For Marianne Faithfull.

It was a perfect storm: Broken English came out in 1979, the same year as what is known in the Stones fan demimonde as “the Spanish Tony book,” aka Up and Down With the Rolling Stones.  It was a sleazy, sordid telling of those days, impossible to read now except with detached disgust, and what it did do was take you into Redlands, Keith Richards’ country home, for the infamous drug bust. Mick and Keith (and Robert Fraser) were arrested and stood trial (and even spent a night in jail) but Marianne became “the girl in the rug.” 

Even as a 15 year old, I knew she was getting a raw deal. That it was meant as a caution, don’t be too free, don’t be too wild, no matter how famous or how much money you have, society can still take you down and sit in judgement as surely as if you’d gone to trial. No one wrote an editorial for the Times of London about the unjust treatment Marianne received. She never lived it down, and it was part of the baggage that would do its best to destroy her life, while Mick and Keith went on to be, well, Mick and Keith. Marianne, like Anita Pallenberg, would simply be collateral damage. (Oh, and we’ll also steal a song while we’re at it and make you fight to get the money and the credit that you deserve.) 

But the daughter of a baroness, from a long line of survivors, wasn’t going to give up or fade away. She came back. I remember waking up junior year to my FM clock radio set to WNEW and hearing that thudding bassline and the synth notes and Marianne singing “Broken English.” It was HER! HER! Oh my god, she was alive and here she was, on the radio, on record, arm shielding her eyes from the glare, cigarette dangling. The second song on Broken English is “Witches’ Song.” There’s also “Guilt,” “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” and the absolute best interpretation of “Working Class Hero” that has ever been recorded. 

But. But but but. BUT.

Side two. Song four.

When I stole a twig from our little nest
and gave it to a bird with nothing in her beak
I had my balls and my brains put into a vise
and twisted around FOR A WHOLE FUCKING WEEK

Emphasis mine, because it is how I have sung “Why’d You Do It” since the first time I heard it. Out loud, arm in arm with girlfriends, walking down the street. Headphones on, into a pillow late at night. In the car, alone. Today, driving up Gratiot Avenue, after getting the horrible fucking news that Marianne had departed the planet, the one good use for streaming services is that I could have that song at my fingertips instantly. That I could drive home down the highway with the synths of “Broken English” echoing off the doorjamb. 

It was a fucking great album. It did not sound like a record that would be made by a contemporary of the Rolling Stones. It absolutely sounded like a record that could’ve been made by the Bowery Class of 1975. The line between Broken English and Horses was a flaming arrow. 

The best thing is that this wasn’t some attempt by a record company to repackage a legacy artist to be relevant. She didn’t have to try! This is who she was! She’d lost the virginal soprano that had first made her famous, but in its place was a war cry. 

why’d you do it, she said, why’d you let that trash
get ahold of your cock, get stoned on MY hash
why’d you do it, WHY’D YOU LET HER SUCK YOUR COCK

This is a feminist song. 

It’s astounding that they let her do this, a complete and total tribute to Chris Blackwell at Island, that they saw that she might be able to do something and so they let her try and then she did! She did it! Broken English was an artistic achievement. It was a great fucking record! 

She also did all of this without any surgery, without any attempt to make her look anything but how she actually looked. She and Chrissie Hynde could have shared eyeliner. (So many hours and burnt fingertips on my part, trying to pull that look off. I could never do it and not look like a drowned raccoon.)

Why'd you do it, she said, why'd you spit on my snatch?
Are we out of love now? Is this just a bad patch?

The other element about “Why’d You Do It” is that in a time where an awful lot of white people tried to make reggae-influenced records and completely embarrassed themselves in the process, there is nothing awkward about its usage here. It’s executed with aplomb -- her band was fantastic, there was all sorts of wonderful twisted guitar work on the part of Barry Reynolds that, again, wouldn’t have been out of place below 14th Street -- and it suits the lyrics precisely.

She played Saturday Night Live in February of 1980 and I was so excited I was literally shaking. The songs were “Broken English” and “Guilt.” I was so excited to SEE HER. Marianne! The performance doesn’t exist on the internet any more and all I remember is that electric surge of IT IS HER. It wasn’t a particularly dynamic or memorable appearance and it sounded as bad as every band did on SNL in the 80s. 

I somehow heard she was going to be at the Mudd Club and this was around the time I started to try to contemplate how I could get into the city to see shows (given that I was 15 and lived in the suburbs). I wouldn’t have it all figured out just yet. But I just wanted to SEE HER. I wanted to be in the same room with her. Part of it was her past, part of it was that she’d survived. You could hear every single second, year, drug, broken heart, try, start, restart, every thing she had gone through in that voice. She didn’t try to hide it. She couldn’t.

There were people who did not like the fact that she was alive and she was around and she was not living a quiet life in the country. It’s kind of hard to explain now how completely dominant the Stones were in the 70s and how they were just godlike and Marianne showing up seemingly out of nowhere was considered a challenge, a fuck you, just existing was some kind of threat to these millionaires. (I don't think that the actual Stones ever thought that, but everyone around them certainly did.)

There would be the slightest sheen of contempt on a radio DJ’s song ID. Raised eyebrows on the guy who worked at the record store. I realized that she carried that and she also still carried the ancient reputation of a bunch of horny British police who hated the younger generation, anyone who wasn’t toeing the line, I’d write something about men being men and women being women but that would just be a little too close to home right now. Patriarchy, always needing to assert its dominance.

To be clear, even if she’d just turned up with this record with absolutely zero backstory, it would still be a kick-ass album. She made this record with a band, her band, not a bunch of famous guest musicians flying in and out, which would have ruined the whole thing. It would have sold some copies, sure, but it wouldn’t have been an artistic statement, a place from where Marianne could find her footing and keep moving forward. 

The first time I got to be in the same room as Marianne was a show at the Bottom Line in 1987 for Strange Weather. Dr. John was playing piano for her, she introduced him with the most casually elegant wave of her hand: “Mac Rebennack,” assuming that we would of course know who that was. (I also realized tonight that Garth Hudson was in that band, which I now can see in my mind’s eye, and am grateful I actually did get that chance.)  

In Marianne’s first autobiography she talks about her voice on Rich Kids Blues, a record she made in the 70s that got released in ‘85: “It’s the voice of somebody incredibly high, probably on the edge of death, making a record. It’s always like that. Johnny Thunders sounds like that.” ACCURATE. Marianne didn’t sound like that on Broken English but it was a little closer to that particular edge. By the time she got to Strange Weather, she had actual sobriety under her belt and she had the magic of Hal Willner and she had the kind of career she deserved to have. Not long enough, still too many scary edges, but she was loved and respected and I believe she knew it. 

A few years later, I was lucky enough to spend a day with her, when I lived abroad and she was in the country for a concert. The person in charge of Island at the record company I worked for was unavailable, so I walked into my office one day to be greeted by my general manager: “Good morning. You will be taking Marianne Faithfull to Jerusalem today.” It was one of the best days of my life. 

When I texted a friend earlier to make sure she’d heard the sad news, her response was, “She deserved so much more in life,” which could read as overly simplistic except that we both knew what we knew. She was a muse, an inspiration, a heroine. She fell down, she got back up, she never quit, she never gave up, she never let them win. She won. Travel well, travel lightly, rest in fucking power.