MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the early 1960s, Marianne Faithfull was at a party, eating hors d'oeuvres, 17 years old, when the manager of The Rolling Stones approached her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MARIANNE FAITHFULL: Can you sing? I said, mm-mm (ph), I can. Mm-mm, you know (laughter). And I think about a week later, I got a telegram saying, be at Olympic Studios at 2 o'clock, such-and-such address, London. And that's where we did "As Tears Go By."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AS TEARS GO BY")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) Smiling faces I can see, but not for me. I sit and watch as tears go by.
KELLY: Marianne Faithfull talking with NPR's Scott Simon back in 2005 - well, she went on to record more than 20 solo albums. Marianne Faithfull died in January. She was 78. And in the year before her death, she was making new music, an EP called "Burning Moonlight," tied to the 60th anniversary of her debut albums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BURNING MOONLIGHT")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) It's just the sort of mood I'm in. Burning moonlight like fire, like food. Think about it as hard as you can.
KELLY: "Burning Moonlight" is out now, and with me to talk about it is the album's executive producer, Andrew Batt. Hi there.
ANDREW BATT: Hi.
KELLY: It's a lovely album, and so I want to start by saying congratulations on putting it out in the world, and also acknowledging it must...
BATT: Thank you.
KELLY: ...Carry such contradictory feelings for you because she's not here to watch you launch it out in the world.
BATT: Oh, I know. And just hearing her voice in your intro there was - you know, it caught me up a little.
KELLY: Yeah.
BATT: It's - I'm still getting used to her passing.
KELLY: So let's talk about this new album, which - I mentioned it's tied to the anniversary of her debut albums. It very much pays tribute to her roots - the pop roots, the folk roots, all the early stuff. It also can feel quite contemporary. I'm thinking of the song "Love Is."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE IS")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) Love is where you leave it. Love is where you find it.
BATT: Yeah. Well, that was the whole thing, is that, you know, Marianne wanted to kind of get back to work. And she had this idea that her last sort of written album, "Negative Capability," was, you know, as she always said, rather doom and gloom, you know. And she was the queen of doom and gloom. But, you know, she wasn't really like that in the flesh, you know. She was very funny and upbeat and charming, and there was a whole other side to her. And a very romantic person - and her music was a great way to express her sadness and melancholy in all those things. If she'd been well enough, we would have done an album, but I think we had to sort of stick to an EP because it was all she could really cope with.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE IS")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) Love is, love is, love is what you make it.
BATT: You know, Marianne's career began in such an unusual way. She had had this hit with "As Tears Go By," and of course, Decca wanted a pop long player, but she had wanted to do a folk record because she was actually performing in the folk clubs around Reading, where she grew up, prior to her being famous. So in a way, the story that we hear in the beginning, in the intro, with Andrew Loog Oldham, it's not the whole story. She wasn't a complete beginner when he found her.
KELLY: Ah.
BATT: He made it happen for her, but she wasn't a beginner.
KELLY: She was already on her way when she was...
BATT: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Nibbling those hors d'oeuvres at the cocktail party.
BATT: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, she basically - when Decca signed her, she sort of put her foot down and said she wanted to do this folk record. And amazingly, they agreed. And I actually can't think of another precedent where a largely untested artist had two albums out on the same day and in two very different genres. It's quite surprising.
KELLY: Well - and it's amazing that here she was, all these years, all these decades later, and she was still playing with both. She still had both...
BATT: Right.
KELLY: ...The pop and the folk side.
BATT: Yeah.
KELLY: So she was still having fun with it.
BATT: Absolutely. And she always loved folk music, and she always wanted to go back to it. Long before we did this, you know, she often talked about it. Like, oh, I could do another folk record. And so we did. And it felt, again, very organic and very personal because the songs we ended up choosing for the folk side - one of them was called "Three Kinsmen Bold"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THREE KINSMAN BOLD")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) There were three kinsmen bold, and they fell in love with me.
BATT: ...Which was a song her father had taught her. He was very into music and collected songs and sheet music and played and sang himself, and so some of those folk things came from him. That's how she got to know them. And for the other track, the other folk one, we decided to revisit "She Moved Through The Fair."
KELLY: And it became the closing track. Yeah.
BATT: It became the closing track. And it's so haunting.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) My young love said to me, my brothers won't mind.
KELLY: What is distinct about this version, for those who haven't heard her earlier recording?
BATT: Well, I mean, so it's a cappella, which is as she would have performed it in the folk clubs back in the day. And it's a sort of ghost story, almost, but it's also about love, you know, loss. And I think both of those things were very connected to her as a person, and she was very fascinated by them. And I think also she just enjoyed the melody line. It sort of sat very nicely in her voice, and she could create an effect with it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) She turned away from me, and she moved through the fair. And I watched her so swiftly move here and move there.
KELLY: Marianne Faithfull - she lived such a life. She had nothing left to prove to anybody. Was your sense that this last album - was it for her fans, was it for all of us, or was it - you know, at this late hour of her life, was she singing for herself?
BATT: That's a good question, you know, because I think she really did it for herself. It was the journey of it, you know, that always interested her in a way. And she was always pleased when something went down well. I mean, in fact, one of the sort of sad things about this is, of course, she never lived to see the physical edition of this EP come out. And one of the last times I saw her, I sort of said, oh, you know, I wish I had the copy to show you. And she was like, darling, you know, it's all about the journey, not the destination.
KELLY: Andrew Batt - he is executive producer of "Burning Moonlight," a new EP from the late singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, who died in January. Andrew Batt, this was a pleasure. Thank you.
BATT: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BURNING MOONLIGHT")
FAITHFULL: (Singing) What does it mean? What's the plan? Is it what we say it is? Is it right? I'm walking in fire. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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