Marianne and Metallica
Marianne Faithfull, who passed away on Thursday at age 78, left behind an enormous fingerprint on the history of 20th-century popular culture. She was a singer and songwriter, one of the first female British artists to become popular in the United States; she was an actress, appearing in productions across theater, film, and television, and doing voiceover work as recently as 2023; she struggled with homelessness and drugs, the latter of which ravaged her vocal chords and changed both her singing trajectory and her image.
And perhaps one of her more unusual ventures was a 1997 collaboration with Metallica, performing guest vocals on “The Memory Remains” on their ReLoad album.
When Marianne Met Metallica
ReLoad is a…complicated album in Metallica’s storied discography. The artwork is not some apocalyptic vision of hell, as is rote for many heavy metal bands, but a recreation of Piss Blood XXVI by Andres Serrano (featuring bovine blood and the artist’s own urine). The twang of a B-bender guitar drove one song on ReLoad; another song traded distorted guitars for a violin and a hurdy-gurdy. Perhaps most unforgivable, of course, was that all members of Metallica were sporting short, neat haircuts by the time ReLoad came out.
This was decidedly not the Metallica of 1986’s iconic Master of Puppets. And then you had “The Memory Remains,” with its midtempo Sabbath-like groove, its sinewy guitar lines, and Marianne Faithfull la-la-la’ing a raspy, nasally melody during the bridge and outro. Metallica guitarist-singer-songwriter James Hetfield had come up with the vocal part as a placeholder for actual lyrics before being convinced that an older woman’s voice was what the song needed. With this in mind, producer Bob Rock gave Hetfield a copy of Faithfull’s 20th Century Blues live album. “You could just smell the cigarettes coming off the CD,” Hetfield explained. The song had found its voice.
“Yes, Marianne Faithfull”
It was the first time Metallica had invited a guest musician to record on one of their studio albums — even a contemporary Rolling Stone review disbelievingly confirmed “Yes, Marianne Faithfull” — and the enterprise divided critics. Stereogum called “The Memory Remains” nothing more than an interesting experiment. AllMusic wrote that the vocals complemented the “weird and uneasy” melody of the song; the New York Times reduced Faithfull’s presence to a “croaking cameo.” Metallica’s own then-bassist Jason Newstead was quoted in Classic Rock magazine as saying that, had he heard “The Memory Remains” on the radio, he would not have bought the album.
Not all reception to “The Memory Remains” was negative. Kerrang! praised “The Memory Remains” for being “creepy biker-witch track,” a sentiment echoed by LouderSound, crediting the “singer-turned-art rock doyenne” for the “gothic twist.”
Fans Unloaded
As for what the fans thought, well, they’re fans; they didn’t like it. Find any comments section or personal review of the ReLoad album, and you’ll likely find complaints about Faithfull’s vocal lines on the song. Fans wanted songs about thrash metal topics like war and death; they didn’t want to hear a 51-year-old woman offering a wordless vocal line over a song about a has-been movie star who’d lost her marbles.
You can even find several fan edits of “The Memory Remains” on YouTube, where the uploaders have removed Faithfull to “improve” the song. It’s an interesting experiment, to be sure — there’s a cool guitar harmonic melody playing in the bridge — but the uploaders completely miss the point of the whole song.
Take Faithfull’s vocals out, and you might as well ask Tom Waits to clear his throat before he starts singing. Take Faithfull’s vocals out, and you might as well say that the drum break in “In The Air Tonight” is too distracting and doesn’t fit the song.
Hell and Back
But of course, Marianne Faithfull was the perfect choice to be a guest vocalist on a song about a celebrity-driven mad by past glory. This was a woman who had fallen hard, surviving relationship failures, a suicide attempt, a heroin addiction, and an eating disorder. She relapsed. She was a squatter. She was arrested the same year she made her critically acclaimed comeback album.
Little, Brown, and Company. 1994.
But her career rebounded; she stayed with drug treatment, recorded more music, and was even cast in the live performance of Roger Waters’ The Wall. Commenting on Faithfull’s 1990 live album, Stereo Review hailed Faithfull’s “cracked and halting rasp,” as the voice of a woman “who’s been to hell and back […] which, of course, she has.”
Who else could Metallica have asked to guest on “The Memory Remains”? Who else could put decades of regret, pain, and loss into a simple vocal line in a song about a diva driven insane by her fixation on the past?
The Memory Remains
Despite the song's polarizing reception in 1997, “The Memory Remains” has become a live staple for Metallica. It has been played 316 times, as recently as 2024; it’s on two live albums and was twice recorded with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Twice, Metallica have performed the song with Faithfull herself: once on Saturday Night Live in 1997 to promote ReLoad; and again in 2011, at the band’s 30th anniversary concerts. It’s a tradition for fans to sing the vocal line at live shows, often leading to an extended outro section. They did the same at that 2011 concert.
“Don’t you feel the love?” James Hetfield asked Faithfull in the song’s closing moments.
“Yeah!” she replied. “It’s wonderful!”
