At 62, a Faithfull reflection on life

NEW YORK (AP) — Marianne Faithfull has never been much for nostalgia throughout a roller-coaster career that has found her constantly reinventing herself. But when her band played “As Tears Go By” on her fall U.S. concert tour, she found herself flashing back to where her wild ride all began.

“If you’d have told me that at 62 I’d still be singing ‘As Tears Go By’ to a rapt audience, I couldn’t imagine that,” Faithfull said. “It’s incredibly moving for me.”

The song takes Faithfull back to 1964, when the 17-year-old convent schoolgirl turned up at a party at an art gallery owned by her future first husband, John Dunbar. Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, spotted the blonde and asked if she could sing.

Soon after, Oldham booked the angelic-voiced soprano into a studio to record the melancholy “As Tears Go By” — the first song co-written by Keith Richards and Faithfull’s soon-to-be boyfriend, Mick Jagger.

“It’s a strange song to get a 17-year-old to sing. It’s all about a woman looking back on her youth, not participating. I couldn’t really feel it. ... But now, I can really feel it, and it’s very beautiful. ... I got to the right age where the woman in the song is,” said Faithfull, now a contralto.

But Faithfull has little in common with the song’s protagonist, who is content “to sit and watch” as her life goes by.

“I like to be involved in every time as it goes past,” Faithfull said. “I want to write a new script for myself.”

The latest script is “Easy Come, Easy Go,” a new CD on which she interprets songs spanning nearly a century of popular music, from Duke Ellington to Dolly Parton to Neko Case and the Decemberists.

Faithfull is proud of her role as muse to the Rolling Stones in the ’60s, inspiring songs such as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Wild Horses” and “Sister Morphine,” for which she belatedly received credit for writing the lyrics.

Today, she said little remains of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle of her youth that claimed so many of her friends.

“I’m very professional. I don’t use drugs and I don’t drink. ... I can’t help thinking that that’s one of the reasons that everything is so good in life,” she said. “I’m a workaholic now. There’s always sex.”

Faithfull teamed again on the album with Hal Willner, who produced her last covers album in 1987, “Strange Weather” — her first album after undergoing rehab. It marked her resurrection as an avant-cabaret artist and masterly song interpreter.

“She is our Lotte Lenya, our (Marlene) Dietrich, our (Edith) Piaf. You can’t learn to sing like that,” Willner said. “None of them were trained, really, and their voice was what they’ve been in their life. ... Marianne comes from rock ’n’ roll and pop, so her roots are different than those classic singers. But I do believe she’s a treasure.”

Faithfull said it has taken a long time to get over the anger that found voice on her 1979 punk-infused comeback album “Broken English” — following a lost decade in which she succumbed to heroin addiction and spent time living on the streets of London’s Soho after her headline-grabbing breakup with Jagger.

That’s when she established herself as a songwriter in her own right with songs such as the obscenity-laden “Why’d Ya Do It?” She said “Easy Come, Easy Go” reflects how much better she feels about herself now.

“I’m proud of this record. It’s coming from a confident and knowing-what-I-want-to-do kind of a place,” Faithfull said.

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