Marianne Faithfull, '60s icon and evolving pop star, has died at 78

The British musician and actress Marianne Faithfull, an icon of London's fertile 1960s music scene, died Thursday at the age of 78.

"It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull," said a representative in a statement provided to NPR. "Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed."

In the reader's note to her 1994 autobiography, Faithfull, the London native wrote, "Never apologize, never explain — didn't we always say that? Well, I haven't and I don't."

That uncompromising spirit guided her music career, which took off in 1964 with her take on "As Tears Go By," an early Mick Jagger and Keith Richards composition that reached the top 10 of the U.K. singles chart. She followed up that success in 1965 with two separate full-lengths: a pop-leaning self-titled effort, and Come My Way, which contained a robust, confident spin on traditional folk songs.

In 1979, after a creatively fallow decade, she released the stunning Broken English, which was selected by NPR as one of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women in 2017. The progressive LP incorporated glacial art-rock guitars and percolating electronic elements (including keyboards from Steve Winwood), and received a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance.

In the 1980s and beyond, Faithfull continued to shapeshift between styles; she dabbled in German cabaret ("Ballad of the Soldier's Wife," from the tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill), indie-folk (a 2008 take on The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife 3" with Nick Cave), and smoky jazz noir (2011's downtrodden cover of The Gutter Twins' "Stations").

Those diverse covers reflected the dramatic evolution of Faithfull's voice. In the 1960s, she wielded a regal, dusky alto, which boasted a crispness amplified by precise, graceful phrasing. As time passed, her voice deepened, giving her gravitas and larger-than-life presence; her gravel-pocked delivery glided roughly over songs, just as sandpaper smooths out rough wood.

She used this evolution to her advantage, especially on well-received collaborations with noted producer Hal Willner, including 1987's moody Strange Weather and 2008's diverse, star-studded Easy Come, Easy Go: 12 Songs for Music Lovers. In late 1997, Faithfull also reached the U.S. Top 40 thanks to the rock band Metallica, who tapped her specifically to provide haunting backing vocals on their song "The Memory Remains."

Faithfull was born on Dec. 29, 1946, in the Hampstead neighborhood of London. Her mother, Eva, was a baroness descended from Austro-Hungarian royalty, and her father worked for the British intelligence agency known as MI6. As a teenager, Faithfull joined a repertory theater company and also did "a little bit of folksinging in coffee bars and folk clubs," she wrote in Faithfull.

Both of these experiences would prove formative. In addition to her musical career, Faithfull acted on the stage, as well as on TV and film.

In 1964, she was discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who spotted her at a party and asked if she could sing. "I said, 'Mm, mm, I can. Mm. Mm,'" she told NPR in 2005. "And I think about a week later, I got a telegram from Andrew saying, 'Be at Olympic Studios at 2 o'clock at such-and-such address, London.'"

That session produced "As Tears Go By" and launched her lifelong association with The Rolling Stones, or more specifically, Mick Jagger, with whom she had a romantic relationship during the second half of the 1960s. During this era, Faithfull co-wrote "Sister Morphine" with Jagger and Keith Richards, and released her own take on the song in 1969 — well before the Stones' version surfaced on 1971's Sticky Fingers.

Over the years, Faithfull navigated numerous health challenges, including anorexia, breast cancer and Hepatitis C, and experienced homelessness in the 1970s due to a well-publicized heroin addiction. She told NPR's Terry Gross in 1994 she started using the drug as a "coping mechanism," for "coping with my life."

Nevertheless, Faithfull worked hard at sobriety, and continued to create. Her 2018 album, Negative Capability, featured original songwriting collaborations with Nick Cave and Ed Harcourt and included a poignant new take on "As Tears Go By." Faithfull's voice sounded more fragile, and her delivery was wistful and wizened, as if she wasn't just taking the song's longing lyrics to heart; she was reflecting on her own life, and the distance she had traveled since initially recording the song.

She followed that up in 2021 with She Walks In Beauty, a collaboration with The Bad Seeds' Warren Ellis rooted in her love of poetry. She finished the project after spending three weeks in the hospital fighting a life-threatening COVID-19 infection.