The one Beatles song Marianne Faithfull always wanted to sing
The Beatles could always be generous with their best tunes, but Marianne Faithfull managed to have some Fab classics slip through her fingers.
(Credit: A. Vente)
Music » From The Vault
Thu 30 January 2025 19:15, UK
The Beatles were always ones to be generous with their wealth of classics. Even if John Lennon and Paul McCartney created a songwriting institution with their body of work, it was always in service to get the rest of the rock community around them to the top of the charts as well. And despite Marianne Faithfull’s history with The Rolling Stones, she came within inches of having many classics written for her by the Fab Four.
Considering Faithfull’s style, though, it’s a wonder why The Rolling Stones ended up writing tunes for her like ‘As Tears Go By’. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were among the major bad boys of rock, so hearing them writing something heartfelt seemed very much out of character if they were trying to be the nasty alternative to what their friends from Liverpool had been doing a few months prior.
Faithfull’s voice always seemed to gel with The Beatles’ model as well. The group were no strangers to writing sentimental love songs every time they took to the stage, and even when they were making some of their uptempo rockers, they could always find time to balance it out with covers of old show tunes like ‘Til There Ws You,’ which sounds like it could have been arranged for Faithfull had McCartney not sung it himself.
It’s not like McCartney didn’t know how to sing within her wheelhouse, either. Throughout the recording of ‘Here There and Everywhere’, McCartney felt that it would be better to think of Faithfull to get the right tone of voice for the track, but since that was one of his favourite tracks that he ever wrote, it’s understandable why he kept that one a bit closer to the chest when it came time to pick tracks for Revolver.
But on the same record, McCartney was also working on different pieces for Faithfull, including a song that he never ended up recording entitled ‘Etcetera’. While Macca knew that the track would work much better for Faithfull’s voice, one of the other tracks that caught Faithfull’s eye was ‘Eleanor Rigby.’
Compared to McCartney’s voice, Faithfull was far more suited to take on something that sounded this regal. No one had heard anything this baroque out of a rock and roll band before, and since Faithfull had a handful of lovelorn ballads accompanied by strings, having a tune this biting in her arsenal would have been a much better change of pace than another lovesick tale of heartache.
Then again, after Faithfull requested McCartney to give her the tune, he admitted to wanting to use it on Revolver, saying, “I offered it to Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger, who were looking for a song for Marianne to record, but it wasn’t what she wanted. I think she was looking for an ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ and instead, I offered her an ‘Etcetera’.”
But that might have been the reason why McCartney kept it for himself. No one had done this in the rock sphere, but that opened up a world of possibilities once he started playing with how the strings were recorded. As much as Faithfull’s voice held a lot of emotional weight, hearing her singing opposite strings that could have come out of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho may have been too much for her fanbase to take.
She did manage to do a sublime version of the song, ‘Yesterday’ in its place instead, which actually does a much better version of connecting her songs together. Because if ‘As Tears Go By’ was like listening to her lamenting about growing older, her version of McCartney’s first major ballad is her way of capturing going through their first serious breakup.
Related Topics
Marianne FaithfullThe Beatles
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