Marianne Faithfull, a pop star turned survivors, has died at 78

At a 1964 party for Rolling Stones, she was contacted by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who was drawn by her beauty. “He asked me, ‘Can you sing?’ And I said, ‘mm-mm, I can,’ she said in an interview from 2005 At NPR. “About a week later I got a telegram from Andrew and said, ‘Be at Olympic Studios at. 2. ‘”

There she recorded her first track, “as tears pass by,” often said to be the first original composition of Mr. Jagger and Keith Richards from Rolling Stones, who until then had mostly performed blues and R&B covers. The recording, with his wan English-horn hook and wistful lyrics, “was a very strange song for two 21-year-old boys to write and a stranger one for an 18-year-old girl to sing,” Ms. Faithull to The Daily News of New York in 1987.

Still, the single became a top 10 hit in the UK in 1964, while also broke into Billboards Top 25 in the US. In her introduction to a photo-driven book about her, “A Life on Record” (2014), Salman Rushdie described the young Mrs. Faithfull, with crooked love, such as having “the voice of a slightly zoned chorists.”

She got another three top 10 hits in the UK in 1965, “Come and Stay With Me” (No. 4), “This Little Bird” (No. 6) and “Summer Nights” (No. 10).

To her album debut, her label, Decca, issued two contemporary releases. One, simply entitled “Marianne Faithfull”, concentrated on her pop songs, while the other, “Come My Way,” consisted mainly of traditional people and rose to No. 12 on the British charts, three positions higher than its companion.