{"id":158655,"date":"2025-11-29T05:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T05:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/158655\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T05:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T05:49:08","slug":"marianne-faithfull-always-shot-straight-sometimes-it-hurt-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/158655\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Marianne Faithfull always shot straight. Sometimes it hurt\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Warren Ellis<\/a> was making the album Ghosteen with his friend and collaborator Nick Cave<\/a>, he sensed a \u201cpresence\u201d in the studio, lighting their way. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what it was, but every day was a revelation. Every day was a surprise. It\u2019s the only time I\u2019ve ever been in the studio and felt there was another presence. There was something else guiding us. It was the only time I ever felt something else was in control \u2013 it was neither Nick or me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghosteen<\/a> was informed by Cave\u2019s experience of losing his son Arthur at the age of 15. I tell Ellis that the album, released in 2019, four years after Arthur\u2019s death, affected me deeply but that, having listened to it once, I don\u2019t feel I could ever sit through it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think of that record as sad or anything the way that you do. I respect what you think. I feel like it is a beautiful record about surrender. It\u2019s about surrendering to something and finding meaning in a terrible event on your own terms. I was convinced that would be the end of our relationship collaborating \u2013 I didn\u2019t feel we could go beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellis and Cave have worked together on and off since 1993, when Cave invited Ellis to join the Bad Seeds during the making of Let Love In, the fire-and-brimstone masterpiece best known today for its track Red Right Hand, also known as the theme for Peaky Blinders. <\/p>\n

But Ellis has always had a life in music apart from Cave. He will shortly return to Ireland with his formative project, Dirty Three, for a concert at which he and his bandmates Jim White and Mick Turner will perform material from last year\u2019s album Love Changes Everything.<\/p>\n

The record is Dirty Three\u2019s first in 12 years, and it captures Ellis and company at a wistful crossroads. The band formed in Melbourne in the early 1990s; they\u2019re all hovering around their 60s now; they\u2019ve lived lives full of joy and suffering, happiness and loss. <\/p>\n

The sense of having experienced the world at its kindest and its cruellest is filtered into an extraordinary album that is powered by Ellis\u2019s keening violin but that, amid dark, flensing moments, finds space for the soulful and the meditative. Just like life itself, it is fraught one instant, sweet and blissful the next.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirty Three will always be my spiritual home. [But] I don\u2019t think Dirty Three is the sort of band you want coming to town every weekend. It goes the same for us playing,\u201d he says of the long interlude between recordings. \u201cYou want to get out there, do the shows the best that you can and then move away from it. It makes it all the more special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DirtyDirty Three. Photograph: Prudence Upton <\/p>\n

Cave was already a decade-plus into his career when he invited Ellis to work with him. But it soon became clear that the duo elevated each other\u2019s artistry. The relationship continues to inspire both.<\/p>\n

That much was plain when the Bad Seeds performed Cave\u2019s Tupelo at their concert<\/a> in Dublin last year. As Cave ranted and raved, it was obvious that this cathartic account of the birth of Elvis amid the rain \u201ccrashing on the pane\u201d was powered by Ellis\u2019s scary, swooping violin as much as by Cave\u2019s singing. It was an extraordinary sight \u2013 and one in which the alchemical power flowed equally from each.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Nick Cave: \u2018My life is much richer and more explicitly meaningful than it was before my children died\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ellis is speaking from his apartment in Paris; his huge bristling beard \u2013 think Ronnie Drew dressed as Rasputin \u2013 fills the screen. He lives in the city with his wife, the composer Delphine Ciampi, and their two sons. Over the past decade or so he became close to another adopted Parisian, Marianne Faithfull<\/a>. She died last January, and Ellis remains heartbroken by the loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved her very much,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd she loved me too. I watched the documentary about her, Broken English. It was very emotional, because I realised how much I miss her. She was such a one-off. So defiant, so frustrating, so tyrannical and absolutely adorable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He collaborated extensively with Faithfull, including producing She Walks in Beauty<\/a>, her swansong album, from 2021. This was a friendship as much as an artistic relationship, however. Ellis grows emotional as he recalls visiting her apartment, sitting with her as she watched \u201chorrific shows [about] time-travelling nurses\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis: She Walks in Beauty \u2013 A love affair with the Romantic poetsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a contradictory person, and complex, but just worth everything. The thing with her is I always knew where I stood. She always shot straight. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it\u2019s upsetting or confronting, but you know where you stand. She was very much herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before Faithfull\u2019s death, the past several years had been full of upheaval and trauma. After Ghosteen he felt that he and Cave might never work together again \u2013 that they had said all they needed to say. But they would go on to make Carnage, their lockdown masterpiece, and then last year\u2019s Wild God, a sort of coming up for air after the crushing pressure of Ghosteen.<\/p>\n

\"EllisEllis and Marianne Faithfull. Photograph: Rosie Matheson\/Shorefire <\/p>\n

Ellis has also helped set up a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra, in Indonesia, which led the Australian film-maker Justin Kurzel to make Ellis Park, a movie about both that project and Ellis\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Ellis agreed to participate because he wanted to publicise the sanctuary, which cares for animals with injuries that mean they can never be released back into the wild. Early in the process, however, it became obvious that Kurzel was as interested in Ellis\u2019s journey as in that of the animals.<\/p>\n

The problem was that there was a lot of darkness and addiction to discuss, including a stint on heroin, and Ellis wasn\u2019t sure he wanted to revisit difficult times. When he and Kurzel travelled back to Ellis\u2019s home city of Ballarat, in the state of Victoria, for example, he found his past intruding uncomfortably on the present. He wondered if he might not be better off pulling the plug on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was quite conflicted about it,\u201d he says. \u201cAt a certain point I realised that I felt uncomfortable. That generally is a good place to be making something from. I decided to let Justin have his vision as a director and stop trying to get in the way. And Justin was very respectful and very sensitive about things. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said this before, and I will continue to say it: it\u2019s probably the most important collaboration I\u2019ve ever had with anybody. My life changed making that and my life changed after that. It got pretty bad in the immediate aftermath of the filming \u2013 just confronting stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellis recalls \u201cstepping off the edge of the world\u201d for four or five months. \u201cI\u2019d been prescribed Xanax for 10 years, for anxiety and all that sort of thing. [I] jumped off that and just went into the abyss. If anybody\u2019s reading this, and they\u2019re going through that, I really wish them well. I\u2019ve given up a bunch of stuff, and that was really horrendous. I basically had a nervous breakdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WarrenWarren Ellis on stage with Nick Cave in 2022. Photograph: Francesco Prandoni\/Getty <\/p>\n

After the strife came salvation, in the form of the Wild God shows with Cave \u2013 transcendental celebrations of surviving the worst life can throw at you. \u201cThere was something very different about that tour,\u201d Ellis says. \u201cA concert when it\u2019s good is like nothing else on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Bad Seeds in hibernation, he is looking forward to bringing Dirty Three on the road again and to sharing with his audience songs that are full of darkness but look always towards the light.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still the greatest wonder for me that I\u2019ve continued to do this for 35 years now,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s my sole way of employment, the way I\u2019ve raised a family, the way I\u2019ve kept food on the table. To stay in the music game so long … If I think about it, it feels like a miracle sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dirty Three play Vicar Street, Dublin, on Saturday, December 6th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Warren Ellis was making the album Ghosteen with his friend and collaborator Nick Cave, he sensed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46,95617,95616,95615],"class_list":{"0":"post-158655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-marianne-faithfull","12":"tag-nick-cave","13":"tag-warren-ellis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}