I was strumming through my newfeeds and stumbled on someone’s tribute to Marianne Faithful as a Forgotten Beauty.  They briefly mention she collaborated with David Bowie.  Not much of a mention, but what a collaboration it was.  Now, the story of Marianne up to this point was rather depressing.  She got off to a fairly messed up start and had her first kid by 18.  By nineteen, she had a big hit and was making the rounds looking like this:

Pretty damn cute in a naughty kinda way. By 20 she was hanging out with the Rolling Stones. By 21 she was a heroin addict. Her second shot at a hit, Sister Morphine, was banned from the radio. The Stones would re-release it with no problems. To this day, it’s hard to find her version, dirt simple to find the Stones’ version. My impression of her problems was that she sold one look, and behaved as differently from that innocent look as she possibly could. The contrast unnerved people. She ran with the Stones. If the Stones did it, they were bad boys and it was kind of cool. If she did it, it was dirty. Her career basically just went nowhere after the Stones bus ran over her and she pretty much disappeared. Then, in 1974, she re-appeared on Bowie’s 1980 Floor Show. Now, the premise of her performance was simple enough:

I dressed Marianne in a nun’s habit with the back cut out and I dressed as the Angel of Death!”

The performance was one of the smoothest, easiest to watch performances of the entire show. She was the perfect foil for Bowie:

However, what the audience in the US never saw was the best part of the entire performance. Here’s about the only thing I could find. You’ll have to look real close so as not to miss it:

Check out Ronson when she does that. Whereas he was obviously getting tired and rather put out with the entire over-production of the show ( going ten hours at this point ). He seemed to perk right up when she did that. Bowie even had a little comment about it later on:

“She was wearing a nun’s habit with no backside and black stockings. I’ve got that clip at home, and it is fantastic. But they wouldn’t show it in America. It was felt to be beyond the pale. Madonna, eat your heart out!” – Bowie (1993)

That’s 20 years later. It must have been pretty damned impressive!
That performance seemed to mark a revival for Faithful. Although she never regained the lofty levels of As Tears Go By, she seems fairly consistent and definitely less suicidal and self destructive.
And yeah, she is definitely one the forgotten beauties of the 60′s. She’s also one of the forgotten casualties of the hippie drug revolution. And, definitely a forgotten icon of getting off drugs and being in control of your life. Today she is still recording and perfoming. However, instead of the bitter and resentful scowl that seemed to be pervasive in her earlier years, she smiles some. That forgotten beauty is a lot more beautiful in the 21st century when she does.