Back in 2008 sixties pinup Marianne Faithfull recorded an album of covers,
titled Easy Come, Easy Go, in duet with Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Cat Power,
Kate & Anna McGarrigle and several more artists.
One take that stands out to my ears is the version of Sing Me Back Home,
a charming lullaby by the late country singerMerle Haggard (1937-2016). Marianne did this one with her first Rolling Stone lover, Keith Richards.
‘Broken English’ by MARIANNE FAITHFULL
Her seventh album – Released 2 November 1979
No 4 in West Germany / No 2 in Austria
No 3 in France / No 57 in the UK
With the fantastic single ‘The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’ …
‘Broken English’
MARIANNE FAITHFULL
Released: 2 Nov 1979
Seventh studio album
THE GUARDIAN says: “In theory at least, there were more opportune moments in pop history for a forgotten 60s legend to stage a comeback than the late 1970s. Admirably less tolerant than subsequent generations of the idea that the 60s were a matchless cultural high-water mark, punks made a great pantomimic show of disdaining the preceding decade. “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones/ In 1977,” sang the Clash. And yet the punk generation seemed to make an exception for Marianne Faithfull. McLaren attempted to cast her as Sid Vicious’s junkie mother in The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle. The songs on her 1979 comeback album, Broken English, were premiered at a gig at the Music Machine in London, the bearpit venue where Bob Geldof was punched in the face in the middle of a Boomtown Rats gig and Richard Hell received such a grim reception that Rotten, of all people, took the stage to ask for calm. “Punk,” Faithfull later recalled, “made Broken English possible. The record careers by, its 35 minutes as bracingly full of venom and spite as anything her punk admirers could muster. For Faithfull, it seemed to work as catharsis.” – Full review here.
TURN UP THE VOLUME‘S favorite track: title track BROKEN ENGLISH
On her excellent 1999 album Vagabonds Waysthe former 60s Rolling Stones connected celebrity & tremendous voice Marianne Faithfull covered the late Leonard Cohen’s classic Tower Of Song (1988) in a truly captivating and serene way with lots of respect and love
for the author. Only last month she included the song in her set at the Bataclan venue
in Paris. A now, unfortunately, world-famous concert hall because of the awful terrorist attack of last year when gunmen killed 90 people inside the building. The 69-year old singer’s (partially living in France’s capital) tribute to Cohen on 25 November was really special. Find out here why…
