Marianne Faithfull, Legendary Singer, Actress and Stones Muse, Dies

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Marianne Faithfull in the 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle

Marianne Faithfull, the legendary English singer-songwriter, actress and muse, died today (January 30, 2025). Her death, at age 78, was reported to the BBC by a spokesperson. The cause of death was not revealed.

Born in Hampstead, U.K., on December 29, 1946, to a former British Army spy and a ballerina, Faithfull moved to Reading, where, by her early teens, she could be found in coffee bars singing folk songs. Her repertoire included “House of the Rising Sun” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” both of which she would eventually record.

After immersing herself in London’s party scene, she befriended Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who, upon realizing that she could sing, quickly signed her.

She made a significant impact with her bittersweet 1964 version of the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition “As Tears Go By” (co-written with Oldham, who changed the title from “As Time Goes By”), a #9 U.K. hit (and #22 in the U.S.).

Soon came such U.K. and U.S. hits as “Come and Stay with Me,” “This Little Bird,” “Summer Nights” and “Yesterday.”

Back in 2020, she publicly thanked the medical team for saving her life during her Covid-19-related hospital stay. On May 20, one month after being discharged from a London hospital, Faithfull posted a photo to her Facebook page, writing, “I want to thank the doctors and nurses who… basically saved my life.” Faithfull had been released from the hospital on April 22, three weeks after she had been admitted with symptoms of the virus. At the time, a representative for Faithfull said, “She will continue to recuperate in London.”

In the May 20 statement, the grateful performer wrote, “I would like to say to all the people who cared for me and thought of me, who sent me love, people I know, people I have never met, thank you for helping me to get better.

“I want to thank the doctors and nurses who were so good and basically saved my life!

“Thank you all again for all your care, love, thoughts, prayers and wishes.”

Marianne Faithfull, in a photo posted on her Facebook page on May 20, 2020.

In a statement on April 4, 2020, when the news of her illness was first reported, her manager François Ravard said Faithfull was “stable and responding to treatment.”

Earlier that day, on a Facebook post, a friend of Faithfull, the performance artist Susana Ventura, who goes by the name Penny Arcade, wrote, “Marianne Faithfull is in hospital in London having tested positive for Covid 19. She went in this past Tuesday [March 31]. Please pray for her!

“She has withstood and survived so much in her life–including being Marianne Faithfull–that to be taken down by a virus would be such a tragedy. I spoke to her last week and she was hiding out from the virus but she has caregivers and someone brought in to her.

“I wrote to her much-loved ex-husband, John Dunbar… He said, ‘So far so good.’ But also that she can barely speak and no visitors.”

Faithfull’s romance with Jagger from the mid-1960s until the end of the decade would become a national obsession. The couple was viewed as emblematic figures of the era, the media fixation obscuring and ultimately hurting her own career.

In a 2011 interview, Best Classic Bands Editor Jeff Tamarkin asked Faithfull about “As Tears Go By.” He asked her, “There was a long period when you wanted nothing to do with ‘As Tears Go By,’ and then you brought it back as a melancholy sort of dirge.”

“Oh, I got over that years ago,” she said. “It was a very interesting thing to do at the time [reworking the song]. I now play the first [hit] version. I don’t even mention their names [Jagger and Keith Richards]. I just say, ‘This is my first song, “As Tears Go By”.’ It’s over for me. Those people are written out of my picture.”

She recorded the original, chilling 1969 rendition of the dark song she co-wrote with Jagger and Richards, “Sister Morphine.” It was later remodeled by the Rolling Stones on their classic 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Watch Faithfull’s stunning performance on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus from 1968

During the ’70s, Faithfull’s life took a downturn as she became engulfed in personal struggles. Although she kept recording, her style evolving all along, most fans lost track of her. When she re-emerged in 1979 with a new album called Broken English, few recognized her as the same woman who’d had the hit with “As Tears Ago By” nearly 15 years earlier. Her voice was now scratchy, deeper and raw, and her songs were often brutal in content.

For years, Faithfull had distanced herself from that 1964 hit. Best Classic Bands’ editor Jeff Tamarkin asked her about it.

“Oh, I got over that years ago,” she said. “It was a very interesting thing to do at the time [reworking the song]. I now play the first [hit] version. I don’t even mention their names [Jagger and Richards]. I just say, ‘This is my first song.’ It’s over for me. Those people are written out of my picture.”

[Her recordings are available in the U.K. here and in the U.S. here.]

Related: Our interview with Faithfull