The music world mourns the loss of iconic singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, renowned for her hit song "As Tears Go By." A spokesperson confirmed her peaceful passing in London, surrounded by loved ones. She was 78 years old.

Faithfull's influence extended beyond her own musical accomplishments. She served as a muse for The Rolling Stones, even co-writing some of their most celebrated tracks, including her 1964 breakout hit, "As Tears Go By," one of the earliest Jagger/Richards compositions. Her romantic involvement with Mick Jagger, beginning in 1966, further intertwined her legacy with the band, inspiring songs like "Wild Horses" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Despite battling health challenges, including heroin addiction in the late 1960s followed by bulimia, breast cancer, and emphysema, Faithfull experienced a career resurgence in 1979 with the critically acclaimed album "Broken English." Her artistic pursuits weren't limited to music; she embraced theater, film, and television, appearing in productions such as Jean-Luc Godard's "Made In U.S.A.," stage adaptations of "Hamlet" and Chekhov's "Three Sisters," and later in films like "Marie Antoinette" and "The Girl from Nagasaki." She even memorably portrayed God in the television series "Absolutely Fabulous."

Married three times and most recently linked romantically with her manager, Francois Ravard, Faithfull's personal life often made headlines. While her relationship with Jagger remains her most publicized, her romantic history also included figures like Keith Richards, David Bowie, and Gene Pitney. She famously declined the advances of Bob Dylan, who was reportedly so captivated by her that he began writing a song about her, a pursuit she rebuffed as she was pregnant with her son at the time.

Faithfull's fascinating life story also features her father, a British intelligence officer during World War II credited with rescuing her mother from the Nazis in Vienna. Her connection to the London art scene through her estranged husband, John Dunbar, led to encounters with Paul McCartney and other notable figures. Dunbar's co-founding of the Indica Gallery, the place where John Lennon famously met Yoko Ono, further cemented her place in a pivotal cultural moment.

Reflecting on this period in her 1994 memoir, Faithfull described a vibrant and interconnected London scene, writing, "The threads of a dozen little scenes were invisibly twining together. All these people — gallery owners, photographers, pop stars, aristocrats and assorted talented layabouts more or less invented the scene in London, so I guess I was present at the creation."

Faithfull's recording of "As Tears Go By" is remarkably efficient, requiring only two takes. In her memoir, she praised Jagger's songwriting prowess, stating, "It's an absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of 20 to have written. A song about a woman looking back nostalgically on her life. The uncanny thing is that Mick should have written those words so long before everything happened. It's almost as if our whole relationship was prefigured in that song."