There is a rather tedious comeuppance to be had when you've
deliberately lived every day as if it were your last. Marianne Faithfull
realised somewhere around her 60th birthday that she might have made a slight
miscalculation.
"The problem with living life as if there is no tomorrow is
that you get to this age and realise that it simply isn't true," she admits
ruefully. She means she "forgot" to sort out the pension plan.
"Saving simply wasn't part of the equation. Money didn't
matter to me - so much so that I don't own anything. I haven't got a house or a
mortgage or a car. I'm still renting - at 60!"
She laughs that famous throaty laugh, the legacy of this most
rock 'n' roll of lives.
Marianne Faithfull's name was synonymous with sex and the
Sixties
"It was never an issue before, but it is now. At this rate,
I could live to 80, and then where will I be? I've decided to be sensible for
the first time ever; to work really really hard for ten years, and save enough
to buy a flat.
"My son Nicholas says I need to put away at least 10 per
cent of what I earn. He's very sensible, Nicholas. I haven't a clue where he
gets it from. Certainly not me."
It's not just her son who has forced a radical rethink, though.
Just before she turned 60, Marianne found a lump on her breast. Pre- cancerous
cells were discovered, and she underwent an emergency operation to remove them.
It's difficult to say what has stunned her more - the sudden
realisation that her days might indeed be numbered; or the tantalising idea,
once recovery beckoned, that she could yet live to be a very old lady. Whatever,
it all seems to have given her one enormous jolt.
"I've been in a pretty dark place," she admits.
"First the cancer, then turning 60 - which I was absolutely traumatised
about. I was convinced I would wake up in the morning and discover I was just a
heap of smoking ash.
"When the day came - nothing. It was fine. I went out for
dinner and I got some lovely presents, and it was no big deal.
"Now I'm just getting my head round the fact that I might
be around for some time. I'm so lucky, I know, but it kind of does mean having
to rethink how I do things. I have to start accepting that there is actually a
tomorrow to think about."
And so she is a fully-paid-up member of the reformed hellraiser
group, joining the Ronnie Woods and Mick Jaggers of this world with their
cranberry juice and vitamin cocktails.
That prolonged heroin phase is just a distant memory - in her
30s she spent a long spell being a full-time heroin addict and living on the
streets of Soho.
"I went to my doctor recently to get some antibiotics and a
Vitamin B12 shot and when he took out the needle, I couldn't look. I hate
needles now. I said to him: 'Isn't it weird that I used to think this was fun,
or desirable.' He said: 'No comment.'"
Now, Marianne is the happiest she has ever been
Restored to health, she is currently on tour, furiously earning
the money that will keep her afloat in her old age - and making sure she gets
early nights and the right sort of peppermint tea. She insists she isn't much
given to reflection. She has an enormous ego, which means that she does love
talking about herself. But only to a point. When she is pushed too far back into
her own life, asked to re-examine aspects of it, she cracks.
"Oh please. I don't do that. I don't ask myself what might
have been. I'm not a sociologist, for God's sake. I'm Marianne Faithfull."
To most of us, being Marianne Faithfull means being an iconic
figure, synonymous with the Sixties. To the woman herself, though, it means
nothing of the sort.
"That was just a part of my life, a stop on the way - an
important stop, yes, but no more than that. I hadn't even started my best work
in the Sixties."
Still, history is always going to remember her as the archetypal
Sixties rock chick, Mick Jagger's girlfriend at a time when that role really
meant something.
The Rolling Stones' lyric "wild horses couldn't drag me
away" was inspired by her: she uttered the words on waking in a Sydney
hospital after a six-day coma brought about by a massive drugs binge.
There have been many hospital beds between then and now, mostly
in rehab units - and mostly she didn't really care whether she left them alive
or dead.
By last year, though, when she discovered the lump in her breast,
it was 20 years since she pledged to get clean and life had most definitely
become precious.
"I belong to the generation that thinks cancer means death,
so I was petrified," she admits.
She was whisked into the world-famous Institut Gustave-Roussy,
the private cancer clinic where Kylie Minogue was treated for the same disease.
While Kylie needed intensive chemotherapy, Marianne was "lucky" to
find that a lumpectomy was all that was required. Still, the terror was
unequivocal. "It really was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I
thought: 'I don't want to die. I haven't finished yet.'"
News of her illness quickly spread. Messages of support from her
fans poured in, and from friends of old. Yoko Ono called to say she was thinking
of her. So did Rolling Stone Keith Richards, fashion designer John Galliano and
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.
Even Mick Jagger picked up the phone. She smiles as she recalls
the conversation. She was feeling particularly sorry for herself as she had just
come round from surgery.
"I answered the phone. It was 2am and this voice came on, 'Hello
Marian, how are you?' I'd know that voice anywhere, and he's the only one who
ever called me Marian. We had a chat. It was lovely. He told me that he'd phoned
my agent to get the number. I thought that was very sweet of him." Although
they've met occasionally, this was the first time in 35 years the pair had
spoken on the phone.
"We've both mellowed. I loved Mick very much, but it was
better for both of us that we split up."
I ask her about her big regrets in life, and she does have some
whoppers, though Mick isn't one of them.
"I wish I'd been nicer to my parents, and I wish I'd been a
better mother," she volunteers. She also wishes that she hadn't allowed her
life to be defined so much by her drug-taking.
"Heroin was a waste of time. It took me off course for
about ten years. I can't remember why I thought it would change my life. But
when I took it I felt no pain, which was what I wanted at the time.
"The trouble with something like that is, you feel no joy
either. It's important to have spirituality in your life. It's subtle but it's
crucial. And when you are on drugs, it simply isn't there."
Now, overall, she is content with her lot. I ask her what the
happiest period of her life was and she bypasses the Sixties altogether.
"I think I'm in the happiest time of my life right now. Now,
and when I was 15. In between there were happy times, of course, but there were
a lot more ups and downs." It was at the end of her teens, of course, that
life changed irrevocably.
She talks about having been "swerved off course".
"I really wanted to go to drama school or university. I think some people
need those few years to grow up a bit before they are launched on the world, and
I might have been one of them.
"You are such a child at 17, everyone is."
It was at that age she was "discovered". Some say it
was her voice, others insist it was her figure. Whatever, her life started
moving at breakneck speed. "I was whisked off and before I knew what was
going on I had a record in the charts and I was on tour with the Hollies.
"At 18 I had a baby, then at 19 I ran off with Mick. When I
was 24, it all fell apart. I realised I couldn't deal with it."
She refers to the pivotal moment as "that dreadful drugs
bust". It was 1967, at Keith Richards' country house in Sussex, and
Faithfull, according to one police officer, let her fur coat slip off to reveal
she was naked. From there, there would be no turning back.
"It was scary. I didn't expect all that attention, to be
living in a goldfish bowl. I wasn't looking to be famous. I wasn't the slightest
bit interested in celebrity - and I'm still not. In fact, I'd say I am
anti-celebrity.
"It's all got so stupid now, with people going to the
opening of an envelope."
It was a long time though, before she really tried to get out of
that world, and she fell pretty low before she did. In 1968 she miscarried
Jagger's daughter eight months into the pregnancy. Devastated, her drug use
spiralled out of control. Jagger threatened to leave her unless she got help:
she refused.
By the time he married Bianca on a beach in St Tropez in 1971,
she was in prison on drugs charges and 15 years of hell - and heroin addiction -
would follow.
Marianne has no memory of much of the Seventies and Eighties,
She moved from squat to squat, eventually living on the streets. She famously
sat on a wall in London day after day for two years, anorexic, stoned out of her
mind, unable to see a reason to go on.
Her son was taken from her, and that was the final straw.
"When Nicholas was taken away I thought: 'F*** this, may as
well become a junkie. No reason not to, now.'"
In all the talk of Mick and heroin, it's easy to forget that
Marianne was a mother. She was briefly married to Nicholas's father, artist John
Dunbar, but left him when she met Mick Jagger. "I remember going out and
having to rush home every four hours to breast-feed Nicholas when he was first
born, something drove me to do it.
"I knew deep down I would never have another child. I
wanted to have a career, a life, to play my part in the music industry. I knew I
would never be able to simply be a wife and mother."
Her desire for some sort of family life eventually spurred her
to beat her addiction. "I was nearly 40 when I noticed that nearly all my
friends had got over drugs and settled down. I hadn't. That's when I went into
treatment. I realised it was going to kill me."
Today, Nicholas edits a financial magazine in London. She is
inordinately proud of him. She is especially proud that he has carved out a
quiet, mainstream life.
"He's never done drugs, never been interested in that sort
of life. Maybe it was because he was turned off it by watching me and his father
go through it."
Now they are closer than they have ever been. "I saw him
last night. He came to talk to me about some trouble with his ex-wife. I
actually do feel like I am his mother now."
What an odd thing to say. Did she not feel like his mother
before? "It took me an awfully long time before I felt like a mother, until
Nicholas was in his early 20s. Luckily, I was able to rebuild that relationship.
"All I will say is we got through it together, and we are
fine now. I am his mum. I love him, and more importantly he loves me."
Thanks to Nicholas, she is now a grandmother, too. She roars
about what an un-granny type of granny she is. "I can't iron or sew a
button. I certainly don't knit," she jokes. "I spoil them, but they
have brought me great joy. When Oscar was born I felt hopeful for the future."
As she was becoming a grandmother, Marianne Faithfull was also
taking a new lover. She uses the word deliberately, refusing to reduce him to
"partner" or "boyfriend".
"He is exactly that," she says. "I don't like the
word 'partner'. He is more than a friend. What else should I call him?"
For years it has been reported that this man is her manager,
Francois Ravard. She refuses to confirm this, with customary bluntness.
"I'm not telling you. He is very private. He doesn't want
his name in the papers. He is French. He has been my lover for 13 years. He is
the man I love."
She might not want to name him, but she is happy to sigh about
him. Thirteen years is a long relationship in anyone's book; in Marianne's it is
a lifetime. "It's the longest I've ever managed. I've obviously found my
soul mate."
She gushes about the wonderful sapphire ring he bought her for
her 60th, whispering he is ten years younger than she. She thinks they will be
together for life. But hasn't she said that about other men? About Mick even?
"When I look back on the people I've loved they were nearly
all great people, but there wasn't the sense that we would be together forever.
You know how it is with these men. You're walking along the same path, you come
together for a while, then you diverge. Mick and I weren't meant to be together
for ever."
"With my new lover, it's for life."
I ask her if sex is still important in a relationship at her age.
She nearly falls off her chair. "You can't ask me that," she squawks.
"It is too private."
But isn't she Marianne Faithfull - as synonymous with sex as she
is with the Sixties? Wasn't the whole thing about sex? We've all heard the one
about the Mars Bar.
She shudders. The Mars Bar incident has come to haunt her.
Little wonder. At the time of that infamous drugs raid, it was breathlessly
rumoured that Jagger and Marianne were discovered carrying out a rather indecent
act with a chocolate bar. She has always insisted it was not true. In fact, she
is mortified by it.
"When a woman loses her reputation at 19 she loses
everything," she has said.
"I am not that sort of person," she tells me, sounding
distinctly grandmotherly. "I am very prudish. That is the real me. Maybe I
was different when I was doing drugs and drink, but I wasn't that different.
"We believed in love. It wasn't just sex and I get annoyed
when people think it was. It was love, a romantic ideal, always. At least it was
for me."
