2 Memoirs by Rock ’n’ Roll Muses Who Were So Much More

Dear readers,

This week’s authors have a good deal in common. Both women were fetishized for their looks, entangled romantically with musical superstars, situated at the epicenter of 1960s culture, veterans of yearslong heroin addictions. And both were profoundly underestimated.

In their memoirs, both also divulge a preposterous amount of glamorous detail. But that’s not what makes these books remarkable. Every addiction story comes with a proof of fire testing. The best ones speak frankly, without euphemism or hosanna, and both of these make the cut.

When you consider that the authors spent years chasing a numbed, obliterated existence, their books are all the more meaningful for their clarity of feeling, vision and memory. Thank goodness they were paying attention all those decades ago. Thank God they made it out alive.

—Joumana

“Faithfull: An Autobiography,” by Marianne Faithfull with David Dalton

Nonfiction, 1994