Marianne Faithfull Bares All In VH1 Documentary
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Long before Courtney Love was raising hell in the rock 'n' roll world, Marianne Faithfull was blazing the trail with a prodigious lifestyle of bed-hopping and drug abuse.
In the 1960s, the former convent schoolgirl became a major pop star and slept with three Rolling Stones along the way. She spent much of the ensuing two decades in a drug haze but still managed to release some fine albums, notably 1979's ``Broken English.'
Now clean for 13 years, she has become music's all-purpose grande dame, singing with Metallica and interpreting Brecht & Weil.
One sign that a recording star really has arrived is to be documented in a VH1 ``Behind the Music' special, and the cable music channel will turn its attention to Faithful in a segment that airs May 23.
Acts such as Shania Twain and Lynyrd Skynyrd have received a huge boost from these specials, and Faithfull hopes it will introduce her to a new generation.
``I think about it as a good story, and I'm proud of my story, actually. It's all right,' Faithfull, now a 52-year-old grandmother, said from her Dublin home Wednesday.
The VH1 special comes as she is preparing to release a new album, ``Vagabond Ways,' and to launch a brief U.S. tour highlighted by a free concert in New York's Central Park on July 21. She will return to the United States in the fall.
The documentary features interviews with a number of prominent faces from Faithfull's past. Among them are former lover Keith Richards, who compliments her breasts, Richards' former girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, and the first of Faithfull's three husbands, John Dunbar.
The show does not miss many opportunities to focus on Faithfull's lurid past, and it boasts rare television footage, including a heart-stopping performance on ``Saturday Night Live' in which she croaked her way through ``Broken English' a day after a cocaine binge.
Much time is spent on her life in the orbit of the Rolling Stones in the 1960s, when she also slept with late guitarist Brian Jones and lived with Mick Jagger for several years.
When police carried out a drug raid at Richards' place in 1967, Faithfull was described in the press as ``Miss X,' allegedly sporting just a fur rug and a sticky candy bar.
Faithfull says she isn't actually in a huge rush to see the documentary, to which she owns the overseas rights. ``I'm doing really good. I don't want to unbalance myself.'
