Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm David Being Cooley.
Today, we're remembering Mary Ann Faithful, the recording artist and actress who died last week at age 78.

Speaker 2 We'll listen back to two interviews Terry Gross conducted with her: one from 1994, the other from 2005.

Speaker 2 In 1994, Mary Ann Faithful had just published her autobiography.

Speaker 2 When she was 17, a chance meeting in London with Andrew Lug Oldham, who managed a young blues group called The Rolling Stones, led her to record, before they did, one of the first compositions by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Speaker 2 It was As Tears Go By and was a hit for Mary Ann Faithful in 1964. It

Speaker 2 She had a string of popular recordings in the UK and established quickly a reputation she would develop and build upon all her life, interpreting the songs of others in her distinctly emotional way.

Speaker 2 She appeared on TV lip-syncing her hit records, but seldom looked at the camera, caught instead in some sort of pensive mood. And she acted on stage and film as well.

Speaker 2 In 1967, she appeared on stage opposite Glenda Jackson in Chekhov's Three Sisters. In 1969, she appeared in a film version of Hamlet, playing Ophelia.
But with success came complications.

Speaker 2 Famously, she became Mick Jagger's girlfriend, then overdosed in a suicide attempt and fell into a coma.

Speaker 2 She survived that, as later in life, she also survived heroin addiction, breast cancer, a decade-long bout with hepatitis C, and most recently, a hospitalization for COVID-19.

Speaker 2 But when she could, she performed as a cabaret artist and acted on film and television, including playing God in three episodes of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

Speaker 2 Mary Ann Faithful recorded 22 solo albums, and the range of songs she covered over the decades was breathtakingly diverse, just as her vocals were raw and intense.

Speaker 2 She recorded songs by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Kurt Weil, and collaborated with Steve Earle and Angelo Battalamenti.

Speaker 2 Terry Gross first spoke with Mary Ann Faithful in 1994 1994 upon the publication of Faithful, an autobiography.

Speaker 2 In the book, she writes that when she went into rehab in 1985, part of the therapy process was for each person to tell his or her story. That's when she realized there was a blank in her life.

Speaker 2 She had a sense of being in the Rolling Stones scene when she and Mick Jagger were lovers in the 60s, but she had no idea what her own story was.

Speaker 10 I think that's one of the saddest things in the book, that bit, where where I'm in Hazelden and they asked me to tell my story and I actually rang Ellen Smith, my publicist, and said to her, please send me up and down with the Rolling Stones because they want my story.

Speaker 12 Which was a book about the Stones.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 11 That is sort of very telling, you know.

Speaker 12 What led to that feeling that you didn't know what you were doing?

Speaker 6 Well, I didn't know when I said that that I didn't have a story.

Speaker 11 I mean, I still thought that my story was the same story as the Rolling Stones.

Speaker 17 I didn't learn, I didn't figure this out for another year.

Speaker 9 I'm very slow.

Speaker 12 So tell us the story of how you met Mick Jagger.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 17 I went along to a party with my first boyfriend, John Dunbar,

Speaker 21 who was a friend of Peter and Gordon.

Speaker 16 And Paul McCartney was going out with Jane Asher.

Speaker 22 It's so hard to remember all these things.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 10 somehow, John was always up for a party.

Speaker 17 And especially then, when we were very young, I mean, I was 17,

Speaker 19 and he must have been 19, you know, 1920, no more.

Speaker 10 But, you know, it was just a party. But it was a dead glam party, I suppose, even for London.

Speaker 6 And it was a lot of fun, I suppose.

Speaker 17 Yes. I mean, it's somewhat sort of

Speaker 8 coloured, in my imagination, now, by the fact that I was discovered there.

Speaker 3 But...

Speaker 12 What do you mean you were discovered there?

Speaker 16 Well, that's where Andrew Oldham saw me.

Speaker 23 I was discovered by several people at that party, actually.

Speaker 10 Andrew Oldham is the only person I gave my address to.

Speaker 12 And he was the producer of your first records and of The Rowing Stones.

Speaker 17 He managed the Rolling Stones, made their early records.

Speaker 12 Now, what did he discover in you? Was it your look, or did he know that you sang?

Speaker 17 No, no, no, he didn't know I sang.

Speaker 11 That was just a sort of bit of luck, I think.

Speaker 12 In your memoir, you reprint a press release that was written for when As Tears Go By was released.

Speaker 12 And it says, Mary Ann Faithful is the little 17-year-old blonde who still attends a convent in Reading, daughter of the Baroness Ariso.

Speaker 3 She is lysome and lovely with long blonde hair.

Speaker 25 Lost of alliteration in this press release, isn't there? Yes.

Speaker 12 A shy smile and a liking for people who are long-haired and socially conscious. Mary Ann digs Marlon Brando, woodbine cigarettes, poetry, going to the ballet, and wearing long evening dresses.

Speaker 12 She is shy, wistful, wife-like. Now, what did you think of that image of yourself?

Speaker 23 I thought it was a hoot.

Speaker 8 I remember taking it back to my mum and sitting in Millman Road, reading it to my mother and Chris, my brother.

Speaker 23 We just fell about laughing, you know.

Speaker 11 I never in my wildest dreams thought that people would think I was like that.

Speaker 9 Although I did dig Marlon Brando,

Speaker 27 that's true.

Speaker 3 And I was at a convent, and my mother was a baroness.

Speaker 17 But apart from that,

Speaker 26 but then again, you know, I can't be too sort of sticky about this because

Speaker 11 it's quite obvious that none of us really see ourselves as others see us.

Speaker 12 Now, you ended up doing a lot of drugs, doing a lot of heroin.

Speaker 3 How did you start doing heroin?

Speaker 9 I used it as a coping mechanism, I think.

Speaker 3 For coping with what?

Speaker 13 For coping with my life.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 10 it worked for a while, but it did have a tremendous drawback,

Speaker 10 which was that it was addictive and it would kill you.

Speaker 12 How long did it take you to figure that out?

Speaker 6 Ages.

Speaker 16 Very long time.

Speaker 9 But I did figure it out eventually, thank God.

Speaker 12 Now, I want to play a song that you wrote the lyrics for called Sister Morphine.

Speaker 12 That was released in England in 1969. Tell me a little bit about where you were in your life when you wrote the song and what the lyrics are about.

Speaker 27 I don't know.

Speaker 10 I it's a very weird thing about Systomorphine because, you know, I it was knocking about the house for six months and Mick was playing it all the time.

Speaker 31 Playing the melody.

Speaker 32 Playing the yes, the

Speaker 27 basic thing, da da da da, da da, that, that thing, all the time.

Speaker 10 So it went into my sort of whole

Speaker 10 sort of nervous system, blood, bones, everything.

Speaker 9 I really had it in my head,

Speaker 10 I knew it by heart, let's say that anyway.

Speaker 13 And then

Speaker 13 I remember it, and I'm sure Mick does too.

Speaker 11 It was very peculiar.

Speaker 29 I just sat down, picked up a legal pad and a pencil, and

Speaker 10 wrote it out, you know.

Speaker 9 And there it was.

Speaker 10 But I do that sometimes. That's obvious.

Speaker 19 I work on it in my head.

Speaker 17 And then when it's all ready, I do it.

Speaker 12 Why don't we hear system morphine? This is Marian Faithful, recorded in 1969.

Speaker 12 The screen

Speaker 12 of the ambulance

Speaker 12 is sounding

Speaker 12 in my ears.

Speaker 12 Tell me, Sister Morphine,

Speaker 12 how long have I been blind in here?

Speaker 12 What

Speaker 12 am I doing

Speaker 12 in this place?

Speaker 12 Why

Speaker 12 does the doctor

Speaker 12 have

Speaker 12 no face?

Speaker 12 Oh,

Speaker 12 I can't fall

Speaker 12 around

Speaker 12 the floor.

Speaker 12 Marian Faithful is my guest, and she's written an autobiography called Faithville. The record company, DECA, you say yanked this record about two days after it was released.

Speaker 20 We took it off the shelves.

Speaker 3 What was their objection?

Speaker 13 Well, there were many.

Speaker 6 The lyrics were very ahead of their time.

Speaker 10 It's one thing for Lou Reed to sing heroin, obviously. It was completely...
This is something I really didn't understand. That this thing about me being this beautiful little angel was real.

Speaker 27 I never really believed that.

Speaker 17 I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 27 So I suppose for Decker, you know, the last thing they put out by Marianne Faithful, I can't remember what it was, was Summer Nights, say.

Speaker 9 I think it was.

Speaker 6 That was in 1965.

Speaker 10 And then in 1969, they're given sister morphine.

Speaker 27 And they couldn't handle it.

Speaker 12 You said that after you became a junkie, that it actually brought you an anonymity that you hadn't known since you were 16. Since 17, that is.
You were living on the street.

Speaker 12 I'm sure that wasn't exactly, though, the kind of anonymity that you wanted.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 6 I hadn't wanted celebrity even in the first place.

Speaker 16 I just went to a party and got discovered.

Speaker 6 And I hadn't had time to think about whether I wanted it or not.

Speaker 10 So the anonymity I got in the street was very valuable to me.

Speaker 12 Where were you living? How did you live during those years?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 27 I lived on a wall.

Speaker 18 I lived on a wall in Soho.

Speaker 10 And it was an amazing time for me.

Speaker 6 When I really couldn't take it, I could always go back to my mother's. It wasn't like I

Speaker 14 had nothing.

Speaker 20 I wasn't exactly the same as the street people.

Speaker 19 But they didn't mind that.

Speaker 2 Marianne Faithful speaking to Terry Gross in 1994. After a break, we'll listen to a later conversation from 2005.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 We're continuing our remembrance of singer, songwriter, and actress Mary Ann Faithful, who died last week at age 78.

Speaker 2 Let's switch now to an interview Terry recorded with her in 2005. Mary Ann Faithful had just released a new CD called Before the Poison, featuring several songs she had co-written with P.J.

Speaker 2 Harvey and Nick Cave.

Speaker 2 This song, Mystery of Love, has words and music by P.J. Harvey.

Speaker 38 When you're not

Speaker 38 my

Speaker 38 size,

Speaker 38 the world's in two

Speaker 38 and I'm a fool.

Speaker 38 When you're not

Speaker 38 in

Speaker 38 my

Speaker 38 size,

Speaker 38 then

Speaker 38 everything

Speaker 38 just fades from view

Speaker 38 The mystery of love

Speaker 38 belongs to you

Speaker 12 Now your voice is very dark your voice is very different from the way it was at the start of your career well obviously yes well some people's voices change more than others.

Speaker 31 Mine was always, you know, I studied singing at school when I was young and my singing teacher used to say to me in hushed tones,

Speaker 23 you know, you have a soprano now but I think if you're very, very lucky, it will become a contralto.

Speaker 12 Why did your teacher think that that would be good luck if it if it did?

Speaker 42 Well, it's a very rare thing to have.

Speaker 33 it's kathleen ferrier you know there are very few real contraltos

Speaker 22 and um i'm one of them

Speaker 12 i don't know what you'll make of this but i think of you as being similar um to billie holiday and laddie lenya as having as great singers whose voices were very different at the beginning and the end and end of their careers of course but that's partly technical like i told you but it's also experience it's in my case i mean thank you very much for comparing me in any way with my great heroines Billie Holiday and Lotta Lenya.

Speaker 20 But in my case, and I'm sure in their case, you know, a lot of it is down to experience.

Speaker 47 You get the voice you really want.

Speaker 28 You get what I suppose a writer would call it finding my voice.

Speaker 12 Was there anything that you missed about that pure soprano that you had? You know, the high notes or that.

Speaker 3 Sure, yeah.

Speaker 41 I mean, if I hadn't been discovered by Andrew Oldham and gone into the pop business, I would have probably either become an actress or I might have gone to the Royal Academy of Music in London and I could have sung Mozart.

Speaker 9 I would have enjoyed that.

Speaker 9 But on the other hand, you know, I kind of

Speaker 9 it was very exciting to be in at the beginning of a new thing, which is

Speaker 42 what was happening in London in the early 60s. And I was right there.

Speaker 12 You know, it's interesting, like as Tears Go By, which is your famous first hit,

Speaker 12 you're singing in an almost uninflected voice.

Speaker 46 That's what Andrew wanted.

Speaker 12 That's what he wanted. Why?

Speaker 12 This is Andrew Luke Oldham who was your producer and he was the Rolling Stones producer.

Speaker 31 He was my manager.

Speaker 12 Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I suppose he was the producer, too, yeah.

Speaker 12 So why did he want it uninflected?

Speaker 9 I don't know.

Speaker 48 I think he wanted me to sound like Mick.

Speaker 3 Huh.

Speaker 34 I really don't know.

Speaker 44 You'd have to ask Andrew.

Speaker 12 It's so interesting because there's so much drama in your singing now.

Speaker 9 Well, yeah, but that's my natural thing. Maybe I didn't have that yet.

Speaker 19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12 Well, you know, you mentioned that.

Speaker 9 Well, I was only 17.

Speaker 3 Right, right.

Speaker 42 I don't think I had any.

Speaker 3 Any drama?

Speaker 35 No, and I was terribly, terribly nervous.

Speaker 9 So probably the natural thing I did was just sort of do what I do when I'm very frightened, is pretend I'm very small and stay very still and do as little as possible.

Speaker 12 Now, you mentioned that Lada Lenya is one of your music heroes.

Speaker 12 So I thought maybe we could listen to a recording in which you sing Kurt Weil.

Speaker 12 And you made a recording.

Speaker 12 You've done a lot of

Speaker 42 records of the Brechtweil cannon.

Speaker 20 The first one was the Cabaret record, which was 20th Century Blues, which I love.

Speaker 14 But my actual total favourite of all time is The Seven Deadly Sins.

Speaker 31 But play something from

Speaker 35 20th Century Blues. Play Pirate Jenny.

Speaker 14 I like Pirate Jenny because it's so fierce.

Speaker 12 And Paul Trueblood is at the piano, and he talks about it.

Speaker 9 Paul Trueblood is such a great musician, and I was so lucky to work with him.

Speaker 46 And I'm very fond of him.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 12 let's go for the drama in here, Pirate Jenny. And this is from Marion Faithful's album, 20th Century Blues, with Paul Trueblood at the piano.

Speaker 49 You lads see me wash the glasses, wipe the floors, make the beds. I'm the best of servants.

Speaker 50 You can kindly throw me pennies, and I thank you very much.

Speaker 50 And you'll see me ragged and tattered in this dirty hotel. You don't know in hell who's talking.

Speaker 25 You still don't know in hell who's talking.

Speaker 49 Yet, one fine day there will be roars from the harbour, and you'll ask, What is all that screeching for?

Speaker 49 And you'll see me smiling as I dunk the glasses.

Speaker 49 And you'll say, What's she got to smile at for?

Speaker 24 And the ship,

Speaker 49 eight sails shining,

Speaker 49 55 cannons white, sir,

Speaker 31 waits there at the quay.

Speaker 10 You say work on, wipe the glasses, my girl, and just slip me a dirt.

Speaker 12 Mary and Faithful, how were you introduced to the the music of Kurfe?

Speaker 21 Well I sort of grew up with it, you know.

Speaker 30 Both my parents,

Speaker 29 I don't know how they did it, I don't know how my mother did this, but she brought 78s with her from Vienna.

Speaker 35 And a lot of the songs on 20th Century Blues are

Speaker 32 my mother's favourite songs or my father's favourite songs.

Speaker 14 Like my father's favorite song was Falling in Love Again.

Speaker 43 And he loved cold porter and he loved all sorts of things like that.

Speaker 12 So, is that like the first music you heard?

Speaker 21 I suppose it is, yes.

Speaker 12 Was your mother a singer?

Speaker 3 I had read that she was. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 31 My mother was a dancer.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 42 She was very young, of course.

Speaker 9 And she was only 24 when Mr.

Speaker 14 Hitler marched in to Vienna in the Anschluss.

Speaker 9 But she was a dancer in Berlin.

Speaker 9 And she, as she would be be coming into the theatre to rehearse as the Court de Ballet for Mr.

Speaker 43 Reinhardt, would see Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht staggering out in the morning, having been up all night writing the Threpney Opera.

Speaker 32 And they would all bob a little curtsy and say, Guten Morgan, Mr.

Speaker 39 Weil, Guten Morgan, Mr. Brecht.

Speaker 12 When you were growing up, did you have like

Speaker 12 clothes from her customs from when she danced in the closet?

Speaker 5 Not much, no.

Speaker 20 I I just have a very beautiful piece of chiffon and some beads. I have very little.

Speaker 42 She didn't bring any of that much with her.

Speaker 34 No, I don't know what happened to it.

Speaker 12 But that sense of theatre was...

Speaker 20 It's as if she wanted to leave it all behind

Speaker 14 and have a new life.

Speaker 9 She'd had quite a hard time, I think, during the war. My grandmother was Jewish, you know.

Speaker 46 And she met... My father was a spy.

Speaker 20 I mean, it's so incredible, it's amazing.

Speaker 35 And she was his contact in Vienna.

Speaker 9 So it was really, I think she was really happy to marry my father and get out.

Speaker 21 Unfortunately, of course, the marriage was a disaster.

Speaker 12 Well, I think they separated when you were six or something, right? Yes. And then you lived with your mother.

Speaker 7 I did, yes.

Speaker 2 Mary Ann Faithful, speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. Mary Ann Faithful died last week at age 78.

Speaker 2 After a break, we'll hear more of their conversation and critic-at-large John Powers reviews I'm Still Here, the Brazilian film, nominated for an Oscar this year as Best Picture.

Speaker 2 I'm David Biancoole, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 12 Now, I want to mention another song that seems a little out of character for you on your previous CD.

Speaker 31 Well, my previous CD, which I do love, you mean Kissing Time?

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 42 Was in fact a very experimental work.

Speaker 32 I wanted to learn about the new technology.

Speaker 14 That's what I did it.

Speaker 14 And so I went to the best people like Billy Corgan, like Beck, like Jarvis Cocker, like Damon.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 a song here that strikes me as a really interesting choice, a very kind of out of character is Um Into Something Good, which was.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was just fun.

Speaker 12 Yeah, well, it's, I mean, that was a Herman's Hermits hit in 1920.

Speaker 21 You know, you've got to remember, when we did Kissing Time, the world was a different place.

Speaker 26 And we could have have fun and we did and we loved it.

Speaker 12 We know that

Speaker 12 the year that that was a hit into something good in 1964 was I think the year.

Speaker 28 It was the year as Tears Good Buy.

Speaker 12 Yeah, the year of the year. And I think it was about that time that you started on tour and you went on a tour, not with Herman Sergei.

Speaker 25 Not with Hermann Hermes.

Speaker 12 But with Freddie and the Dreamers and

Speaker 28 the Hollies, they were good.

Speaker 12 Jerry and the Pacemakers.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 12 Where did you see yourself fitting in as...

Speaker 9 I didn't fit in.

Speaker 47 I was completely out of place.

Speaker 14 And I actually believed that I would go back to school when the tour was over

Speaker 34 and pick up my life again.

Speaker 12 Were you like the only girl in

Speaker 3 the tour?

Speaker 9 And what I was doing was reading my A-level books.

Speaker 12 Oh, because you were still in school?

Speaker 14 Well, that's what I thought I was, yes.

Speaker 7 So I do remember very well how kind the Hollies were to me.

Speaker 21 Really sweet.

Speaker 12 Did the guys on the tour try to be protective or try to take advantage of you?

Speaker 47 No, of course they didn't.

Speaker 7 I mean, I kind of,

Speaker 42 you know, I did learn the meaning of the word tour romance.

Speaker 5 I thought that was rather fun.

Speaker 3 Why not?

Speaker 12 Well, I'm going to play I'm Into Something Good from your previous album, Kiss in Time.

Speaker 3 Good.

Speaker 21 I think it's charming.

Speaker 5 Me too.

Speaker 26 And, you know, now in this world, I could never do something like that again.

Speaker 28 That's why it's called Before the Poison.

Speaker 12 That's why the new CD is called that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 44 But let's remember the days when we could do something like this.

Speaker 12 Okay, so this is Marian Faithful from her previous CD, Kiss and Time.

Speaker 25 Woke up this morning feeling fine.

Speaker 25 There's something special

Speaker 25 on my mind.

Speaker 25 Last night I met a new guy in the neighborhood.

Speaker 25 Oh,

Speaker 25 yeah.

Speaker 25 Something tells me I'm into

Speaker 25 something good.

Speaker 25 He's the kind of guy who's not too shy.

Speaker 25 And I can tell he's my kind of guy.

Speaker 25 He danced close to me like a hoe tea would.

Speaker 25 oh yeah

Speaker 25 something

Speaker 25 tells me I'm into

Speaker 25 something good

Speaker 12 with Marianne Faithful from her previous CD Kiss in Time the 1964 hit I'm into something good

Speaker 12 and she has a new CD called before the poison

Speaker 5 much darker

Speaker 12 at what point did you start getting to know know the um and I I assume that you did at some point the the Andy Warhol factory crew?

Speaker 7 I didn't.

Speaker 12 You never knew them?

Speaker 46 No, I never did.

Speaker 12 It just seems to me you'd you'd have connected at some point. Never.

Speaker 46 Never, never, never, never. I went to New York once with Andrew.

Speaker 9 And um what I did do was meet up with um Al Grossman and Bobby Newers. And it was the time when Bob Dillon had his um motorbike accident

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 44 I think I had my first joint with Bobby News

Speaker 14 and I was up all night being sick.

Speaker 12 From the joint?

Speaker 35 I was 18.

Speaker 5 Wasn't able, didn't know anything, just couldn't deal with it.

Speaker 12 So, you know, I'm wondering what you thought, because you must have been aware of this, whether you knew the Velvet Underground personally or not.

Speaker 26 Oh, I thought they were wonderful.

Speaker 9 But I had a sense of self-preservation, which told me, do not go to New York.

Speaker 43 You will die.

Speaker 12 Right, because you'd get so deep into it.

Speaker 48 It would have been another Edie Sedgwick.

Speaker 14 It was quite bad enough in London, if I may say so.

Speaker 26 But, I mean, it would have been too much for me.

Speaker 39 At least I knew London.

Speaker 12 What did you make of it when the Velvet Underground recorded Venus and Furs?

Speaker 21 I didn't. What did you think about it?

Speaker 12 I asked this in case our listeners are confused.

Speaker 9 Well, no, my great-great-uncle

Speaker 9 was Baron Leopold von Sachermazoch, who gave his name to Mazuchism and wrote a book called Venus in Furs.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, I sort of noticed it, but didn't really notice it.

Speaker 42 There were other songs on the Velvet Underground that I thought were better.

Speaker 7 I didn't think that was one of the best.

Speaker 45 I'm a huge and was always a huge fan of Andy Warhol.

Speaker 43 I mean, before I got discovered and all that stuff happened, my mother took me to see a huge Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate.

Speaker 9 I went to see the Picasso retrospective.

Speaker 11 I went to see the Surrealist retrospective.

Speaker 5 It was wonderful.

Speaker 43 You know, I had a wonderful life before all that stuff happened.

Speaker 12 Did you feel, I mean, you've lived in a very unconventional world your whole adult life.

Speaker 26 Well,

Speaker 43 my whole life as a child.

Speaker 12 That's what I was wondering.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 9 My parents were extremely unconventional, and I was brought up in a delightful bohemian manner.

Speaker 34 So I sailed right into swinging London with no problem.

Speaker 12 Tell us a little bit about the delightful

Speaker 12 bohemian manner that you were brought up in.

Speaker 23 Well, my father was a real idealist.

Speaker 20 After the war, he formed a a commune, not like a 60s commune, a 50s or even a 40s commune, more like an Iris Murdoch kind of thing,

Speaker 20 and the purpose of this place, which was called Braziers Park, was to change the world

Speaker 44 and to teach people, only Europeans, he couldn't really go further than that,

Speaker 42 to live together in harmony so that war would never happen again.

Speaker 44 And that was my father's mission.

Speaker 44 My mother was

Speaker 9 also an idealist in a way, but not quite as serious as my father.

Speaker 33 And she didn't really like it at Braziers Park.

Speaker 7 She didn't like living in a commune.

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 31 it split up and she thought she was marrying an English gentleman, you know,

Speaker 33 and she thought she would have a much more conventional life.

Speaker 43 She didn't realize she was marrying this wonderful world-class loon.

Speaker 12 Did you live on the commune at all?

Speaker 9 I used to go at weekends.

Speaker 34 I had a wonderful time.

Speaker 3 What was it like as a girl? Farm. It was a farm.

Speaker 34 I watched calves being born.

Speaker 23 I had a friend who had a pony.

Speaker 39 I didn't have anything to do with the commune.

Speaker 43 I was just out from dawn till dusk.

Speaker 12 And did your your father talk to you about the philosophy behind it?

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 43 not till I got much older.

Speaker 20 And then I would, then I found it very interesting.

Speaker 9 You know, he used to give courses on Alexander Pope and things like that.

Speaker 35 Before I wrote my book, he did a course specially, really, for me on the writing of autobiography.

Speaker 3 You're kidding? No.

Speaker 12 How did it affect the writing of your 1994 autobiography?

Speaker 21 He really helped. He was a really great teacher, you know.

Speaker 33 He was a professor at Bedford College in London.

Speaker 41 He taught me a lot.

Speaker 29 For instance,

Speaker 9 I learnt in his course about autobiography that it was absolutely essential to put dialogue in,

Speaker 14 or it got very boring.

Speaker 12 Well, that's always interesting to me because I read so many autobiographies and I always think who has the memory to really remember what somebody said and what you said back?

Speaker 18 Well,

Speaker 42 you can't really, but you can make a rough guess.

Speaker 44 I wrote it from my perspective.

Speaker 14 I don't put thoughts and feelings into other people.

Speaker 42 I wrote about me and what I felt and what I did.

Speaker 42 And I remember everything.

Speaker 20 And I remember how I felt, I remember my motives.

Speaker 33 I remember what I did and what I thought of things I saw around me.

Speaker 9 and in fact I was very very hard on myself I realize that now but I didn't see any other way any other honorable way to be

Speaker 3 how far away does the really hard time seem to you when you were homesick a long long time ago

Speaker 3 really

Speaker 35 I know I was very lucky to get through it it was obviously something I needed to learn

Speaker 20 and in a strange way, I learnt some very positive things, you know.

Speaker 12 Have you asked yourself why you think you survived? No. Why so many other people don't?

Speaker 14 I guess every no junkie dies in vain.

Speaker 11 Everybody who dies, for each one who dies, another survives.

Speaker 31 I don't really know why I

Speaker 28 survived.

Speaker 9 I tried incredibly hard not to, but finally I did accept that I had to survive, and there must be some reason why I had to survive, and I might as well accept it.

Speaker 9 And when I did that, everything got a lot easier, of course.

Speaker 12 You occupy a kind of unique spot in pop music now because, you know, you were a teenage pop star, but what you're doing now is somewhere between...

Speaker 3 Princess.

Speaker 12 What you're doing now is a kind of...

Speaker 12 What you're doing now is a kind of hybrid of cabaret and theater music music and pop and rock and...

Speaker 34 I don't really do cabaret.

Speaker 42 I do rock and roll.

Speaker 5 Sort of.

Speaker 43 With a lot of drama.

Speaker 6 I don't know what I do.

Speaker 28 I do what I do, you know.

Speaker 12 And if you don't mind my mentioning your age, is that?

Speaker 26 I don't mind.

Speaker 35 I've just turned 58.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 12 And, you know, back when you were starting in the 60s, there still was the sense of what do rock and rollers do when they get older?

Speaker 34 Well, I didn't think I would.

Speaker 12 You didn't think you'd live that long?

Speaker 3 No way.

Speaker 28 I mean, I thought broken English was the end.

Speaker 14 I thought after that, I would die.

Speaker 26 You could have knocked me down with a feather when I had to make another record.

Speaker 12 And broken English was, what, 1979?

Speaker 14 Yeah. Right.
I thought that was it.

Speaker 42 I thought, go out in a blaze of glory.

Speaker 14 Off you go.

Speaker 12 Before the interview started, you mentioned to me that you stopped smoking about three weeks ago.

Speaker 21 Three weeks now.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 why did you decide to stop after all these years?

Speaker 35 Well, I've been wanting to stop for about a year because I've got the beginning of emphysema.

Speaker 33 And my mother died of emphysema and alcoholism.

Speaker 14 So I kind of didn't really want history to repeat itself.

Speaker 11 So I did everything I could. I went to a hypnotist.
I read Alan Carr. I did all these things.

Speaker 14 Nothing worked.

Speaker 35 Then just before I came to America, I got really bad bronchitis, really bad, and I could not even think of smoking.

Speaker 9 So I didn't.

Speaker 41 I stopped.

Speaker 44 And I'm using a patch, of course.

Speaker 31 I'm beginning to not need the patch now.

Speaker 9 It's sort of getting easier. I've done this whole interview without a patch.

Speaker 31 They make me sick.

Speaker 14 They actually are rather like bad speed

Speaker 3 patches.

Speaker 5 But,

Speaker 9 you know,

Speaker 44 time went by, the bronchitis got better.

Speaker 20 I've had some terrible moments where of craving.

Speaker 14 But my doctor in Paris did it's very like giving up drugs, you know.

Speaker 7 They don't last long, the cravings.

Speaker 14 They last about five minutes.

Speaker 35 So you just find something else to do.

Speaker 34 Talk to somebody, you you put your makeup on, you do anything, you wash your knickers, anything you can think of, and

Speaker 21 the craving will pass, and then it's gone.

Speaker 12 What is the action that you typically take that seems most incomplete without a cigarette?

Speaker 11 Well, the one I'm really worried about is face-to-face promo,

Speaker 35 because in that, I wasn't using nicotine just as a drug.

Speaker 44 I was using it as a prop and as a smoke screen.

Speaker 29 That's going to be pretty scary.

Speaker 5 I've got to think of something else to do with my hands, and I've got to give myself a smoke screen.

Speaker 47 Jost sticks?

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 5 A candle?

Speaker 3 I can't think.

Speaker 44 I've got to think of something.

Speaker 3 Dark glasses?

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 41 I think people should see my eyes.

Speaker 26 So do you feel like...

Speaker 9 But that's not a bad idea.

Speaker 47 Dark glasses is a possibility.

Speaker 9 But, you know, I think that's been kind of covered by Yoko.

Speaker 3 God bless her.

Speaker 12 Do you feel like your speaking or singing voice is changing at all? Or that you're breathing better when you sing?

Speaker 26 Well, I've not yet, no, but I think that will come.

Speaker 12 Mary Ann Faithful, thank you so much for talking with us.

Speaker 9 Thanks, Terry.

Speaker 47 It was a pleasure.

Speaker 2 Marianne Faithful, speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. The singer, songwriter, and actress died last week.
She was 78 years old.

Speaker 40 I walk along the street of Sarah,

Speaker 51 the boulevard of broken dream,

Speaker 51 where gigalo and gigolette can take a kiss without regret, so they forget their broken dream.

Speaker 9 you'll laugh tonight and cry tomorrow

Speaker 41 when you behold your shadowed scheme

Speaker 52 and giggle

Speaker 51 and gigalette wake up to find their eyes are wet with tears that tell of broken dreams

Speaker 51 here is where you'll always find

Speaker 38 me

Speaker 51 Always walking up and down

Speaker 51 But I left my soul behind

Speaker 38 me

Speaker 24 In an old cathedral town

Speaker 51 The joy that you find here you borrow

Speaker 51 You cannot keep it long, it seems

Speaker 52 But jiggle

Speaker 52 and jiggle

Speaker 51 still sing a song and dance along

Speaker 3 the boulevard of broken green

Speaker 3 La da da

Speaker 2 The joy that you've coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews I'm Still Here, the Brazilian film that's nominated for a best picture Oscar this year. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 In the new film I'm Still Here, the Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salas tells the true story of a Rio de Janeiro mother who reinvents herself when Brazil's military dictatorship goes after her husband.

Speaker 2 The movie has been Oscar-nominated for both Best Picture and Best International Feature Film. Its star, Fernanda Torres, has been nominated for best actress.
She already has won the Golden Globe.

Speaker 2 Our critic at large, John Powers, says that I'm Still Here is a moving, inspiring, beautifully made story about learning to confront tyranny.

Speaker 37 It's one measure of Latin America's arduous history that it spawns so many books and movies about dictatorship.

Speaker 37 Over the years, I've been through scads of them, from novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Yosa, to the landmark documentaries of Patricio Guzmán, to Hollywood thrillers like Missing and Under Fire.

Speaker 37 What they share is the awareness that history hurts.

Speaker 37 Few films have shown this with more delicate intelligence than I'm Still Here, a moving new drama set during Brazil's military dictatorship that began with an American-backed coup in 1964 and ended in 1985.

Speaker 37 Based on a memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Walter Salas's movie is no political tract or manipulative tearjerker, although it may make you cry.

Speaker 37 Exploring the dictatorship indirectly, I'm Still Here tells the heroic true story of a wife and mother who steers her family through the rapids of tyranny.

Speaker 37 The story begins idyllically on Ipanema Beach in 1970, when we first meet the Paiva family.

Speaker 37 The father is Rubens, played with easy charm by Sultan Mello, a warm-hearted man who was a congressman before the coup.

Speaker 37 And by Eunisi, that's Fernanda Torres, a rather traditional-seeming wife who bakes great soufflés and wrangles their five high-energy children.

Speaker 37 Theirs is a happy upper-middle-class family whose home is a kind of Eden, complete with a view of the beach.

Speaker 37 Buzzing with openness to friends, to ideas, to laughter, to music, the movie's soundtrack is fabulous, their house is Brazil, as we might dream of it being.

Speaker 37 Yet such openness is precisely what the junta mistrusts. It tortures or disappears anyone it considers a threat to its notion of an orderly anti-communist society.

Speaker 37 Even as the family dances, plays fussball, and amiably bickers, we await the dreaded knock on the door. It comes.
Rubens is taken away for questioning.

Speaker 37 Security men occupy the house, and Unisi herself is called in for a nasty interrogation.

Speaker 37 Rubens' disappearance is the turning point in Eunisi's life. Over the next months, in fact the next decades, she transforms her practical maternal virtues into something mighty.

Speaker 37 Channeling her grief, she becomes a stronger, tougher, wiser person who protects her kids, digs into the cruel facts of her husband's fate, and learns to fight for other people's rights as well.

Speaker 37 From the start, Eunisi is a woman of impressive self-command. and the movie shares that virtue.

Speaker 37 Salas has always been a gifted director, but earlier films like Central Station and the motorcycle diaries were so busy being artful and important, they often felt impersonal.

Speaker 37 Here, you feel his profound emotional engagement. Salas grew up in the same milieu as the Paivas.
Indeed, he hung out with the kids, and you feel his affection for that family and its values.

Speaker 37 He captures them, and 1970 Rio, in a way that feels loving and true.

Speaker 37 Salas does a superb job of depicting how the dictatorship colored daily life. We see how things could often appear normal, with fun at the beach and happy visits to the ice cream shop.

Speaker 37 Yet without laying on the violence or heavy-handed moralism, even the secret policemen we meet aren't monsters, Salas also conjures a pervasive atmosphere of anxiety.

Speaker 37 We feel it in the sounds of helicopters hovering overhead, the TV newscasts filled with lies, the spasms of fearful mistrust that grow between friends, and the way that once your family is singled out, you're treated differently out in the world.

Speaker 37 Like Brazil, their house of freedom is now in lockdown.

Speaker 37 The counterweight to the dictatorship is the unglamorous strength of UNICE, who goes from making soufflés to becoming at 48 a lawyer who helps make Brazil a better place to live.

Speaker 37 She's played with surpassing brilliance by Torres, whose performance is so subtle, so internal, and so quietly shattering that in a just world she'd win all this year's big acting awards.

Speaker 37 Registering each flicker of emotion as precisely as a seismograph, Taurus captures Eunice's pain and horror at her husband's fate, but also her endurance, her faith that life goes on, a faith that time vindicates.

Speaker 37 Even as it's buffeted by misfortune, the family survives and thrives.

Speaker 37 At one point, a newspaper photographer comes to take a picture of the family and tells them to look somber. After all, Rubens is missing.
But Unicie insists that everyone smile.

Speaker 37 She will not let them face the world looking beaten.

Speaker 2 John Powers reviewed the new movie, I'm Still Here.

Speaker 2 On Monday's show, Questlove returns. He'll talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone.
His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, premieres February 13th on Hulu.

Speaker 2 Questlove won an an Oscar for another of his music documentaries, Summer of Soul. I hope you can join us.

Speaker 2 To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer.

Speaker 2 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper.
For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Hugh.

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