If I Never Get To Love You

One of the highlights of the first years of Marianne Faithfull’s career. Even the most loving fans have to admit that in those years she made better contributions sartorially than she did musically. But although a lot of Faithfull’s early work is hopelessly twee, she did record enough outstanding songs to fill out at least one full album. Her eponymous debut album was almost completely. She quickly cemented an image, quite typical of the early sixties, as the virginal yet poised beyond her years convent girl who trilled slightly masochistic odes to chaste devotion. Such was the ideal image for young girls back then, I suppose. The wistful, dewy-eyed blonde pining for a presumably much older man who barely notices her. She woos him with vows of self-abnegation in return for just – please! – letting her hang around. Not exactly an empowering role model, then. Faithfull herself was never than person and she quickly grew frustrated with her romantic English-rose image. At the time she understandably didn’t view herself as an artist with a vision to share or a message to impart. She fell into a singing career quite by accident and she was happy enough to fall right back out of it. At the same time, being a particularly intelligent and highly educated person, she saw the need to undermine the phony and harmful pretty-picture image of herself. Which she undertook doing via her personal life, becoming overnight a reviled and controversial figure for her sinful lifestyle and later, drug addiction. It wasn’t until years later that she embraced herself as an artist and realized that she did have an avenue of expression besides making herself ugly. In a way, her journey into darkness was almost an act of performance art. She used her body as the means to express her disgust with the roles that were thrust upon her. As a young singer who had been groomed and dressed to appear a certain way – a patriarchy-pleasing submissive waif in lace peter pan collars – she didn’t feel she had a voice to express her real self, and resorted to expressing herself through self-destruction, culminating in a highly publicized suicide attempt. As a heroin addict with no money, no record contract and no more fame, she came back to singing, but on entirely her own terms. It was a dramatic and unique evolution, and a continual inspiration. Nonetheless, even knowing how manufactured and phony the image of Marianne Faithfull was in the early sixties, the music should still be judged by its own merits. Corny and sugary it could be, yes, but who could deny she had a beautiful voice that even then was touchingly emotive.

I’m On Fire

Marianne Faithfull is a very modern girl. Though her sixties heyday will never cease to inspire fashion shows, for herself, Faithfull is anything but stuck in the past. She’s resigned to her most popular public image, still deflecting questions about Mick Jagger with weary tolerance. But she’s has never been hesitant to do away with things she’d done with, and her own mythos fascinates her much less than it does us. She remains remarkably edgy for someone who by all rights should be old and tired. She’s seen at the coolest parties, holding court in hip places where It Girls a third her age jostle to pay homage. She must have a laugh or two seeing young models dressed up as herself fluttering down the runway. It goes beyond cool PYT’s emulating her famous blonde bangs. It may have been decades since she’s been what we think of as a pop star, but in that time she has grown into one of our most respected artists. Anyone she wants to play with she can have. She’s collaborated with the biggest names and the most obscure. Nick Cave and PJ Harvey want to write songs with her. Lou Reed and Keith Richards lend her their guitar licks. Kate Moss stars in her videos. Anna Sui sends her clothes. When she covers Morrissey, he comes to the studio to listen. Nor is Faithfull ever afraid to experiment. Lately she likes to alternate her albums between the dirty/genteel neo-cabaret of Strange Weather and Easy Come, Easy Go and odd rock inflected records like Vagabond Ways and Kissin’ Time. The latter, with its roster of collaborators from Billy Corgan to Beck, was one of her most modern sounding, and hardest rocking albums in years. I would say it was as close as she’s come to re-exploring her angry, punk-influenced Broken English phase. It was also a very, very sexy record. I don’t know what she’s been up to in her personal life, and I’m sure she’s had all the speculation about that as she can stand, but she did seem to have desire on her mind when she made that record.

I’m A Loser

The Beatles For Sale, again. Wherein the Beatles demonstrate a nifty and difficult trick of songcraftery; putting bleak ideas to tunes so bouncy and cheermaking that nobody notices how bloody depressing you really are. This is an incredibly catchy song, with some deeply self-pitying lyrics. What reason what the wildly successful Beatles have to write about being losers, besides irony? Maybe the fact that their lives in 1964 consisted of eight days a week parade of hotel rooms, airplanes and recording studios, interspersed with running away from shrieking fans. The money and acclaim were all very nice, but when you’re essentially a signing prisoner, the euphoria wears off quickly. The Beatles were beginning to regret wishing to be bigger than Elvis. John Lennon especially began feeling seriously out of sorts, and that spirit was reflected on record. But since they continued to write inescapably appealing tunes that in turn continued to be wildly popular, nobody really paid much attention to John’s musical cries for help, even when literally titled HELP! If this frolic is what being a loser feels like, please don’t ever stop, was the attitude. When an artist produces music this good, who cares if he’s crying on the inside, or having a nervous breakdown, or whatever else. Of course, there’s not a Beatles song that hasn’t been covered to Hades and back, and this one is no exception. I adore the cover done by Marianne Faithfull, who among all of her other reasons for not being a loser, was 18 years old at the time. Her warbling about grown-up subjects she barely understood was adorable. But she caught up fast, and it became substantially less cute when it became clear just how well she’d come to understand what she was singing about.

I’ll Keep it With Mine

Well, I guess it’s official that Bob Dylan is a writer of Great American Standards. Like a grumpy, nasal, LSD-munching Cole Porter. Of course, he’s just as great a performer, but whether that’s first and foremost over songwriting is up for debate. Or maybe those two qualities are inexorably intertwined. Either way, besides providing us with his own musical persona, he’s also provided a brickload of songs other people like to sing. Singing Dylan is like a master class for aspiring rock stars. Everyone sings Dylan, it’s like a bylaw or something. You just have to do Dylan to prove your bonafides. This here is one of his many songs that have been interpreted by more singers than there are frogs in a swamp. Dylan tried to record this one for the Blonde on Blonde sessions, didn’t like any of it, and didn’t release a version until the Bootleg Series came out. What he did do was give to Judy Collins to song, and she released it as a single. Then there was a Bob-approved version by Nico, which is my personal favorite, because NICO. Actually, Nico’s version is kind of weird and terrible and not suited to her vocal style at all. But she’s Nico, so obviously it’s brilliant. I’m almost equally enamored or Marianne Faithfull’s recording. Or maybe even more, I can’t decide. Faithfull really surprised the universe by her metamorphosis from dreamy eye-candy folksinger into one of the greatest of torch singers. Any song she turns her mind to, she turns into something intensely personal and often painful. I almost always love what she does, but often I find it too depressing. As in this case. It’s practically the polar opposite of what Nico did. Nico played it all cool and detached, as befits her ice maiden image at the time. Faithfull played it her usual gut-wrenching way, as befits her image at the time, that of someone who’s traveled every circle of hell and has a lot of stories to tell about it. Next to those two, old Zimmy runs a very distant third. He was right to leave this track off his own albums. He may have written it, but it was never meant for him.

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

Here is Bob Dylan being noncryptic. He’s produced so many incomprehensible word salads that it’s easy to forget that the man can also write a damn good straight-up cry-in-your-beer drinking song. My favorite Dylan albums, and probably a lot of people’s, will always remain his fractured reality ’65, ’66 period. It’s inevitable that Dylan will always be defined by Subterranean Homesick Blues, Visions of Johanna, Desolation Row and their brethren. That’s fine – those were his finest moments, after all. On the other hand, it’s also good to remind yourself that Dylan is quite a bit more versatile a songwriter than that. He’s not the most versatile musician on earth, and his vocal limitations being what they are, there are a lot of genres he’s just not suited for. But he does like to mix it up and work with different styles. I’m not crazy for his early folk recordings, as that is just not a style of music I’m a fan of. Christmas songs, also, turned out to be not his forte. But if there’s one genre Bob Dylan is well suited to, it’s country. He’s great at croaking about unhappiness. On John Wesley Harding, Dylan found a sweet spot between old-school country and blues rock. That was a great album, and this track is my favorite. It’s the perfect combination of sweetly-sad, with simple, evocative words and just the right amount of croak in the vocal. No wonder it’s become a popular tune for cover artists, well loved by folksy types like Linda Ronstandt and Rita Coolidge. I have a particular fondness for Marianne Faithfull’s plaintive version. Her take is so much more painful and emotionally raw than the original, and certainly stands above most of the bland covers floating around out there.

I Want You

‘I want you’ songs are a genre all their own, a not unpopular one. Some musicians never play anything but. Everybody does ‘I want yous’ at least on a regular. And this, starting from the title, is as straight forward an ‘I want you song’ that Bob Dylan was capable of producing. Yes, it’s stuffed to the gills with the usual cryptic Bob Dylan mumbo jumbo, but at least it has a chorus. That makes sense. And a tune you could almost hop around to, or at least tap your foot a little. It’s Bob Dylan being almost accessible. I’m not one for playing games of What Does Bob Dylan Really Mean? I think that kind of defeats the purpose. I imagine even Bob Dylan can’t truly say what any of his songs mean. They’re not designed to have clean little meanings. They’re supposed to mean whatever you happen to hear in them, at any given time. But sometimes you have to wonder anyway. I’ve always presumed that the lines about ‘The dancing child with is Chinese flute’ was a reference to one or another of The Rolling Stones. Because time is on his side, don’t you know. Some scholars seem to think it’s about Brian Jones, who was the Stone who hobnobbed with Dylan the most. I’ve always thought it was a resentful jab at Mick Jagger, because Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull spend a lot of time hanging out with Dylan – before she was with Jagger – but rejected his advances on the grounds that she was pregnant and about to get married. Dylan expressed his anger by ripping up all the poetry he’d written for her. But, as Faithfull herself wondered “Did these thoughts, perhaps, end up in songs?” It’s a long shot, a load of speculation, but I’ve always suspected that in some roundabout way, maybe this is what came floating through from that encounter.

I Got You Babe

Basically, I hate this song. What a piece of cheesy, campy, faux-counterculture pandering late sixties bullshit kitsch. Sonny Bono was a clown with an ugly mustache and his ex-wife has managed to overshadow any smidge of creative output with outre outfits and the quasi-ironic affections of middle-aged drag queens. So even as early as 1973, the only decent way to handle it was to trowel on enough surreal campiness to drown a pride parade. I mean, this song can never, ever be a serious one, and no one can ever ever perform it with a straight face. That’s why the only half reasonable version comes from two bizarrely clad, drug-baked pop culture refugees, namely Marianne Faithfull and David Bowie, on Bowie’s 1980 Floor Show special.  Faithfull and her bedazzled wimple was in the deepest throes of a heroin addiction, and Bowie, though he seemed to be riding a wave of success, was on the brink of spiraling into cocaine induced dementia. Obviously, they were a match made in some circle of hell reserved for rock stars who’ve spun way off the tracks of reality. It wasn’t an entirely random matchup; Faithfull and Bowie had shared billing on some low-rent early sixties package tours, when she was a folkie ingenue with a Jagger/Richards single on the charts, and he was a mod wannabe scrabbling for recognition. Rumors of a romantic relationship are probably just wishful thinking, but they had definitely known each other before either one had become an icon. Still, there are few rock star pairups as surreal as this one. It works, strangely enough. Perhaps they are on some level kindred spirits, two artists who are unable to exist within the established commercial hegemony, or two troubled old friends just trying to help each other out.

Guilt

A very naughty lady, bless her heart – Keith Richards

High compliments indeed. If Marianne Faithfull didn’t write Guilt doesn’t mean it’s not her song. Barry Reynolds penned the tune, from inside a haze of codeine-spiked cough syrup according to Faithfull, and who knows whence the inspiration came. But I think it’s easy enough to guess where Faithfull drew from when delivering her vocal. She must have felt enough guilt and shame for her choices in life. When Broken English was being recorded it seemed that she had failed as hard as possible in every way possible, ruined her life, lost everything, squandered her life on smack, with no hope on the horizon of redemption. It was only in hindsight that her journey came to seem a necessary trial by fire through which the true artist could emerge. But it’s a mistake to take all (or any) of Faithfull’s work as only drug fueled. Crushing aimless guilt doesn’t just come from a junkie’s sense of worthlessness. It can strike anyone, at any time. The same is true of the heartbreak and regret that are Faithfull’s hallmarks. She may have chosen a rougher path than most, but the emotions she channels are universal. That is what’s made Faithfull such an interesting artists over the years, what keeps her music essential and brings her into fans’ hearts.

Back in Baby’s Arms

A new Marianne Fathfull release is always cause for celebration. Though, yes, she’s settled into world-weary introspective mode and shows no signs of her Broken English fire. Not that she hasn’t earned it. She’s made her specialty to take formerly pretty songs and ravage them into some form of truth. Is it possible to get tired of the gravelly voiced Faithfull being downtempo and depressing? Maybe for you, but she’s only one in a million and every missive she sends is a gift. The new record, Horses and High Heels has covers and originals, mostly downbeat; the usual rueful tone; Lou Reed on guitar for edge; everything you could ever want to drown your sorrows in.

For Wanting You

No good time goes unpunished. Love affairs come at cost. For the pleasure of intimacy you pay in injured feelings, attachments made are inevitably severed, for every time you open up your heart you get a scar. It doesn’t take too many drives ’round the block to start measuring out your precious, finite resources – feelings – in tiny dollops, calculating how much care to invest, how much hurt to expect and whether it will be a worthy trade-off in the end. If you’re lucky you’ll go home with a handful of bright shining memories, and be happy you had those moments, and be grateful for them, and know you earned them and they were worth the price of admission. If not lucky, you just have wasted hours and wasted bruises, a lesson in mistakes not to be repeated. You fucking get cynical after a while, that’s what.

That’s what this song makes me think. What I made of it in 1999, when it came out, I don’t know, except back then I didn’t have a clue. Now, being a little wiser for being older, I find it truthful beyond doubt. It seems like what Marianne Faithfull was put on earth to do, reminding us of the pits and glories of love, teaching by example, being the voice of experience. And no less personal of a lesson for being a song written by Elton and Bernie. That’s the genius of Faithfull. They’re her words regardless of if she wrote them or not, they’re her lessons to teach. She’s always been the greatest inspiration to me, because she has that blues-singer’s quality – a deep resignation that good times and wild times and everything that is interesting and colorful in life comes at a cost.