Marianne Faithfull fans have been sharing footage from the final concert she ever played, following the news of her passing.
Earlier today (January 30), Faithfull’s representatives shared the news that the iconic singer and actress had died at the age of 78. “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family,” the message read. “She will be dearly missed.”
The last show Faithfull played took place at Le Bataclan in Paris on November 25, 2016, where she played some of her best known songs, including ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Sister Morphine’.
Check out extended footage of Faithfull’s elegant, intimate performance below, as well as her full setlist from the day.
As well as ‘As Tears Go By’, which Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and manager Andrew Loog Oldham penned for her, she also played covers of other contemporaries, including Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ and Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower Of Song’.
She also played a number of new songs, including giving live debuts to ‘They Come At Night’ and ‘Don’t Go’, which would both go on to be included on her 2018 album ‘Negative Capability’, for which she collaborated closely with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
Marianne Faithfull played:
‘Tower Of Song’
‘Broken English’
‘Vagabond Ways’
‘They Come At Night’
‘Don’t Go’
‘Crazy Love’
‘Love More Or Less’
‘As Tears Go By’
‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’
‘Sister Morphine’
‘Late Victorian Holocaust’
‘The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’
Faithfull was closely associated with The Rolling Stones from the moment she arrived in London as a teenager during the height of the ‘Swinging London’ scene. ‘As Tears Go By’ was her first hit, reaching the UK Top Ten in 1964 when she was still 17, and she was quickly established as a US chart success too.
Despite marrying artist John Dunbar in 1965 and having a son with him, she left him for Jagger in 1966 and had a high-profile relationship with the frontman for the following four years. During the period, she was often referred to as a “muse” for the band, and she is thought to have been the inspiration for songs such as ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ and ‘Wild Horses’.
‘Negative Capability’, meanwhile, was one of a number of artistically adventurous records Faithfull worked on in her later years. After a near-fatal battle with COVID-19 in 2020, she set to work on the spoken word album ‘She Walks In Beauty’, also with Ellis, which featured the singer reciting poetry from Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Alfred Tennyson. It would prove to be Faithfull’s final studio album.
Tributes have been pouring in for Faithfull since news of her death broke, including from Blur‘s Graham Coxon, The Charlatans‘ Tim Burgess and Cosey Fanni Tutti. See a collection of tributes here.
