The Singer not the Song: Greil Marcus on Marianne Faithfull

version of Moulin Rouge, Lead Belly's "I Ain't Goin' Down to the Well No More," Billie Holiday's "Yesterdays," Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's title song, even back at "As Tears Go By"--and the songs would be transformed, because she had lived. But the only thing more pretentious than the music was Terry Southern's liner notes: "The fabulous Marianne Faithfull takes up where Lotte Lenya and Marlene Dietrich leave off. In fact, she might well be called the 'Rhythm and Blue Angel.'"
The first sign that Easy Come Easy Go (Decca), the new Faithfull-Willner collaboration, is different is plain on its face. The album's front shows a drastically young-looking Faithfull, standing behind a drastically ancient-looking studio microphone, apparently expressing boundless devotion toward whatever it is she's singing. The tones are muted brown, just past sepia. "12 Songs for Music Lovers," reads a line below the title ("18 Songs ..." on the two-disc British version)--just like a generic '50s album of recent hits by any of the sort of sub-Tony Bennetts and Patti Pages who filled the record stores in those days. And the same sense of humor--of play--is at the heart of Faithfull's first song, long before the set explodes all over the place with her outrageous duet with Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) on the Miracles' "Ooh Baby Baby."

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