MARIANNE FAITHFUL

Marianne Faithfull has always been a personification of her time. Pure ingénue at the beginning of the ’60s, the hippie chick by the end, then the heroin girl at the beginning of ’70s.

Since the age of 11, when she first began to sing folk songs with her friend, Sally, in the convent at Reading, she has been in love with the simple earthy music.

She had her first hit record in 1964, “As Tears Go By”, a song written by a 20-year-old Mick Jagger and his friend Keith Richards.

Directed in 1968 by Jack Cardiff, Marianne Faithfull is a stunner in her role as a discontented young newlywed. The film photography is gorgeous and her beauty fits right along with it, as she rides from Switzerland to Germany, to see her lover played by Alain Delon, who gave her the bike as a “wedding gift”.

Marianne Faithfull on the set of ‘The Girl on a Motorcycle’, 1968. Her leather fur-lined catsuit was designed by Lanvin. Lavin redefined the animal skin jacket for motorcyclists into a full leotard that Marianne Faithfull wore within the film.

Here with top model and fellow it girl  Penelope Tree.

Recording with Mick Jagger, 1968.

Marianne Faithfull with hes son Nicolas and Anita Pallenberg on the backstage of Rolling Stones free Hide Park concert, july 1969.

Here with a very unusual looking Mick Jagger.

“Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!” -Marianne Faithfull.

Jagger and Faithfull broke up. A short time later, while in a London taxi, she learned of Jagger’s engagement to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias. Faithfull got out, got drunk, got arrested, and then spent the night in jail.

Marianne Faithfull had been labeled as a one-hit wonder when she reappeared in 1979 to shock everyone with this dark masterpiece, “Broken English”.

Photographed by Helmut Newton in Monte Carlo, 1999.