{"text":[[{"start":11.45,"text":"“Can she sing? ”"},{"start":12.904,"text":"So asked Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of The Rolling Stones, at a party in 1964, pointedly ignoring Marianne Faithfull’s presence and instead addressing the 17-year-old’s boyfriend. "},{"start":23.334,"text":"Yes: she could sing, initially in a sweet folk-pop vibrato with very English diction, then later — several lifetimes later — in the weathered tones of hard experience. "}],[{"start":33.8,"text":"Faithfull’s career, if that prosaic term can be applied to such a free spirit, was launched by the hustling Oldham. "},{"start":40.342,"text":"He promoted her, in her words, as “an eerie fusion of haughty aristocrat and folky bohemian child-woman”. "},{"start":46.321999999999996,"text":"There was a grain of truth to the fantasy. "},{"start":48.602,"text":"Faithfull was born in 1946 to an Austro-Hungarian baroness who moved to England after marrying an eccentric British intelligence officer. "},{"start":56.068999999999996,"text":"The marriage foundered, a wartime folie d’amour. "},{"start":59.123999999999995,"text":"Faithfull was raised by her mother as a penniless blueblood. "},{"start":62.31699999999999,"text":"From her she learnt the intoxicating but ruinous habit of living beyond one’s means. "}],[{"start":67.6,"text":"Her first single was the Françoise Hardy-style ballad “As Tears Go By”, which was also the first song written by Jagger and his Stones partner, Keith Richards. "},{"start":76.12899999999999,"text":"A chart success in 1964, predating the Stones’ version by a year, it sparked a run of hit singles. "},{"start":82.509,"text":"But Faithfull did not relish pop stardom. "},{"start":85.03899999999999,"text":"In the description of her superb 1994 memoir Faithfull, she was bedevilled by “grotesque contracts, lying, cheating crafty legalisms, mad and bungling managers and barbaric schedules”. "}],[{"start":96.50999999999999,"text":"Relief of a sort came with entry into the Stones’ inner sanctum. "},{"start":100.16399999999999,"text":"She was attracted to Richards at first, culminating in “a wonderful night of sex” with the guitarist while tripping on LSD, as she reminisced in Faithfull. "},{"start":107.93199999999999,"text":"Afterwards, to her surprise, the guitarist breezily told her to give the “smitten” Jagger a call: “Go on, love, give him a jingle, he’ll fall off his chair. ”"}],[{"start":117.47,"text":"Emblematic of the group’s louchely complicated dynamics, she and Jagger became the golden couple of the Swinging Sixties. "},{"start":124.012,"text":"Barely 20 when she moved in with him in 1966, she arrived with a baby son from an undissolved marriage to the gallerist John Dunbar. "},{"start":131.804,"text":"She continued releasing records and also had a successful sideline acting in high-profile plays and films. "},{"start":137.497,"text":"But her work was overshadowed by her off-stage life. "}],[{"start":141.28,"text":"Having affairs with women and men alike, opening her mind with LSD and hashish, she embodied the era’s spirit of libertinage. "},{"start":148.647,"text":"But there were risks too. "},{"start":150.227,"text":"Lurid lies about sexual depravity circulated after Jagger and Richards were arrested in the notorious Redlands drug bust of 1967, at which Faithfull was present, wearing a fur rug and nothing else. "},{"start":161.094,"text":"A nearly fatal sleeping pill overdose in Australia in 1969 prompted a Conservative MP to dub her “a rather stupid young lady” in a House of Commons debate. "}],[{"start":170.16,"text":"The pop ingénue had become vilified as a monster of corruption. "},{"start":173.939,"text":"But Faithfull’s hedonism had an innocent quality. "},{"start":176.719,"text":"She gave herself to sensual pleasure wholeheartedly. "},{"start":179.662,"text":"As she sang in “Guilt”, from her 1979 landmark album Broken English: “I never lied to my lover