Revealed: Tiny sum Marianne Faithfull left to her family as records show pop icon and Rolling Stones muse died without a will

Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull who was the lover of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger for four years in the 1960s left an estate worth just £35,000.

Faithfull who died aged 78 on January 30 this year became the ultimate rock chick, inspiring Stones songs such as Wild Horses and You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

She also had flings with two other Stones – Keith Richards and Brian Jones – as well as David Bowie, but she resisted the advances of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.

Her life spiralled out of control due to heroin addiction and homelessness in the early 1970s before she resurrected her career with a string of new albums including Broken English in 1979.

Probate records revealed today that Faithfull who was married and divorced three times died intestate without leaving a will.

Under intestacy rules, her entire estate of £43,000, reduced to a net figure of £35,000 after deduction of liabilities, will be inherited by her only son Nicholas Dunbar.

Faithfull died after years of suffering multiple health problems, including bulimia, breast cancer and emphysema caused by decades of smoking.

She was hospitalised for 22 days when she contracted Covid-19 in 2020 and was not expected to survive, but she pulled through, releasing her 21st album, She Walks in Beauty, a year later.

Marianne Faithfull, pictured here in 1967, had hits such as Come And Stay With Me

Marianne pictured with Mick Jagger at Euston station in 1967. The pair dated for four years and split in 1970

Faithfull’s grant of probate revealed she was living at the time of her death in the Denville Hall care home for members of the theatrical profession in Northwood, north west London. She reportedly moved into care in 2022.

The singer was born in Hampstead, north London, on December 29, 1946, little more than a year after the Second World War.

Her mother Eva was a Hungarian, half-Jewish baroness and former ballet dancer who had fled the Nazis, while her father Major Robert Glynn Faithfull was a colourful character who had been a MI6 agent before becoming a professor of Italian literature.

It was often suggested that Faithfull’s free spirit came from her childhood at a country house called Braziers Park, in Oxfordshire, which her father turned into a commune where promiscuity reigned.

Her mother later moved with her to a terraced house in Reading and sent her to a Roman Catholic boarding school.

It was during this time that she started pursuing a singing career, performing in coffee bars in Reading.

Her big break came in 1964 when she was just 17 and attended a Rolling Stones party where she was spotted by the band’s producer Andrew Loog Oldham who helped her to release her haunting debut single As Tears Go By in the same year.

Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull  died at the age of 78. Pictured here in London in February 2002

She starred in the 1960s film Girl On A Bicycle as well as enjoying chart success as a singer

The wistful ballad had been written by Jagger and his songwriting partner Keith Richards, but Oldham gave it to her because he did not think it was suitable for the Stones.

Faithfull went on to release a string of captivating singles including Come Stay With Me, This Little Bird, Summer Nights and a cover of The Beatles’ Yesterday.

Despite having turned down Bob Dylan when he came to London in 1965, she began a high-profile four-year relationship with Jagger in 1966.

One of the Rolling Stones’ most famous songs, Sympathy For The Devil, was inspired by a Russian novel called The Master And Margarita, introduced to Jagger by Faithfull.

As a couple, they epitomised the Swinging Sixties and attracted huge interest in the media, including lurid headlines.

Faithfull was aged just 20 when police found her wearing nothing but a fur rug during a drugs bust at Richards’ luxury Sussex home Redlands in 1967.

The raid prompted a less than salubrious rumour that Jagger had been performing a sex act on Faithfull at the time, involving a Mars bar.

Faithfull always insisted that the story had been made up, describing it in her autobiography as ‘a dirty old man’s fantasy’.

Her popularity was enhanced by acting roles which starring in the Chekov play Three Sisters alongside Glenda Jackson at London’s Royal Court in 1967

Faithfull was credited with being the first person to say ‘f***’ in a mainstream film, when she appeared in the 1967 film I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname.

Her other hits in the 1960s included As Tears Go By – co-written by her then-boyfriend Mick Jagger (the couple are pictured together in Sydney in July 1969)

Faithfull poses during a photocall to present her film ‘Irina Palm’ running in the competition at the 57th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin February 13, 2007

Her most famous screen role was in the lead tole of the 1968 film The Girl On A Motorcycle in 1968, which was noted for being America’s first X-rated film.

But drugs took a toll on her and her relationship with Jagger disintegrated as her pop career hit the buffers.

Her decline was documented in the Stones’ song Sister Morphine which she co-wrote with Jagger and Richards for the band’s 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Faithfull lost custody of her son and went into a coma after a suicide attempt as she remained in the grip of heroin addiction which led to her being effectively homeless and living for two years in a squat in Soho.

But her fighting spirit helped her make a musical comeback in 1979 with her album Broken English, and its signature song The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan.

Her years of hard living, as well as severe laryngitis and drug abuse had left her voice sounding raspy, cracked and lower in pitch.

Critics described her tone as ‘whisky soaked’, and helping to capture the raw emotions expressed in her music, drawing on jazz and blues in particular.

Her other albums included Dangerous Acquaintances in 1981, which ended with the searing song Truth, Bitter Truth.

Marianne Faithfull attends the Gus Van Sant : Retrospective at la cinematheque on April 11, 2016 in Paris

Marianne pictured in 1968 on the set of The Girl On A Motorcycle 

Faithful during her performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival July 10, 1995

She also played God in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the devil in William Burroughs’ and Tom Waits’ musical, The Black Rider.

Faithfull’s final album She Walks In Beauty in 2021 featured her reciting the works of British romantic poets to music arranged by Warren Ellis, Brian Eno, Nick Cave and Vincent Segal.

She received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the Women’s World Awards in 2009, and was also made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.

Faithfull was first married briefly to artist John Dunbar in 1965, then Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators from 1979 to 1986, and actor Giorgio Della Terza from 1988 to 1991

Jagger paid tribute to her after her death, describing her as ‘a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress’, and saying he was ‘so saddened’ by her loss.

Richards also posted that he was ‘so sad’ following her death while Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood posted pictures on Instagram of himself with her, along with captions saying: ‘Farewell dear Marianne’, and ‘Marianne will be dearly missed. Bless her xx’.

Faithfull’s long-time friend, the BBC Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris, called her an ‘encapsulation of the sixties’.

He said that ‘people began to see her as an artist, as a creator’, although she was initially known as Jagger’s girlfriend.

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