Marianne Faithfull turns 75 and opened her poetry album

Created: 12/28/2021, 3:49 PM

From: Michael Schleicher

Marianne Faithfull reads British poetry on her new album.

© FRANCOIS GUILLOT

"As Tears go by" and "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan" were her biggest hits.

Marianne Faithfull survived excessive drug abuse with the Rolling Stones, breast cancer and a severe corona infection.

It is questionable whether she can sing again.

The British artist will celebrate her 75th birthday on December 29, 2021.

Her album “She walks in Beauty” was recently released.

Of course she didn't wrest this album from death.

Still, not much was missing, and Marianne Faithfull should not have seen the release of “She walks in Beauty”.

The British artist fell very seriously ill with Corona last year, and the worst was to be feared.

But she was lucky - and very good medics in London who saved her life.

So she could not only celebrate the release of her new record in early summer, but also her 75th birthday on December 29th.

Marianne Faithfull is still suffering from the consequences of the corona infection

The British singer is admittedly not healthy to this day.

"Maybe I'll never be able to sing again," Faithfull recently told the British Guardian.

Her doctor predicted that her lungs will probably not recover from the Covid 19 infection.

“It may be that the singing is over.

I would be incredibly shaken, but on the other hand: I'm 74. ”Despite everything, she wanted to be“ hopeful ”.

"I'm still fucking here."

That's it - with an almost unbelievable presence.

“She walks in Beauty”, named after the poem by Lord Byron (1788-1824), is Faithfull's poetry album: special, moving, impressive.

She reads 19th-century British poetry on floating arrangements, alongside Byron, for example, by John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Hood.

The recordings took place at the beginning of the first lockdown last year.

The singer and actress speaks the poems with a solemn, sometimes fragile, pleasantly calm and, at the appropriate point, pathetic voice (if you haven't seen her in "Irina Palm", you've missed something. Really.) The poems, feel the words and their meaning.

Nick Cave took over the piano parts

She sent the recordings to the Australian composer and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, who wove the appropriate melodies and atmospheres.

Nick Cave, in whose band Ellis is active, took over most of the piano parts, Brian Eno realized the sound collages (the birds chirping wonderfully at the opening!) And Vincent Ségal played the cello.

While the music often creeps up and carefully feels into the sound space, Faithfull's interpretation of the eleven texts is there immediately and to the point.

Marianne Faithfull has already dealt with Brecht and Weill

“She walks in Beauty”, however, is not the first occupation of the British woman, who counts the Austrian writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895) among her ancestors, with poetry. Let us remember her impressive engagement with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, which was reflected in the 1998 record "The Seven Deadly Sins and other Songs". She also toured British stages with Shakespeare sonnets when that was still possible. Her enthusiasm for the English romantic poets goes back to her teenage years, Faithfull reveals in the press material for the new album. Her teacher Mrs. Simpson's literature course played a decisive role in this - but she finally went to London at the age of 16 and electrified the music world with the song "As Tears go by" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.From then on the signs were on rock'n'roll instead of recitation, on drugs instead of poetry. "I have never forgotten all of that," quoted the record company Faithfull. “After all these years I have now pulled on these strings again, and they still mean something, touch even more in me - because I now have life experience. Life and near death experience. Many times. Not just once."

Sounds gloomy - but the album is much more than that. In the most beautiful, most impressive contribution, “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats (1795-1821), the fourth verse begins with these verses: “Away!

Away!

For I will fly to thee / Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards / But on the viewless wings of Poesy. ”Faithfull does not want to be carried away by Bacchus, the god of intoxication, but rather she escapes on the“ invisible wings of poetry ”.

It is delightful to listen to her.