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Click on the song titles above for lyrics and songwriting credits

Cast Your Fate To The Wind: The Complete U.K. Decca Recordings is the first ever CD boxset of Marianne’s Decca catalogue. The set features all four original albums Marianne Faithfull, Come My Way, North Country Maid and Loveinamist reproduced on miniature facsimile LPs, as well as a further two discs of non-album singles B-sides and rarities. The set has been remastered from the original tapes by the Grammy nominated Andrew Batt who also wrote detailed sleevenotes which Marianne contributed to before her passing in January 2025. The liner notes are reproduced in a luxury 76 page book featuring many rare and unpublished photographs, and the boxset includes five art cards.

Disc 1 features her first pop long player Marianne Faithfull. The album was produced by Mike Leander one of the key musical forces behind the British 60s pop scene, and features a mix of popular cover versions, folk revival standards, French pop and songs written specifically for Marianne including two of her biggest hits on both sides of the Atlantic; namely her Jagger / Richards penned debut single ‘As Tears Go By’, and ‘Come And Stay With Me’ by Jackie DeShannon. Marianne contributes ‘Time Takes Time’ – her first published composition, and her guitarist Jon Mark (and key collaborator of the 60s after Mike Leander), wrote one of the albums highlights ‘Paris Bells’. Although pop in sound, several of the songs were selected by Marianne from her collection of folk records including ‘What Have They Done To The Rain?’ and ‘Plaisir d’amour’. The album also reflects Marianne’s penchant for French music which can be heard on ‘He’ll Come Back To Me’ originally recorded by the folk singer Hugues Aufray and ‘They Never Will Leave You’ by Jean-Jacques Debout. The rest of the LP features Marianne’s versions of popular hits like ‘Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat’ by Herman’s Hermits, ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark and a charming cover of the Beatles’ ‘I’m A Loser’.

Released on the same day as her eponymous pop LP, Disc 2 features Come My Way, a folk album based around tracks from the American folk revival that Marianne had been performing in local folk clubs before she was signed. The album was produced and arranged by Jon Mark who is joined on acoustic guitar by Big Jim Sullivan, one of the most in-demand and versatile studio musicians of the 60s, alongside John Paul Jones (later of Led Zeppelin) on bass. On tracks like ‘Mary Ann’ and ‘House Of The Rising Sun’, the trio achieve a frequently perfect blend of the folk revival sound infused with some unexpected jazz flourishes.
Other musical highlights include the title track that was specially written for the project with Jon Mark, ‘Spanish Is A Loving Tongue’ by the cowboy poet Charles Badger Clark and Marianne’s interpretation of the traditional songs ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’ and ‘Fare Thee Well’ – the latter more than a match for Joan Baez’s version. The album’s spoken word recordings of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwock’ and ‘Full Fathom Five’ from Shakespeare’s The Tempest came out of Marianne’s work with the Prospect Theatre, a local theatrical group that she performed with before her recording career.

Disc 3 features Marianne’s third Decca album North Country Maid. Where Marianne’s first folk album had largely been compiled from music of the American folk revival, its follow up, released in April 1966 was built around songs from the British Isles. Rightly hailed as Marianne’s finest LP of the 60s, North Country Maid conclusively established her as an artist with a unique stylistic approach, and many of its songs (such as ‘Scarborough Fair’) were not yet the established folk/pop standards they would soon become. Featuring emotive interpretations of songs by contemporary folk writers like Cyril Tawney’s ‘Sally Free And Easy’, Bert Jansch’s ‘Green Are Your Eyes’ and Ewan MacColl’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, the album also includes traditional material such as the title track and ‘She Moved Thru’ The Fair’, which is one of the few songs Marianne performed throughout her life; it even appears on her final release, the 2025 E.P. Burning Moonlight.

Disc 4 includes Marianne’s fourth and final Decca album Loveinamist. The release was a hybrid comprised of earlier hit singles (‘Yesterday’ and ‘This Little Bird’) alongside tracks released on her US only album Faithfull Forever 7 months earlier, and new recordings in the folk-pop style that defined her signature sound. The album features a clutch of impressive interpretations from the songwriters that suited her best, including a string laden ‘Counting’ by Bob Lind, a stoic ‘Reason To Believe’ by Tim Hardin, gorgeous folk-pop ballad ‘With You In Mind’ by Jackie DeShannon, and the baroque psychedelia of Donovan’s ‘In The Night Time’. There was something in Donovan’s words music and ideas that seemed to sit particularly well with Marianne’s interpretive gifts and another of his compositions ‘Young Girl Blues’ is given a powerful treatment distinctly at odds with the rest of the album’s folky romanticism. Loveinamist also continues Marianne’s penchant for French music with beautiful versions of ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’ from the 1964 musical Les Parapluies De Cherbourg and ‘Coquillages’, Marianne’s own French translation of ‘Cockleshells’, which originally appeared on North Country Maid.

Discs 5 and 6 group together all Marianne’s non-album singles, B-sides and rarities issued in the UK alongside four previously unreleased recordings. These include ‘A Strange World’, the pop track earmarked by her discoverer Andrew Loog Oldham as the follow up to ‘As Tears Go By’ but abandoned in favour of Marianne’s choice of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ (also included), a haunting acapella version of ‘She Moved Thru The Fair’ from the North Country Maid sessions, an outtake from Loveinamist that gives this set its title, and an alternative version of Donovan’s trippy ‘Good Guy’ also from Loveinamist.
These discs also include a couple of Marianne’s early compositions ‘Oh Look Around You’ and ‘I’d Like To Dial Your Number’ that appeared on the B-sides of her UK singles, alongside more well-known releases like her only UK EP Go Away From My World (featuring ‘The Most Of What Is Least’ written for her by Donovan), and a series of singles including ‘Summer Nights’ (included here in its original 7” version as well as the more well-known recording that appeared on her greatest hits The World Of Marianne Faithfull), ‘Tomorrow’s Calling’ and her superlative cover of The Ronettes’ ‘Is This What I Get For Loving You?’ The collection closes with Marianne’s final Decca release ‘Something Better’ which signified the end of an era in more ways than one, even though it would be the self-penned lyrics to the B-side, ‘Sister Morphine’, that became a defining artistic statement, and one that eventually led Marianne to her next musical quantum leap.

CD BOXSET TRACKLIST
Disc 1: Marianne Faithfull 
Disc 2: Come My Way
Disc 3: North Country Maid
Disc 4: Loveinamist
Disc 5&6: As above