The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!
As a
former music seller and current music snob, I always hated it when
people would come in after an artist died and proceed to clean us out of
their stock. My immediate question is why didn't they appreciate that
artist more when they were alive? This was a big issue with both George
Harrison and Michael Jackson. The sad thing is that, since I no longer
sell music for a living, I find myself guilty of doing the same thing.
When Prince died in 2016, I immediately bought two of his albums (and a
third some time later), although, in my defense, I was not as familiar
with his music as I felt I should be. This week, I find myself in that
same position. I found out yesterday morning about the death of
singer/actress Marianne Faithfull. Like Prince, I'm not too familiar
with her music. And I feel I should be. I have a couple of recordings
where she made guest appearances for certain artists, most notably The
Chieftains, but I don't have a full album--or even a compilation
album--of her music. I'm sure I'll be changing that in the near future.
I
was primarily familiar with Faithfull because she was Mick Jagger's
girlfriend in the late 1960s. But when I read her obituary in The New York Times,
I discovered a lot of fascinating things about her. Her mother was a
Viennese baroness and former ballerina. Her father was a British spy in
World War II who "invented a device meant to liberate female sexuality,
which he named the 'Frigidity Machine.'" I mean... who knew, right?
After her parents' divorce when she was six, she lived with her mother
in Reading and attended a Roman Catholic convent school.
In
1964, at the age of 17, The Rolling Stones' manager, Andrew Loog
Oldham, approached her at a party and asked if she could sing. Within
the next week, she recorded her first song, "As Tears Go By," which is
considered to be the first song co-written by Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards (Oldham is also credited on this song as a co-writer). The
song became a Top 10 hit in the U.K. and hit the Top 25 here in the U.S.
At
age 19, she married gallery owner John Dunbar. Shortly after giving
birth to their son, she left Dunbar and started dating Jagger. She
became almost as notorious as the guys in the band, particularly during a
drug bust at Keith Richards's house in 1967. While trying to have a
child with Jagger in 1968 she suffered a miscarriage. A year later she
tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. She woke up from a coma
six days later and apparently uttered, "Wild horses couldn't drag me
away," which later became the chorus of one of the Stones' most enduring
songs.
After
splitting from Jagger in 1970, she spent two years on the streets of
London, eventually becoming a heroin addict. While this took a toll on
her voice, lowering it considerably and causing it to occasionally
crack, it allowed her to sing with a certain amount of gravitas that
wasn't there when she was 19. She finally got clean in 1985 and became
something of a cabaret singer, singing show tunes and blues songs. By
the early 2000s, she was collaborating with artists who had admired her
for years including Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Beck, and PJ Harvey. She
even recorded two more renditions of "As Tears Go By."
For
all of the critical acclaim she received later in life, she considered
this week's album to be her masterpiece. After the initial recording of
the album, producer Mark Miller Mundy felt it should be more "modern
and electronic," bringing in Steve Winwood on keyboards and giving the
album a distinctly new wave sound. Released in late 1979, it became her first album to chart in the U.S.
since 1965 and garnered her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock
Performance. Today it's listed among the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Featuring songs she co-wrote, along with covers of songs by the likes of John Lennon and Shel Silverstein, this week please enjoy Broken English.
Until
next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember
that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for
you.
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