"The blonde, voluptuous Faithfull was a celebrity before turning 17, homeless by her mid-20s and an inspiration to peers and younger artists by her early 30s, when her raw, explicit "Broken English" album brought her the kinds of reviews the Stones had received.
Over the following decades, her admirers would include Beck, Billy Corgan, Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, although her history would always be closely tied to the Stones and to the years she dated Mick Jagger.
"I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull," Jagger wrote on Instagram. "She was so much a part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress."
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Jagger and Richards often cited bluesmen and early rock n rollers as their prime influences, but Faithfull and her close friend Anita Pallenberg, Richards' longtime partner, also opened the band to new ways of thinking.
Both were worldlier than their boyfriends at the time, and helped transform the Stones' songwriting and personas, whether as muses or as collaborators.
Faithfull helped inspire such Stones songs as the mellow tribute "She Smiled Sweetly" and the lustful "Let's Spend the Night Together."
It was Faithful who lent Jagger the Russian novel "The Master and Margarita" that was the basis for "Sympathy for the Devil" and who first recorded and contributed lyrics to the Stones' dire "Sister Morphine," notably the opening line, "Here I lie in my hospital bed."
Faithfull's drug use helped shape such jaded takes on the London rock scene as "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Live with Me," while her time with Jagger also coincided with one of his most vulnerable love songs, "Wild Horses."
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Rock in Peace!