As Tears Go By - Marianne Faithfull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phZZgkT1Jk

People often think that the reason why Marianne Faithfull became a successful pop star and actress in the sixties, was because she was a girlfriend of Mick Jagger. This is not the case. The truth is that she was a folk singer performing in coffee houses around London in April 1964 when she met the Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, at what all sources call "a Rolling Stones launch party". Maybe it was a Rolling Stones lunch party: they had had their inaugural Top Ten hit in February of that year, ("Not Fade Away" reached number 3) and their first number one was just round the corner.

At the time, Oldham was trying to persuade Jagger and Richards to write simple pop songs as opposed to the blues influenced rock numbers they had confined themselves to hitherto. All three had been impressed by the way in which Paul McCartney and John Lennon had "knocked off" the Stones' first Top Twenty hit "I Wanna Be Your Man" while the five of them were in a London studio together, and by the number of hits they were churning out for the Epstein stable of performers, so Oldham thought they should give it a go. Jagger and Richards half-heartedly put together a song, taking the signature song from the movie "Casablanca" as a starting point, Oldham changed the title from "As Time Goes By" to "As Tears Go By", thereby earning himself a writer's credit, and issued it as Faithfull's debut single in June 1964.

Listening to it now, along with her other 3 hits of the following year, Marianne Faithfull comes across as England's answer to "Françoise Hardy", cool and reserved, quintessentially Home Counties with a hint of folk.

For six years she was indeed part of the Stones coterie, splitting up with Brian Jones shortly before he was sacked from the group, and subsequently going out with Mick Jagger.

She was one of those people who seemed to be at the heart of the legend that became the sixties, famously featuring déshabillé in press coverage of a police drug raid on Keith Richard's country house, appearing amongst the backing vocalists on the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" and "All You Need is Love", recommending to Jagger the Mikhail Bulgakov novel "The Master and Margarita" which inspired him to write "Sympathy for the Devil", as well as providing backing for that too.

Extraordinarily, on top of all this she somehow found time to fit in numerous acting roles on the London stage and in movies amongst which was the iconic (if silly) "Girl on a Motorcycle" opposite Alain Delon, and Ophelia in Tony Richardson's 1969 version of "Hamlet". In the theatre she appeared in Chekhov's "Three Sisters" opposite Glenda Jackson as well as in plays by Edward Bond and John Osborne.

And then she fell off the map. 1970, found her homeless on the streets of Soho, addicted to heroine, and cocaine, depending on the kindness and charity of others to get by, one of the most sudden falls from fame to destitution there has ever been.

In the early nineties, I when I was working for Islington Council as an Arts Officer, we put together a poetry writing scheme for the Union Chapel Homeless Project, in partnership with the performance poetry organisation Apples and Snakes, and the Big Issue. I was proud to name it "The Word on the Kerb". Apples and Snakes led weekly poetry workshops for the homeless participants over a a couple of months, resulting in a performance at the Union Chapel. Topping the bill for the evening was a well-known New York "beat" poet, flown over especially for the occasion, along with the two poets from Apples and Snakes who'd been running the workshops.

While we promoted the whole event as being a vehicle for the homeless poets, the definite main draw of the evening was the American, a legend whose name I can't now remember. I insisted that all of the poets performing would be announced by name only, and no-one would say who was from the workshop programme or who wasn't. Brilliantly, the Apples and Snakes Poets, demanded to be "mixed in" with the others, so that only the American headliner gurned due status through the order of performance - ie he was last, the climax of the evening.

We spent the afternoon doing actual performance workshops, making sure the readers would be confident, knew how to project, use the mics and so on, and then, a couple of hours before the 7.30 start, I prepared to take the professional poets out to a nearby Italian restaurant for a meal, a condition of the Apples and Snakes "spec". I suddenly realised with horror we would have to ask the homeless performers, there were seven of them, to return just before the show while we ate in the meantime. Even though it wasn't budgeted for, I invited them along. It clearly was the right and only thing to do. Any concerns that I may have had about them "misbehaving" or drinking too much were swiftly dispelled, and it was a pleasure to see them enjoying being treated as equals alongside their luminary fellow poets. I couldn't help noticing that none of them finished their pasta, as their stomachs were not used to normal size portions.

The evening was a hit: the audience appreciated all of the performers alike. Some of the homeless were too shy to perform, so we had the other poets read their poems for them, and these went down a storm too. Now, over 30 years later, I can't remember the names of any who performed that day, save one. The reason why I remember him was because he read so well, and his final poem was one of the highlights of the night. Afterwards I asked him if he'd send it to me, and he gave me his reading copy, which I still have.

A True Reflection

When you get what you want in your struggle for self, and the world makes you king for a day,

just go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your mother, your father or wife, whose judgement upon you must pass,

the one whose verdict counts most in your life is the one staring back from the glass.

He’s the one who counts, never mind all the rest, for he’s with you right up to the end -

and you’ll have passed your most dangerous, difficult test if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may cheat the whole world down the pathway of life, get pats on the back as you pass,

but your final reward will be heartache and tears if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

Sky McColgan