Although her landmark "Broken English" album from 1979 is widely regarded as the one that sparked MARIANNE FAITHFULL'S creative renaissance, it's important to remember the role played by that album's predecessor "Dreamin' My Dreams"(1976) in spurring her on her way.
With hindsight, that Faithfull even survived to make "Dreamin' My Dreams" at all seems against nature. Sure, everyone remembers her early, virginal pop records from the 1960s and her dalliance with three of the Stones in all (the most famous being Mick Jagger of course), not to mention the spurious rumours of her involvement in the 'Mars Bar' incident at the Redlands drug bust, but despite the glamour and danger, the early '70s found Marianne in the depths of despair and actually living on the streets as her drug addiction spiralled almost fatally out of control. In terms of fallen angels, only Nico's doomed, teutonic beauty gave Mazzer a run for her money back in the day.
The fact she hadn't been involved in writing a song since the notorious "Sister Morphine" in 1969 hardly strengthened her case for a creative renaissance either, but thanks to her ex-manager Tony Calder's new label NEMS (also home to ulikely stable mates Edgar Broughton and Black Sabbath in the mid '70s), Marianne had the opportunity to make a comeback with "Dreamin' My Dreams" - the single - in 1975.
Initially, the single did little and things looked bleak for the future, until Irish DJ Pat Kenny (yes, as in "The Late Late Show") took the single under his wing. Ergo: a sizeable Irish smash hit for Ms.Faithfull and the opportunity to make an album on the back of it. Everyone needs a bit of luck at times, don't they?
Ironically, "Dreamin' My Dreams" itself opens the parent album and is actually a pretty horrendous slice of string-drenched schmaltz from the Nashville pen of Allen Reynolds. It's followed swiftly by the equally syrupy "Fairy Tale Hero" where the ghost of Gram looms large. Listening to this opening double-whammy, you can see why Warners passed on Marianne at the time because they felt she sounded too like Emmy Lou Harris for comfort. If you find that hard to take, try these tunes on for size. They beggar belief.
Actually, the only thing that really distinguishes these tracks at all is that you immediately notice the voice. Long gone is the sickly, virginal, Convent girl coo of the '60s. This Marianne is a street-tough woman, steeped in experience and life on skid row, with a husky, scarred larynx to match. "Dreamin' My Dreams" was the song that marked the appearance of the high tar'n'bourbon voice we all associate with Marianne Faithfull to this day and it brings with it an edge she could only have dreamed of previously.
Stylistically, the rest of the album is too compromised to work as a convincing whole. Marianne herself envisaged "Dreamin' My Dreams" as a kind of English country-pop album and certainly on occasions this vision gels. Witness the defiant, regretful grace of "I'm Not Lisa", with its' warped veneer of pedal steel, or the swampy, suggestive second single "All I Wanna Do In Life", which has lovely, descriptive slide guitar and a real, come to bed vocal from Marianne.
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Elsewhere, when she ups the pastoral Englishness, like on the excellent "The Way You Want Me To Be", she succeeds beautifully. This song rides along on flecked acoustic guitars and an insistent bassline and cuts to the chase to perfection. Meanwhile, while Mazzer has gone on record to say how much she despises the throwaway chorus of the Jackie De Shannon-penned "Vanilla O'Lay", the song itself sounds like a finely-wrought confection to these ears.
Sadly, though, the stylistic confusion mars other parts of the album. Both "Wrong Road Again" and "Somebody Loves You" have rousing choruses, but they're too sentimental and cloying to survive the ravages of time, while the faithful(l) but incongrous cover of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" that closes the album proper makes a big rock noise, but is an artistic whimper in itself. I'd also question the wisdom of covering obvious contenders like Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "Honky Tonk Angels". Both of these came from later sessions Marianne undertook with Tim Hardin's Grease Band and were included on a later issue of "Dreamin' My Dreams" called "Faithless", only to make a re-appearance as extra tracks this time around.
However, "Dreamin' My Dreams" pulls itself up by the bootstraps by the inclusion of Marianne's first two original songs since 1969. "Lady Madelaine" makes the album proper and it's a gem. A sad, acoustic-based ballad about the drug-related death of Fairhfull's friend Madelaine D'Arcy, it's stained with references to the Rolling Stones and Marianne's immediate past (note the reference to Keith's dealer "Spanish Tony" Sanchez in the chorus) and is alluringly poignant. The second Faithfull original is "That Was The Day (Nashville)": a suprisingly decent stab at adopting a Honky Tonk angel persona that suits her better than you'd expect.
"Dreamin' My Dreams", then, was a necessary step on the road to artistic recovery that led to "Broken English" and the serious modern artiste we are familiar with today. It's not as good as its' successor, but has moments aplenty and also proves that Gram Parsons' friendship with Mick and Keef resulted in more than just "Honky Tonk Women" and "Dead Flowers."
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