Easy Come Easy Go: Marianne Faithfull and Hal Willner's Songs of Tragedy and Heartbreak

The highlight on this consistently revelatory record just might be Faithfull’s duet on Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” with longtime friend Keith Richards. While they didn’t work together in the studio, the experience for her was rich. “It was just fantastic. It was so ... like time stopped. You know, I learnt ‘Sing Me Back Home’ when Keith used to sing it with [Gram] Parsons in the ’60s. And then Keith recorded it on a bootleg album from Toronto called Unknown Dreams, and he did it on his own, on piano. My manager talked to his manager, and asked her to ask Keith, and I got this wonderful fax from him saying, ‘I’ll do it for you, baby, if you do it for me.’?”

Channeled through the grain of Faithfull’s 62-year-old one-note-and-you-recognize-it voice, Easy Come Easy Go’s selection of pop standards new and old seem, not so strangely, destined to have been interpreted by this uniquely qualified singer. It’s a cracking-fragile but toughened sound that fits the material to perfection, as when she works with the Brecht-Weill songbook, a fascination she’s had since she performed Weill’s “The Ballad of a Soldier’s Wife” on Willner’s Lost in the Stars album. Faithfull is currently preparing for European performances of Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Dennis Russell Davies.

Patric Zwirc

On Easy Come Easy Go, Faithfull collaborates with Nick Cave, Cat Power, Rufus Wainwright and Antony Hegarty.

Related Content

• Rolling Stones - Staples Center - May 3, 2013 (With Photos and Set List)
  May 4, 2013
• We Lurked Outside the Rolling Stones' Rehearsals in Burbank
  May 2, 2013
• Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - The Fonda Theater - 2/21/13
  February 22, 2013
• The Best Concerts in L.A. This Week
  February 18, 2013
• The Rolling Stones - Staples Center - 5/20/13
  May 21, 2013

More About

• Hal Willner
• Marianne Faithfull
• Kurt Weill
• Cat Power
• Rufus Wainwright

That’s a change of gears that requires a bit of thought and practice on her part. “Because it’s a classical piece, I have to really work out my breathing and make sure I don’t run out of breath,” she says.

Meanwhile, it must be incredibly satisfying for Faithfull to keep accomplishing such high-quality projects as Easy Come Easy Go.

“Yeah, it really is,” she says, “and it’s doing a lot for my self-esteem, which is always a little bit shaky. I can’t help it, you know. I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t pleased that people really like it. I need to hear it, because I’m always expecting somebody to say, ‘Who do you think you’re fucking kidding?’?”

Faithfull roars with laughter. “Nobody has.”

Marianne Faithfull

Easy Come Easy Go

(Decca)