Ever decreasing circles.

When Marianne Faithfull died this week the press were quick to wheel out a series of gushing obituaries and reflections, determined as they were to ensure that they appeared to know and love her almost as well as she knew and loved herself. Of course, you can never really know someone like Marianne Faithfull as well as you’d like. She was almost a one off: smart, sexy and sharp, and certainly determined enough to know that when fate threw her a second shot she wasn’t going to let it slip away. A lot of the things I read and heard seemed to make a beeline for her connection to Mick Jagger and the urban legend (peppered, perhaps, with a drizzle of truth) that she really didn’t know what a Mars Bar was for, and that’s a shame, because it’s a glance back on an utterly irrelevant moment in the history of all time, whereas what Faithfull did next – spending most of the 1970’s strung out on drugs and sleeping rough in London, another 60’s casualty, thrown to the foxes and the dustbins and the shit in the gutter – is far more interesting and a much better testament to the power of her survivalist instincts. Faithfull almost made it look like it was part of the plan, and when she crawled up for air in 1979 to make her comeback album, ‘Broken English’, (which is, frankly, a brilliant, dark, intravenous wonder of an album, sewn through with black wit, humility and some very fruity language indeed) she essentially started the last long chapter of her life, laid bare for rehabilitation and redemption and to slip into the status of a strange underground version of a national treasure; the nicotine fuelled Joan Collins of British rock, with a voice that could grate ginger.

Faithfull deserved every drop of praise that came her way. And besides, what do we have left now? Who is carrying her torch for the next generation? Florence Welch? Jess Glynn? Raye? Balls to that. Not even Amy Winehouse carried it off as well, and she probably knew it too. I was pleased at least that Marianne Faithfull got the send off and the recognition she was due, which is more than can be said for Garth Hudson, whose belated obituary I stubbled across purely by chance in the Telegraph (causing me to let out a short sigh of relief that I had finally found something worth reading in the Telegraph). I suppose it’s the way Garth would have wanted it, as the modest, retiring, limelight swerving multi-instrumentalist of The Band; not just a formidable musician, but a formidable musician in one of the most formidable bands the world has ever had the joy to witness. Perhaps the greater tragedy was not his death but the fact that he was the last of the gang to go, for there is something hugely melancholic about great line ups of great bands that have all finally shuffled off to tap their toes together again in the afterlife.

It’s somehow not quite right, that we still have a smattering of Beatles, Byrds, Beach Boys, Kinks, Stones, Clashes, Velvets and a couple of the Who left to lean on, but we’ll never hear a another word from any member of The Band ever again. But hey, thank God we’ve got their music (and by that I mean their proper records, their albums, not just the odd song pulled out of Spotify by some ludicrous hipster in an attempt to impress a woman called Hermione) and we have The Last Waltz, one of the greatest films ever made about music and piece of evidence #1 in any case that could be made that while The Band may not necessarily be the best band ever they were certainly one of the very coolest. Here was a quintet of men who played with a natural warmth and an other-worldly telepathy that few other groups had, or will ever have. But their reward for this was not longevity but a slow attrition, and after they broke up in 1977 their habits started chipping away at them until there was only Garth left. So thank goodness for Garth Hudson, who was weird and wonderful in all the best ways and all we can hope now is that The Band will never be allowed to drift away into obscurity, because they just don’t deserve that in a world where The Kaiser Chiefs are still making money from what they think is their art.

Thinking about Marianne made me think about Garth, and thinking about Garth made me think about The Band, and that made me think about Black Sabbath, a band who are something of a miracle, when you think about it for long enough. How is it that The Band are gone forever and Black Sabbath are all still alive (well, fairly alive). Not that I resent their refusal to let the reaper do his work, it just seems incredible that somehow that very same reaper keeps on letting them off the hook. I like a bit of Sabbath, once in a while, but I couldn’t eat them for breakfast every day. They are without much doubt the founders of what heavy metal subsequently became, but they are also justly remembered for being one of the most idiotic gangs of fully grown children the world has ever seen. In their prime, when they were knocking out doomy, metal melting riffs that were as crunchy as they were caustic as they were cataclysmic, they also managed to master the art of being as fucked out of their heads as it is possible to be while still appearing to be alive. Between them they drank more booze and took more drugs and pissed more blood than pretty any other outfit on the block and the stories of their almost courageous stupidity are many legions more than the tight cluster of songs that form their best work.

Naturally, Ozzy Osbourne steals most of the headlines (so, so many to choose from) but my favourite story is the one where their drummer, Bill Ward, allegedly turned up at the airport for a world tour wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and carrying no other luggage than two jugs of strong cider – because only a member of a band like Black Sabbath could get away with such a level of steam-hammered, pin-eyed and thoroughly disconnected naivety. And yet, despite all the daft antics, poor decisions and plain bad luck the original members of Black Sabbath are all still with us, and not only that they are set to perform together for a charity gig in Birmingham, with a supporting cast of some of heavy metals biggest names, all lining up to pay tribute to their idols. I think that’s fantastic. Fantastic that of all the big bands that blew the world away decades ago it turns out that Sabbath are the most intact. Simply ask: what are the chances? How on earth did they manage that?! It also reminds us that music isn’t like it used to be. There are no rock and roll stars anymore – they have no place, because the merest whiff of something dangerous sends everyone scurrying onto social media to complain. The thrill has gone and only vapours remain, specks of dust from the remnants of a world we’ll never see again. But at least we can still hear it, bubbling away in our heads. Alive and kicking, even when it’s dead. Like Marianne. Like The Band. Like all of the great things, sooner or later.

G B Burton. 08.02.2025