Naked girl at Stones party

Marianne Faithfull seemingly moved through the fair that was the Swinging Sixties effortlessly, but the footing was treacherous.

Her father was an academic; her mother came from Polish nobility. A great-great-uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whom the word “masochist” is derived and author of Venus in Furs, the underground novel about sadomasochism that inspired the Velvet Underground song.

Faithfull was a 17-year-old folksinger adrift in a male-dominated world of rock musicians. She was a musical muse to Bob Dylan – she turned down his advances, leading him to write It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue in response – and a smitten Graham Nash, who wrote Carrie-Ann about her.

(Adding Wild Horses, Mick Jagger’s ode to their relationship, and she overtakes Patti Boyd, for whom George Harrison wrote Something and Eric Clapton wrote Layla).

Faithfull wandered into the tarpit that was the Rolling Stones inner circle, having brief affairs with Keith Richards and Brian Jones, then getting pregnant by U.S. pop singer Gene Pitney who had played piano during a Stones recording session, before connecting with Jagger.

Faithfull the folk singer

She recorded one of the first songs Jagger and Richards cowrote, As Tears Go By, which peaked at #22 in January 1965 in the U.S. (Teenage girls – the true force behind the British Invasion – may have sensed that Faithfull was rival than role model. When the Stones recorded the song, it went to #6. And somehow to #10 on the adult easy listening charts).

A couple of other Top 40 singles, Summer Night and Come and Stay with Me, were pleasant but did little to bolster Faithfull’s reputation as more than just the girl on Jagger’s arm.

In early 1967, the couple and others, including George and Patti Harrison, attended a weekend retreat at Keith Richards’ country estate. Following a tip, a squad of 18 police officers raided the house with Jagger and Richards arrested for drug offenses based on the discovery of a few roaches and amphetamine pills (which likely belonged to Faithfull, but that Jagger claimed as his own to save her from arrest).

Two legends grew out of the party’s aftermath: that the police hid in the bushes until the Harrisons left, thereby not arresting a Beatle, and that the police interrupted Jagger while he was eating a Mars Bar out of Faithfull’s vagina – a rumor the police floated to the British tabloids out to sink those degenerate Stones. (It was always the specificity of the candy brand that made this sound more like the fulfillment of someone’s sexual fantasy than reality).

What is true is that Faithfull had just taken a bath when the cops busted in and covered herself with a nearby rug, hence the headline in the next day’s Evening Standard, NAKED GIRL AT STONES PARTY.

Marianne and Mick went from being photographed in airport terminals and entering clubs, to getting their pictures taken in front of a courthouse. They broke up shortly afterwards.

Faithfull sightings were rare through most of the seventies. She developed a serious drug habit, and was at times homeless, living in the streets or squatting in abandoned buildings.

In 1979, her voice weather-beaten, lived in – you get the idea – Faithfull came out of nowhere to record a new wave single Broken English, a critical and dance floor favorite. She’d found her own voice, and a second career as international chanteuse and actress, touring sporadically, but always intertwined with a long litany of health issues, suicide attempts, marriages, divorces, miscarriages and abortions.

She deserved respect for what she accomplished. All of it can be considered a triumph.