attendant “culture freaks” were, as Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren put it: “fucking disgusting … vampiric … the most narcissistic generation there has ever been,” and that the decade’s famous names should no longer be afforded the kind of awed reverence they had enjoyed for most of the 70s. “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones,” as the Clash had sung.
And yet Marianne Faithfull, who has died aged 78, turned out to be the kind of famous face from the 60s that a world shaped by punk could get behind. She was living proof that the rock aristocracy were remote and decadent and ripe for the culling. Never given the credit due to her by her most famous associates, the Rolling Stones, she had to go to court to get her name appended to the credits of Sister Morphine, a song she had co-written. She subsequently spiralled downwards, at startling speed, from having a seat at swinging London’s top table to life as a homeless junkie. Her years of addiction on the streets had so ravaged her voice that, by the late 70s, it was completely unrecognisable as coming from the woman who had sung As Tears Go By and Come and Stay With Me.
