Review: Marianne Faithfull - Come My Way (1965)
Tracks: 1) Come My Way; 2) Jaberwock; 3) Portland Town; 4) House Of The Rising Sun; 5) Spanish Is A Loving Tongue; 6) Fare Thee Well; 7) Lonesome Traveller; 8) Down In The Salley Garden; 9) Mary Ann; 10) Full Fathom Five; 11) Four Strong Winds; 12) Black Girl; 13) Once I Had A Sweetheart; 14) Bells Of Freedom.
REVIEW
The standard modern narrative of the rise-and-fall of Marianne Faithfull is that of an intelligent, intellectual young girl who wanted to go to Cambridge (or was that Oxford?) to study English literature, but instead was manipulated by the dominant male pressure of the times into pursuing the career of a pop artist, ruining her life in the process. Part of that narrative is most likely true, but I do not think even Marianne herself supports it in toto. After all, from the very beginning she was no shy recluse — the whole «bright lights, big city» thing was every bit as attractive to her as her books — and her ability to secure herself the twin-LP deal with Decca shows that she could stand her ground, at least in the form of a compromise, when it came to identity trading with the music industry.
In particular, it cannot be doubted that she was interested in making her mark on the folk music scene prior to meeting Oldham and Jagger, having already landed some coffeehouse gigs in London and stuff; and the fact that for her second single she chose ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, rather than another pop ballad, means that she had no plans to completely sacrifice her agency if a musical recording career was in the works. The irony of the event, however, as it sometimes happens, is that in this case a more lasting legacy was left behind by the «marketed» pop single (‘As Tears Go By’) rather than the «free» folk single — probably the only curious aspect of this Dylan cover is that the acoustic guitar on the recording is played by none other than Keith Richards; since old Keith is not known all that much for being a folk guitarist, he basically just throws out Dylan’s melody and plays something close to his acoustic performance of ‘Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)’ on the Stones’ debut, and it kinda fits in with Marianne’s vocals (she herself follows the bass rather than guitar). The vocals themselves do not amount to much, though, other than showing that she is capable of impressively sustaining a tremolo note. (This is not even mentioning that ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ belongs to the same category as ‘Yesterday’, ‘Imagine’, and ‘Country Roads’ — a.k.a. «songs that should not ever be covered, under pain of extreme torture, followed by more extreme torture»; and yes, Marianne did cover ‘Yesterday’ just as well).
For the B-side she made an equally predictable, but slightly more interesting choice of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ — clearly following the Animals’ rather than Dylan’s version, but with Alan Price’s organ replaced by Morriconesque strings and a Gothic piano sound, while Keith still provides acoustic rhythm and unidentified backing vocalists ultimately push the mood in the direction of somber Gregorian chanting by the time the verses are over. It’s an interesting combination, and the song’s dark nature certainly fits Faithfull’s style more than the sing-along optimism of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, but while it can be seen how she struggles to convey the broken down, dejected, dehumanized, emotion-stripped state of the lyrical heroine, her vocal tone and that odd invented accent do not really get her where she needs to be. It would probably take somebody like Nico to make this stuff really work — as it is, it’s just a curiosity.
Still, even though the single did not chart (and one can hardly blame the public for not wanting to spend money on yet another cover of a song everybody already knew by heart), this little impediment did not stop Marianne from insisting on recording a full-fledged «coffehouse folk» record. Since getting Keith to back her up for such a monumental project was out of the question (people might start mistaking him for Donovan and all that), what she did was enlist the services of folk guitarist and singer Jon Mark, formerly of the forgotten folk duo Jon & Alun and later gaining a bit more notability during his several years of tenure with John Mayall and, later, as part of the Mark-Almond group. Mark is in complete command here, writing the title track for Marianne, arranging all the covers, and playing guitar. Interestingly enough, standard album credits never list the rest of the musicians — which, according to the information on Marianne’s own website, included not only the famed session drummer Bobby Graham (the same who played on early Kinks singles), but also none other than Jackie DeShannon’s boyfriend, Mr. Jimmy Page, on second acoustic guitar and a certain John Paul Jones on bass — this was certainly not the first time Jimmy and J. P. played on the same record, but it still kind of makes it a must-buy for devoted Led Zeppelin fans.
In fact, this information does matter, because most of the retro-evaluation of Come My Way that I have seen predictably focus on the sole aspect of Marianne’s singing — and it may, in fact, not be the best thing about the record. Take some totally random non-highlight off it, like, for instance, the playfully fast-paced ‘Mary Ann’, taking care to hear it in the stereo version where the two acoustic guitars are separated into different channels, and just focus your mind on the interplay between them and the bass, forgetting about the singer for a sec: isn’t that good? it’s just the kind of complex, polyphonic sound that the Seekers would kill for, just as much as this arrangement would probably kill for a Judith Durham type of voice to complete it. Though Marianne does an okay job, too, but that little folk trio is just too good for her.
The bottomline is that Come My Way is definitely above average, and does not look half bad against the contemporary background of British folk recording practices — I know for sure I’d take it over any given Shirley Collins album any day (well, maybe any day other than those days on which I’d be exclusively interested in the history of the British folk tradition, which Professor Collins teaches consistently well; most days, I am a bit more interested in how 20th century artists digest and interpret the British folk tradition). And for all the indifference that we may fling at Marianne’s singing, I think I prefer her brave take on Joan Baez’ version of ‘Fare Thee Well’ to the original — she hits those high notes on "if I go, if I go, if I go ten thousand miles..." right on the nose, and somehow does it with a little more warmth («Euro-warmth?») than Joan did with so much less effort; and that’s not even counting the twin-acoustic guitar arrangement on Marianne’s version, which blows Baez’ standard-fare folk pickin’ out of the water.
One other thing the album reflects is the trend to find common ground between traditional folk and modern jazz, which was most notable at the time in the work of Davey Graham. Three tracks on the LP feature heavily jazzified arrangements, the most curious of which is the re-recording of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ in a totally different manner — as a trialogue between Marianne’s «conservative» delivery of the vocals, Mark’s bluesy-jazzy acoustic part in which he keeps fluctuating between Lonnie Johnson and Wes Montgomery modes, and Jones’ grim, post-boppy, Mingus-influenced bass. The result is more weird than emotionally impressive, but when your experimental recording is made in an era in which the word ‘experimental’ actually means what it says, «weird» is okay by me. There is also ‘Full Fathom Five’, on which Marianne recites rather than sings the lyrics, while Mark helps her complete the Beat Café impression; and an equally modernistic reading of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’, on which the jazz bass takes prominence and Marianne tests her acting skills (I don’t know if she was already pregnant with Nicholas when doing this, but I bet it would have worked great as a scare-you-to-sleep experience for the kid anyway).
The best thing I can say about Mark’s only fully original contribution to the album — the title track — is that it fits in perfectly with the rest, a melancholic ballad in which Marianne has to complain about how impossible it is to find true love among all the "wild mountain thyme that grows around my door". Maybe it is because the arrangement is so minimalistic: this is the only track where she is only backed by Mark’s guitar, picking out a repetitive and relatively simple pattern, so it ends up reading like a deeply personal manifesto, something for which Marianne really wasn’t ready at the time. At least it makes for a much more convincing opening to the album than the closing ‘Bells Of Freedom’, which is supposed to end the proceedings on a note of triumphant optimism, something for which Marianne really wasn’t ready at the time — nor, for that matter, at any time ever throughout all of her career. Nothing «rings» as hollow and fake on the album than her "bells of freedom ring, bells of freedom ring for us!" chorus.
Still, on the whole, the album does not leave me with one of those nasty «why the hell does it even need to exist?» kind of feelings. Marianne may have been a far more accidental passenger on the folk train than Judy Collins or Sandy Denny, but at least she bought the ticket herself, and she made sure to surround herself with fairly high-class company for the journey. Just as Mike Leander’s baroque arrangements gave her the much-needed advantage for her «pop» side, so did Jon Mark’s participation seriously ennoble these folk recordings — in the end, while I am hardly head-over-heels in love with either of the two records, I can still heartily recommend them to all lovers of solid, juicy sound... oh, and exaggerated, tragicomically mysterious artificial Euroaccents, of course.