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Click on the song titles above for lyrics and songwriting credits
Vagabond Ways was Marianne’s first album containing original material after a 5 year gap; in the intervening years she had explored the music of the Weimar republic on her releases 20th Century Blues and The Seven Deadly Sins, but as the decade drew to a close Marianne found she had a lot to say. The result was acknowledged upon its release as one of her greatest albums, and most of the stories told in the songs were adapted from memories that didn’t make her acclaimed autobiography Faithfull, or were borne out of her observations of social struggles which she felt particularly moved by. As usual, the original material was interspersed with songs that showcased Marianne’s interpretive gifts including Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song’, ‘Incarceration Of A Flower Child’ gifted to her from the Pink Floyd vaults by Roger Waters, and ‘For Wanting You’, written for Marianne by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.
It was also an album of firsts for Marianne, who at the time expressed that it displayed a level of self-acceptance she hadn’t explored before; that she had “nailed her colours to the mast” so to speak, jokingly referring to the album as her “Marianneifesto”. Vagabond Ways also contains ‘After The Ceasefire’ written with her friend the writer Frank McGuiness, which is an early example of her overlaying a spoken word performance with music, something she would later explore to critical acclaim on She Walks In Beauty her 2021 album with Warren Ellis.
Recorded at Teatro Studios in California and produced by Mark Howard and Daniel Lanois, A deluxe edition released by BMG in 2022 included two outtakes left off the final record; an unheard Marianne Faithfull and Daniel Lanois composition called ‘Drifting’, and a cover of ‘Blood In My Eyes’, written by the 1930’s country blues band Mississippi Sheiks and covered by Bob Dylan on his 1993 album World Gone Wrong that was now released for the first time outside of Japan. The re-issue also features a selection of powerful previously unreleased demos of some of the albums key songs including ‘Vagabond Ways’, ‘Incarceration of a Flower Child’, ‘Electra’, and ‘Tower of Song’.