Marianne
Faithfull Horse And High Heels [album]
“For
forty-seven years Marianne
Faithfull has been, and remains, one
of the most unique, bewitching and
unconventional musical artistes
Britain has produced; and the result
of her experience of a creative public
life is reflected in the release of her
2011 album Horses And High Heels...”
THE NAME MARIANNE FAITHFULL conjures up an alluring, sweet-voiced Sixties
icon with impeccable rock star connections and a talent all of her own. That
is, to the initiated loyal fans who have followed her career over the years.
Marianne is now just as appealing to the youth of today, while staying faithful
both to herself and to her fans from the early days. Her new album, Horses
And High Heels, is due for release early in the Spring of 2011. Her beautifully
gravelly voice oozes sensuality and has evolved from the sweet, quivering tones
on her debut single in 1964 As Tears Go By — the first song ever
written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Today she is established in her peerless
position as a profoundly distinctive scorched-earth torch-singer and richly
emotive songwriter.
Horses And High Heels is her twenty-third solo album, which is described
as "sonically stunning". Recorded in New Orleans with a core of exceptional
local musicians, the album features eight cover versions and four original new
songs co-written by Marianne; four songs featuring the virtuoso guitar playing
of her musician/producer friend John Porter, most noted for his work with Roxy
Music, Eric Clapton and The Smiths.
Also included is the evocative Old House. The lyrics were specially written
for her by Irish playwright Frank McGuiness and there are two cameo appearances
on guitar from another old friend, Lou Reed, plus further cameos from Dr John
and MC5's Wayne Kramer.
The album is exquisitely produced by long-term collaborator Hal Willner, the
soundscape alchemist behind the critically-lauded Easy Come, Easy Go
(2009), her astonishing collection of covers and duets featuring more of the
kind of people Marianne calls friends — from Keith Richards and Jarvis
Cocker to Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave.
Two years on and Horses And High Heels shimmers with creative life, made
by a woman in her sixties who is clearly more vibrantly-inspired than ever.
"I never stop working these days," Marianne admits in her velvety, throaty timbre.
"Because I can do it. I'm healthy. And I love working. I think it's good for
me. I'm very happy and I'm having a very good time. I think the worst is over.
And it's about time, really, isn't it!?"
Known as the Godmother of Goth, emblem of the night, both doomed romantic and
yet ultimate bohemian survivor, Marianne's future looks good. I have always
thought of her as a Celtic noblewoman, perhaps The Lady Of Shallot in
John Waterhouse's dramatic painting of the theme of the poem but for whom, like
the Phoenix, there is a rising from the ashes.
Marianne has lived her life, certainly, on the scenic route. A teenaged pop
star, rock star's girlfriend and iconic beauty in the 1960s; film star and theatre
actress in Chekhov's Three Sisters (1967), Girl On A Motorcycle
(1968) and Hamlet (1969); vulnerable drug addict lost in the shadows
during the 1970s.
Yet in 1979 that lost young woman resurrected herself as a rock star with the
classic album Broken English. Two decades of steady creativity followed throughout
her thirties and forties, from Dangerous Acquaintances (1981) to her
critically-acclaimed post-heroin album Strange Weather (1987, produced
by Hal Willner), to the Angelo Badalementi collaboration A Secret Life
(1995) and to her operatic recording The Seven Deadly Sins (1998).
A flourishing acting career in her fifties and beyond saw Intimacy (2001),
Marie Antoinette (2006) and a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for
her starring role in Irina Palm (2006) as a woman who would do absolutely
anything to help her sick grandchild. A collaborative magnet across the generations,
she's worked with Billy Corgan, Beck, Blur, Pulp (2002's Kissin' Time)
and PJ Harvey & Nick Cave (2004's Before The Poison), sung with David
Bowie and Metallica and interpreted the songs of Kurt Weill (1995, 20th Century
Blues), Tom Waits and Morrissey.
A mythologically-addictive personality, she's been teetotal since 2004, survived
both a cancer scare in 2005 and clinical depression in 2008 and written two
volumes of autobiography, Faithfull (1994) and Memories, Dreams And
Reflections (2007).
Horses And High Heels, recorded in the New Orleans French quarter over
September/October 2010, features a spectrum of astonishing musicianship from
the city's exceptional music pool. Marianne is always refreshingly honest: "I
don't really do conventional," she admits. "We wanted to have fun, find great
musicians — and, of course, New Orleans is cheaper than New York!"
The album spans the spectrum of soul, blues, folk, country, jazz-pop perkiness
and beguiling guitar-rock, all underpinned by her striking vocals and hauntingly
influenced by the perhaps unlikely musical combination of jazz, classical music
and Nick Cave's malevolent Grinderman.
The cover versions see Marianne and Hal once again reprising their uncanny gift
for finding beautiful, unexpected and often scandalously overlooked songs. Songs
that are as dramatic as they're coolly diverse. "We just do find great songs,"
Marianne remarks. "But there's no theme… well, the only theme is me."
There's the brooding, spectral guitar-rock of Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan's The
Stations, a fine start to the album and a track that suits Marianne's voice;
the swooning, country-rock tinge of R B Morris's That's How Every Empire
Falls which is a terrific track infused with pathos. The bar-room blues
and Seventies soul revue thrills of Jackie Lomax's No Reason reeks of
merriment. "We chose some soul material this time which I was very unsure of
at first," muses Marianne. "No Reason, Back In Baby's Arms, Gee
Baby, these songs are more vocally demanding and it was quite frightening.
But I think we managed it." Indeed they did.
Elsewhere are glimmering Seventies soul classics from the gorgeous, steel-guitar-layered
Love Song (written by Seventies songwriter Lesley Duncan and made famous
by Elton John) on which you can detect some of the reverence and poignancy from
Marianne's early years; the bewitching piano reverie of Carol King's Goin'
Back (recorded in 1966 by Dusty Springfield), an old favourite sung beautifully
by Marianne; and her positively Shakespearian rendition of the Shangri-La masterpiece
Past, Present And Future, which has a kind of mystical style with a coquettish
feel that seems delightfully theatrical.
Her four original new songs, meanwhile, are a revelation: the folky and unfeasibly
rousing Why Did We Have To Part?, which is an elegy to the end of a long
relationship and is an enticing poem to music. Marianne comments: "I just couldn't
resist a break-up song — and the pain is over."
The rollicking, Hammond swirl of Prussian Blue is a paean to her life
in Paris. You just know it's great from the first musical notes. Marianne sings
it with a smile in her voice and then manages sheer enjoyment with the title
track, the rhythmically-compelling, Celtic-folk-tinged Horses And High Heels,
that casts its magic wide. A fabulous song, eerily captivating and explained
by Marianne as "just me watching from my windows in Paris and Ireland".
The joyous and evocative Eternity features a sampled Arabian-jazz flourish from
Brian Jones' recording in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Jajouka (1968's
Brian Jones Presents: The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka). "It's all a very
different style for me," says Marianne. "Much more rhythmic. And a very modern
record; it's not looking back to the past at all. All the songs are about now,
you know." Mature and sophisticated with a different style maybe, but you can
still detect a little of the young Marianne in her voice.
It's a now filled with even more possibilities. In 2011, Marianne tours
the world, says she may "slip in" some spoken-word performances of her beloved
Shakespearian Sonnets and has recently completed filming on Belle du Seigneur,
due in 2012, the English-language adaptation of Albert Cohen's epic French love
story, in which she plays housekeeper Mariette alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers
and Natalia Vodianova. No wonder, at the heart of Horses And High Heels,
is the sound of a worldly, sophisticated joy — an album as colourful, dramatic
and artistically liberated as her own extraordinary life.
"Conventional happiness isn't my way, you know," states the irresistibly unconventional
Marianne. "But this is a very happy record. I'm not depressed any more. And
I think it's all been well worth it. I did have a bit of a bad time in the Seventies
but I think things have been wonderful. So I suppose this album is a bit of
a breakthrough. I'm incredibly lucky; don't think I don't know it. I'm so grateful
to be able to still write songs and express my emotion in music. And the best
thing of all is working with such great people. It's inspirational."
Marianne Faithful is ethereal, powerful and yet vulnerable. The young Marianne
was very much a child of the Sixties, with her long golden tresses and rock
star connections. And that sweetly drawling seductive voice. On Horses And
High Heels, Marianne has got It — and she flaunts it beautifully.
• A mature Marianne brings the allure of that
flower child who pouted innocently yet provocatively to a modern audience with
the terrific Horses And High Heels, to be released on Dramatico Records
on 7 March 2011.
Tracklisting: 1 The Stations | 2 Why Did We Have To Part |
3 That's How Every Empire Falls | 4 No Reason | 5 Prussian
Blue | 6 Love Song | 7 Goin' Back | 8 Past Present And
Future | 9 Horses And High Heels | 10 Back In Baby's Arms
| 11 Eternity | 12 The Old House
"On Horses And High Heels, Marianne has got It — and she flaunts
it beautifully"
— Maggie Woods
Check out mariannefaithfull.org.uk.
