Marianne Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an English singer, songwriter, actress and diarist whose career spans five decades.
Her early work in pop and rock music in the 1960s was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse in the 1970s.
Faithfull began her singing career in 1964, landing her first gigs as a folk music performer in coffeehouses.
Faithfull emerged as a fashionable, vivacious teenager and soon began taking part in London's exploding social scene.
In early 1964 she attended a Rolling Stones' launch party with John Dunbar and there a chance meeting with Andrew Loog Oldham, who discovered Faithfull.
Her first major release, "As Tears Go By", was penned by Oldham, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and became a chart success.
She then released a series of successful singles, including "This Little Bird, Summer Nights" and "Come and Stay With Me".
In 1966 she stay with Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg in London.
During that time period, Faithfull started using marijuana and became best friends with Pallenberg.
She also began a much publicized relationship with Mick Jagger that same year.
The relationship with Jagger lasted throughout the early 1970s, and the couple became notorious and largely part of the hip Swinging London scene.
Faithfull's involvement in Jagger's life would be reflected in some of the Rolling Stones' best-known songs. "Sympathy for the Devil", featured on the album Beggars Banquet (1968), was in part inspired by The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, a book which Faithfull introduced him to.
The song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on the Let It Bleed album (1969) was written about Faithfull; the songs "Wild Horses" and "I Got the Blues" on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers were also influenced by Faithfull, and she herself wrote "Sister Morphine".
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