Marianne Faithfull - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Four Sessions, LSO St. Luke's, London, Britain, 2-18-2009

I thought I was done with Marianne Faithfull and the BBC. She did a series of BBC studio sessions in the mid-1960s, and I made an album out of that. But her life spiraled downwards in the late 1960s due to drugs and other problems, causing her musical career to spiral downwards too. I thought that was the last of her and the BBC.

But Faithfull has had a remarkable revival to her career. After wandering in the musical wilderness for most of the 1970s, she came back strong with her 1979 album "Broken English." By that time, her voice had totally changed. But before she'd relied out outside songwriters, and by that time she'd become a capable songwriter of her own. Since then, she's put out many well received albums, although her sales haven't been that big.

I recently found out that she finally got back to the BBC in 2009 (unless there are other shows that I've missed, which is very possible). This concert was filmed for a BBC TV show called "BBC Four Sessions." But as far as I can tell it hasn't appeared as a music bootleg. I had to concert a video recording into mp3s. Still, the sound quality is excellent, with no flaws.

This concert took place shortly after the release of her 2008 covers album "Easy Come Easy Go." As a result, it heavily features songs from that album. But it also has some highlights from her career. Of particular note are two 1960s songs that she almost never did in concert, due to the drastic change in her voice, as well as her musical style: "Sister Morphine" and "As Tears Go By."

This concert is an hour and 13 minutes long

Oh, by the way, now that I've posted this, I changed the title of her 1960s BBC album, adding "Volume 1" to it.

UPDATE: On March 3, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added three songs from the show that I'd previously missed: "Children of Stone," "Crazy Love," and "Sing Me Back Home." A kind commenter provided them for them. They were broadcast by the BBC as extras. That meant I had to guess where they appeared in the set. As it happens, she was pretty consistent in her set lists in 2009. For instance, "Sing Me Back Home" was always played as an encore. So I followed those trends.

There were two more songs from the show that I didn't include because the sound quality was much worse, only from an audience bootleg: "Easy Come Easy Go" and "Why D'Ya Do It."

01 Down from Dover (Marianne Faithfull)
02 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
03 Times Square (Marianne Faithfull)
04 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
05 Hold On Hold On (Marianne Faithfull)
06 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (Marianne Faithfull)
07 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
08 Solitude (Marianne Faithfull)
09 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
10 Broken English (Marianne Faithfull)
11 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
12 In Germany Before the War (Marianne Faithfull)
13 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
14 Children of Stone (Marianne Faithfull)
15 Crazy Love (Marianne Faithfull)
16 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
17 Kimbie (Marianne Faithfull)
18 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
19 Dear God, Please Help Me (Marianne Faithfull)
20 The Crane Wife 3 (Marianne Faithfull)
21 Sister Morphine (Marianne Faithfull)
22 talk (Marianne Faithfull)
23 As Tears Go By (Marianne Faithfull)
24 Sing Me Back Home (Marianne Faithfull)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15218808/MarianneF_2009_BBSessionsVolum2BBFourSssionsLSOStLukes___2-18-2009_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact date and location. But it appears to have been taken before or after the concert itself.