‘Rich Kid Blues’: the Marianne Faithfull album Jessica Pratt became “obsessed with”
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(Credits: Samuel Hess)
Marianne Faithfull, the iconic 1960s singer-songwriter, inspired generations of musicians, from her peers to current singers. That’s why indie-folk artist Jessica Pratt found herself gravitating towards Faithfull’s Rich Kid Blues.
“When I was a young girl, I discovered this record, and I was really obsessed with it,” Pratt explained in a 2019 interview at Amoeba Music record store in Los Angeles. “Favourite record of mine,” Pratt said. “I sort of am perennially repping this record.”
Faithfull first caught the public eye at 17, after attending a launch party for The Rolling Stones, during which the band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, decided to helm her career. She released her debut single ‘As Tears Go By’, written by Oldham, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1964 and released her first album, Come My Way, the following year. Her music career was off to a strong start, and she even began acting in movies, but things took a turn. Shortly after the birth of her son in 1965, she left her husband, John Dunbar, for Jagger. Their relationship lasted until 1970, during which time Faithfull’s drug use escalated.
Faithfull was going through a difficult time during the making of Rich Kid Blues. “She wasn’t really working at the time,” Pratt said. Faithfull was dealing with heroin addiction, homelessness and anorexia. Recorded in 1971 under the name Masques, the Rich Kid Blues wasn’t released until 1985. Faithfull eventually made a comeback with 1979’s Broken English, which earned her a Grammy nod.
Laryngitis and drug abuse transformed Faithfull’s voice, making it deeper and rougher. “You can tell listening to it that her voice is rather shaky, and she doesn’t really have full control, but at the same time, she’s playing with these studio musicians, and they’re really tight, so it’s kind of a nice contrast,” Pratt says of Rich Kid Blues.
“She’s also a master of covers,” Pratt explains. Rich Kid Blues includes covers of Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin. “She also does a cover of James Taylor’s ‘Mud Slide Slim’ that is topically very appropriate considering where she was in her life at the time,” Pratt added.
On Rich Kid Blues, Faithfull covered both ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’. “Dylan songs are really difficult to cover,” Pratt said. “I think there’s a lot of pretty repulsive Dylan covers out there, but she really nails it.”
Faithfull was a big fan of Dylan. “I had never seen a person like Bob Dylan,” she said. “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined anyone like Bob in 1965, his brain. I was frightened, but they were probably more scared of me. He played me the album Bringing It All Back Home. It was just amazing. I worshipped him.”
Last year, Iggy Pop, Cat Power, and Shirley Manson, along with several other artists, appeared on the cover compilation The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull. The album featured covers of 19 Faithfull songs performed by 25 artists, with proceeds going to help Faithfull in her recovery from long-Covid. She became ill with Covid in March 2020, which led to her being hospitalised for 22 days.
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