Mucho más conocida entre nosotros por un romance con Mick Jagger que por su brillante obra como cantante y compositora, Faithfull llega por primera vez a Buenos Aires junto al guitarrista Marc Ribot y un repertorio a la medida de su profundidad como intérprete.
hija del mayor Robert Glynn Faithfull (un ex espía británico que terminó como profesor de psicología) y de Eva von Sacher-Masoch (una bailarina y más tarde baronesa austríaca venida a menos), Marianne Faithfull, también ella baronesa de Sacher-Masoch, en virtud de un título heredado por la rama materna de su familia de su tío Leopold Sacher-Masoch (el autor de La Venus de las pieles y el que le prestó su apellido al término “masoquismo”), nació en Hampstead, Londres, en diciembre de 1946. Descubierta a los 16 años por Andrew Loog Oldham, el manager de los Rolling Stones, comenzó una curiosa carrera de cantante folk que rápidamente pasó al pop, con giras por Gran Bretaña en compañía de Roy Orbison, Chad & Jeremy o los Hollies (quienes le dedicaron el tema “Carrie Anne”). Su deslumbrante belleza no pasó desapercibida. Bob Dylan intentó sin éxito seducirla, pero el que lo logró fue Mick Jagger.
Aquí corresponde aclarar que Marianne Faithfull fue la reina del swinging London, denominación que se le da a ese lapso que va desde mediados a fines de la década de 1960 en que la capital británica desbordaba de creatividad y la juventud era un valor avalado por la imaginación. Pero su adscripción a la realeza del rock, en el preciso momento en que éste dejaba de ser apenas una de las tantas especies de la música para transformarse en arte, hizo que sus muchos méritos como artista se vieran opacados por una continua exposición mediática ligada a escándalos y por una progresiva adicción al alcohol y a las drogas.
Por Jagger, había roto su matrimonio con el artista plástico y galerista John Dunbar –padre de Nicholas, su único hijo– y, luego de que ese romance de cuatro años concluyó, sufrió el oprobio público. Al respecto, en Faithfull, la magnífica autobiografía que escribió en 1994, asistida por David Dalton (hay traducción castellana), se lee: “La gente tenía un tremendo interés en creer que mi vida con Mick era un largo idilio de amor y felicidad. Parecía terriblemente importante para ellos que fuera así. ‘Prometía’, pero sólo en el sentido que la prensa sensacionalista le da a ese término. Y cuando dejé a Mick, fue como si hubiera cometido un crimen terrible a los ojos de la prensa, a los de Mick y a los del mundo. (…) Y yo la dejé para ser heroinómana. En esos días, ésa era mi idea del glamour”. Así, el escándalo y la heroína la llevaron a varios desastres privados que opacaron su trabajo de esa década: nada menos que cinco álbumes y actuaciones en Las tres hermanas, de Anton Chéjov, y en la célebre puesta del Hamlet de Tony Richardson, así como papeles cinematográficos en Made in U.S.A., de Jean-Luc Godard, y en diversas películas con Orson Welles y Alain Delon.
Durante la década de 1970 las cosas fueron peor: perdió la custodia de su hijo y vivió en St. Anne Yard, un baldío en el Soho, como adicta que dependía de la caridad pública. Por otra parte, la anorexia y el consumo constante de cocaína le produjeron frecuentes alteraciones de la voz. En 1977 –vale decir, en pleno período punk–, ayudada por algunos amigos grabó Dreaming my dreams, un álbum de canciones country que en ese momento parecía completamente fuera de lugar. Dos años más tarde, con la edición del potente Broken English, un disco lleno de fuerza, cuyo tema homónimo estaba dedicado a Ulrike Meinhoff, una militante alemana de la ultra izquierda, que se había suicidado en la cárcel un año antes, Faithfull volvió a la consideración pública y su carrera retomó visibilidad.
Pese a las muchas idas y venidas de Faithfull en el mundo de las adicciones y de las continuas internaciones en clínicas de rehabilitación, se las arregló para proseguir grabando discos importantes, como Strange weather (un álbum de 1989, dedicado al jazz y al blues), o 20th Century blues (1997, dedicado al repertorio de Bertolt Brecht y Kurt Weill), o Easy come, easy go (2008, un disco doble de covers) o el más reciente Horses and high heels (2011). También, para dedicarle tiempo al teatro, como Pirate Jenny en la puesta irlandesa de La ópera de tres centavos, de Bertolt Brecht y Kurt Weill, o en la ópera Los seis pecados capitales, de Kurt Weill, o en El jinete negro, de William Burroughs y Tom Waits (con dirección de Robert Wilson), sin contar sus recientes interpretaciones de los sonetos de Shakespeare, acompañada apenas por el cellista Vincent Segal. En cuanto al cine, se recuerdan sus actuaciones en filmes de C. S. Leigh, Patrice Chéreau, Sofia Coppolla y, sobre todo, Mike Garbanski, el director de la magnífica Irina Palm (2007), donde Faithfull interpreta a una ama de casa, viuda pobre, que, en su desesperación por salvar a su nieto enfermo, se gana la vida masturbando hombres en un pornoshop, detrás de una pared que la oculta de sus clientes.
A pocos días de su primera presentación en Buenos Aires –ciudad donde nunca estuvo y que manifestó querer conocer por años–, Ñ la llamó a su departamento en París, residencia que alterna con largas estadías en el lujoso Shellbourne Hotel, en pleno centro de Dublín. Del otro lado de la línea, la voz ronca, profunda e inconfundible de Marianne Faithfull y su marcado acento británico terminaron por imponer naturalmente el tema de la conversación, que, inesperadamente, giró alrededor de la literatura y la composición.
-Si se presta atención a las letras de las canciones que compuso, así como a muchas de sus elecciones de repertorio, da la impresión de que la literatura está muy presente.
-Eso tiene que ver con la educación que recibí. Aunque no fui a la universidad –y eso que me habría encantado estudiar literatura inglesa, filosofía o religiones comparadas–, tuve la suerte de ir a un muy buen colegio religioso donde me hacían leer mucho, lo que me encantaba porque, además, me permitía sacarme muy buenas notas. Y le digo que me gustaba tanto que nunca pude parar. Sigo leyendo tanto como cuando estaba en el colegio.
-¿Qué leía en esos años de formación?
-Lo usual: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, los poetas románticos, que son mis favoritos. Pero el que más me gusta y al que siempre vuelvo es William Blake.
-¿Por qué Blake?
-Creo que por todo. Me fascina su uso de la lengua, los temas sobre los que escribe: el cielo y el infierno, la temporalidad y la eternidad, la mente y la vida real…
-Supongo que todas esas lecturas la ayudaron cuando empezó a escribir canciones.
-Lo que más me ayudó, lo que me resultó fundamental, fue haber leído mucha poesía y, por supuesto, Shakespeare. Creo entender muy bien lo que es formalmente un soneto así como lo intrincado de su estructura. Y creo haber internalizado los versos blancos. Con eso en la cabeza, mi primera intención cuando me siento a escribir letras de canciones es que sean muy líricas. Y no siempre me sale, porque además de lo que uno trae de la poesía, hay otras cosas que se relacionan exclusivamente con lo que se canta. Entonces, se aprende a escribir canciones escribiéndolas. Es un trabajo que, como todos, va mejorando con el tiempo.
-Y cuando decide cantar canciones ajenas, ¿qué la determina a elegir el repertorio?
-Por lo general, las letras. Cuando tienen fuerza, la agarran a una. Soy muy sensible a las palabras de las canciones.
-Usted también es actriz…
-Lo cual me ayuda a interpretar. Como usted sabrá, hice mucho teatro y estoy acostumbrada al escenario, lo cual, me parece, me resuelve muchas cuestiones cuando canto. Pero la cosa va en los dos sentidos, porque también creo que cantar me ayuda a actuar mejor.
-¿Se fija en otras cantantes? ¿Aprende de ellas?
-Bueno, a mí me gustan mucho el jazz y el blues, y aprendí mucho oyendo a Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald o Sarah Vaughan. No puedo cantar como ellas, claro, pero sí aprender.
-¿Y qué descubre de las canciones cuando la que canta es usted?
-Muchas cosas. Tantas que a veces me sorprendo y, de hecho, me emociono. Por ejemplo, canté por primera vez “As tears go by” a los diecisiete años y fue un éxito. Ahora me doy cuenta de que era una canción que quizás debía haber grabado mucho más adelante y con otra voz. Por eso la volví a hacer en mi álbum Strange weather. No se puede cantar cualquier cosa en cualquier momento. Hay que esperar la oportunidad propicia para hacerlo.
-¿En qué medida usted pudo compartir con sus colegas del rock sus conocimientos literarios?
-Nick Cave, por ejemplo, tiene una cultura increíble. Keith Richards es muy leído –dijo incluso que le habría gustado ser bibliotecario– y Mick Jagger también lee mucho. Mire que en el rock and roll hay mucha gente con educación…
-Todos, a lo largo de nuestras vidas, vamos cargando con nombres. En su caso, dada la naturaleza de los nombres que invoca, ¿no le pesan?
-Sí, claro que me pesan. De hecho, no quiero volver a hablar de los Rolling Stones. A veces estoy francamente harta.
-A principios de su carrera como cantante usted grabó muchas canciones folk, ¿podemos imaginar que quizás alguna vez haya algún disco dedicado enteramente a ese repertorio?
-En un par de años. Lo pensé, pero deme tiempo. No hay que apurarse. Por ahora estoy escribiendo mucho.
-¿Qué esperar para su concierto de Buenos Aires?
-Voy con Marc Ribot, que es un guitarrista extraordinario, particularmente bueno haciendo jazz, lo que me va a permitir cantar algunas de las canciones que hacía Billie Holiday. Voy a cantar muchas canciones propias de mi última cosecha Y no se preocupe que también van a estar “Strange weather”, “Lucy Jordan”, “Sister Morphine”, “Broken English” y, claro, “As tears go by”.
I'm sick of talking about the Rolling Stones
Better known among us for an affair with Mick Jagger that his brilliant work as a singer and songwriter, Faithfull first arrives in Buenos Aires along with guitarist Marc Ribot and a kit to measure its depth as an interpreter.
daughter of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull (a former British spy who finished as a professor of psychology) and Eva von Sacher-Masoch (a dancer and later rundown Austrian baroness), Marianne Faithfull, she also Baroness Sacher-Masoch, in Under a title inherited by the maternal family of his uncle Leopold Sacher-Masoch (the author of Venus in furs and lent his name to the term "masochism"), was born in Hampstead, London in December1946. Discovered at 16 by Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones began a curious folk singing career quickly moved into pop, with tours of Britain in the company of Roy Orbison, Chad & Jeremy and the Hollies (who will dedicated the song "Carrie Anne"). Her stunning beauty has not gone unnoticed. Bob Dylan tried unsuccessfully to seduce her, but whoever did it was Mick Jagger.
This should clarify that Marianne Faithfull was the queen of swinging London, a name given to that period from mid to late 1960 in the British capital overflowed with creativity and youth was a value endorsed by the imagination . But his allegiance to rock royalty at the precise moment it stopped being just one of many species to become art music, made his many accomplishments as an artist is seen overshadowed by a continuing media exposure linked to scandals and by a progressive addiction to alcohol and drugs.
For Jagger, had broken her marriage to the artist and gallery owner John Dunbar, father of Nicholas, his only son, and after that four-year romance ended, he suffered public opprobrium. In this regard, Faithfull, the magnificent autobiography he wrote in 1994, assisted by David Dalton (Spanish translation is available), reads: "The people had a tremendous interest in believing that my life with Mick was a long romance of love and happiness. It seemed terribly important to them that way. 'Promised', but only in the sense that the tabloid press gives this term. Mick And when I left, it was as if he had committed a terrible crime in the eyes of the press, the Mick and the world. (...) And I left for heroin addicts. In those days, that was my idea of glamor. " Thus, heroin scandal and led to several private disaster overshadowed his work of that decade: no less than five albums and performances in The Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov, the famous and fantastic Tony Richardson's Hamlet andfilm roles in Made in USA, Jean-Luc Godard, and in several movies with Orson Welles and Alain Delon.
During the 1970s things were worse, lost custody of her son and lived in St. Anne's Yard, a vacant lot in Soho, as an addict who depended on public charity. Moreover, anorexia, and constant consumption of cocaine caused him frequent alterations of the voice. In 1977-ie, in the punk period, helped by some friends recorded Dreaming My Dreams, an album of country songs at that point seemed completely out of place. Two years later, with the release of the powerful Broken Español, an album full of power, whose title track was dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof, a German militant ultra-left, who had committed suicide in prison a year earlier, again Faithfull public consideration and resumed his career visibility.
Despite the many comings and goings of Faithfull in the world of addiction and continuing admissions to rehabilitation clinics, managed to continue making records important, as Strange weather (a 1989 album dedicated to jazz and blues) , or 20th Century Blues (1997, dedicated to the repertoire of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill), or Easy Come, Easy Go (2008, a double album of covers) or the latest high heels and Horses (2011). Also, to devote time to the theater, as Pirate Jenny in putting Irish Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, or the opera The Six Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill, or black Rider, William Burroughs and Tom Waits (with direction by Robert Wilson), not counting recent interpretations of Shakespeare's sonnets, accompanied only by cellist Vincent Segal. As for the film, recalls his performances in films C. S. Leigh, Patrice Chéreau, Sofia Coppolla and, above all, Mike Garbanski, the director of the magnificent Irina Palm (2007), where Faithfull plays a housewife, poor widow who, desperate to save her sick grandson, make a living in a pornoshop men masturbating behind a wall that hides its customers.
A few days after his first performance in Buenos Aires city and was never said to want to know for years, Ñ called to his apartment in Paris, alternating with long residence in the luxurious stays Shellbourne Hotel, in downtown Dublin . Across the line, his voice hoarse, deep and unmistakable Marianne Faithfull and her British accent naturally ended up imposing the topic of conversation, which, unexpectedly, turned around literature and composition.
-If you pay attention to the lyrics of the songs he composed, as well as many of his choices of repertoire, it seems that literature is very present. 'That has to do with my upbringing. Although I did not go to college and that I would have loved to study English literature, philosophy or comparative religion, I was lucky enough to go to a very good religious school where I did read a lot, which I loved because, well, let me get me good grades. And I say that I liked so much that I could never stop. I read as much as when I was at school.
- What I read in those formative years? -The usual: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Romantic poets, who are my favorites. But I like and who keep coming back is William Blake.
- Why Blake? 'I think about everything. I love his use of language, the themes he writes about: heaven and hell, temporality and eternity, mind and real life ...
I suppose that all these readings helped when he started writing songs. 'What helped me most, which I was critical, was to have read much poetry and, of course, Shakespeare. I understand very well what is formally a sonnet and the intricacy of its structure. And I have internalized the white lines. With that in mind, my first thought when I sit down to write lyrics is to be very lyrical. And I do not always come out, because in addition to what one brings poetry, there are other things that relate exclusively to what is being sung. Then, you learn to write songs typing. It's a job like everyone else, gets better with time.
And when he decided to sing songs of others, what is determined to choose the repertoire? -In general, the letters. When you have strength, grab one. I am very sensitive to the words of the songs.
-You are also an actress ... 'Which helps me to interpret. As you know, I'm used a lot of theater and the stage, which, I think, I solved many issues when I sing. But it goes both ways, because I also believe that singing helps me do better.
- Fixed to other singers? Do you learn from them? Well, I really like jazz and blues, and learned a lot listening to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. I can not sing like them, of course, but learn.
- What view of the songs when you are singing? -Many things. So many that sometimes I am surprised and indeed, I was excited. For example, for the first time I sang "As Tears Go By" at seventeen years and was a success. Now I realize it was a song that perhaps should have recorded much later and with another voice. That's why I came to do in my album Strange weather. You can not sing anything at any time. You have to wait for the right opportunity to do so.
- How you could share with colleagues his literary rock? Nick Cave, for example, has an amazing culture. Keith Richards is widely read even said he would have liked to be a librarian, and Mick Jagger also reads a lot. Look at that rock and roll a lot of people with education ...
-All along in our lives, we loaded with names. Where appropriate, given the nature of invoking the names, do you weigh? 'Yes, I weighed. In fact, I do not want to talk about the Rolling Stones. Sometimes I'm really tired.
-Early in his career as a singer you recorded many folk songs, can we imagine that perhaps some record ever devoted entirely to the repertoire? -In a couple of years. I thought, but give me time. Should not be rushed. For now I'm writing a lot.
- What to expect for their concert in Buenos Aires? I'm going with Marc Ribot, a guitarist extraordinary, particularly good at jazz, which will allow me to sing some songs that made Billie Holiday. I will sing many original songs from my last harvest and not worry that they will also be "Strange weather", "Lucy Jordan", "Sister Morphine", "Broken Español" and, of course, "As tears go by".
Better known among us for an affair with Mick Jagger that his brilliant work as a singer and songwriter, Faithfull first arrives in Buenos Aires along with guitarist Marc Ribot and a kit to measure its depth as an interpreter.
daughter of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull (a former British spy who finished as a professor of psychology) and Eva von Sacher-Masoch (a dancer and later rundown Austrian baroness), Marianne Faithfull, she also Baroness Sacher-Masoch, in Under a title inherited by the maternal family of his uncle Leopold Sacher-Masoch (the author of Venus in furs and lent his name to the term "masochism"), was born in Hampstead, London in December1946. Discovered at 16 by Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones began a curious folk singing career quickly moved into pop, with tours of Britain in the company of Roy Orbison, Chad & Jeremy and the Hollies (who will dedicated the song "Carrie Anne"). Her stunning beauty has not gone unnoticed. Bob Dylan tried unsuccessfully to seduce her, but whoever did it was Mick Jagger.
This should clarify that Marianne Faithfull was the queen of swinging London, a name given to that period from mid to late 1960 in the British capital overflowed with creativity and youth was a value endorsed by the imagination . But his allegiance to rock royalty at the precise moment it stopped being just one of many species to become art music, made his many accomplishments as an artist is seen overshadowed by a continuing media exposure linked to scandals and by a progressive addiction to alcohol and drugs.
For Jagger, had broken her marriage to the artist and gallery owner John Dunbar, father of Nicholas, his only son, and after that four-year romance ended, he suffered public opprobrium. In this regard, Faithfull, the magnificent autobiography he wrote in 1994, assisted by David Dalton (Spanish translation is available), reads: "The people had a tremendous interest in believing that my life with Mick was a long romance of love and happiness. It seemed terribly important to them that way. 'Promised', but only in the sense that the tabloid press gives this term. Mick And when I left, it was as if he had committed a terrible crime in the eyes of the press, the Mick and the world. (...) And I left for heroin addicts. In those days, that was my idea of glamor. " Thus, heroin scandal and led to several private disaster overshadowed his work of that decade: no less than five albums and performances in The Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov, the famous and fantastic Tony Richardson's Hamlet andfilm roles in Made in USA, Jean-Luc Godard, and in several movies with Orson Welles and Alain Delon.
During the 1970s things were worse, lost custody of her son and lived in St. Anne's Yard, a vacant lot in Soho, as an addict who depended on public charity. Moreover, anorexia, and constant consumption of cocaine caused him frequent alterations of the voice. In 1977-ie, in the punk period, helped by some friends recorded Dreaming My Dreams, an album of country songs at that point seemed completely out of place. Two years later, with the release of the powerful Broken Español, an album full of power, whose title track was dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof, a German militant ultra-left, who had committed suicide in prison a year earlier, again Faithfull public consideration and resumed his career visibility.
Despite the many comings and goings of Faithfull in the world of addiction and continuing admissions to rehabilitation clinics, managed to continue making records important, as Strange weather (a 1989 album dedicated to jazz and blues) , or 20th Century Blues (1997, dedicated to the repertoire of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill), or Easy Come, Easy Go (2008, a double album of covers) or the latest high heels and Horses (2011). Also, to devote time to the theater, as Pirate Jenny in putting Irish Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, or the opera The Six Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill, or black Rider, William Burroughs and Tom Waits (with direction by Robert Wilson), not counting recent interpretations of Shakespeare's sonnets, accompanied only by cellist Vincent Segal. As for the film, recalls his performances in films C. S. Leigh, Patrice Chéreau, Sofia Coppolla and, above all, Mike Garbanski, the director of the magnificent Irina Palm (2007), where Faithfull plays a housewife, poor widow who, desperate to save her sick grandson, make a living in a pornoshop men masturbating behind a wall that hides its customers.
A few days after his first performance in Buenos Aires city and was never said to want to know for years, Ñ called to his apartment in Paris, alternating with long residence in the luxurious stays Shellbourne Hotel, in downtown Dublin . Across the line, his voice hoarse, deep and unmistakable Marianne Faithfull and her British accent naturally ended up imposing the topic of conversation, which, unexpectedly, turned around literature and composition.
-If you pay attention to the lyrics of the songs he composed, as well as many of his choices of repertoire, it seems that literature is very present. 'That has to do with my upbringing. Although I did not go to college and that I would have loved to study English literature, philosophy or comparative religion, I was lucky enough to go to a very good religious school where I did read a lot, which I loved because, well, let me get me good grades. And I say that I liked so much that I could never stop. I read as much as when I was at school.
- What I read in those formative years? -The usual: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Romantic poets, who are my favorites. But I like and who keep coming back is William Blake.
- Why Blake? 'I think about everything. I love his use of language, the themes he writes about: heaven and hell, temporality and eternity, mind and real life ...
I suppose that all these readings helped when he started writing songs. 'What helped me most, which I was critical, was to have read much poetry and, of course, Shakespeare. I understand very well what is formally a sonnet and the intricacy of its structure. And I have internalized the white lines. With that in mind, my first thought when I sit down to write lyrics is to be very lyrical. And I do not always come out, because in addition to what one brings poetry, there are other things that relate exclusively to what is being sung. Then, you learn to write songs typing. It's a job like everyone else, gets better with time.
And when he decided to sing songs of others, what is determined to choose the repertoire? -In general, the letters. When you have strength, grab one. I am very sensitive to the words of the songs.
-You are also an actress ... 'Which helps me to interpret. As you know, I'm used a lot of theater and the stage, which, I think, I solved many issues when I sing. But it goes both ways, because I also believe that singing helps me do better.
- Fixed to other singers? Do you learn from them? Well, I really like jazz and blues, and learned a lot listening to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. I can not sing like them, of course, but learn.
- What view of the songs when you are singing? -Many things. So many that sometimes I am surprised and indeed, I was excited. For example, for the first time I sang "As Tears Go By" at seventeen years and was a success. Now I realize it was a song that perhaps should have recorded much later and with another voice. That's why I came to do in my album Strange weather. You can not sing anything at any time. You have to wait for the right opportunity to do so.
- How you could share with colleagues his literary rock? Nick Cave, for example, has an amazing culture. Keith Richards is widely read even said he would have liked to be a librarian, and Mick Jagger also reads a lot. Look at that rock and roll a lot of people with education ...
-All along in our lives, we loaded with names. Where appropriate, given the nature of invoking the names, do you weigh? 'Yes, I weighed. In fact, I do not want to talk about the Rolling Stones. Sometimes I'm really tired.
-Early in his career as a singer you recorded many folk songs, can we imagine that perhaps some record ever devoted entirely to the repertoire? -In a couple of years. I thought, but give me time. Should not be rushed. For now I'm writing a lot.
- What to expect for their concert in Buenos Aires? I'm going with Marc Ribot, a guitarist extraordinary, particularly good at jazz, which will allow me to sing some songs that made Billie Holiday. I will sing many original songs from my last harvest and not worry that they will also be "Strange weather", "Lucy Jordan", "Sister Morphine", "Broken Español" and, of course, "As tears go by".
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