Marianne Faithfull at Meltdown 2013

Marianne Faithfull, accompanied by Bill Frisell on guitar, played at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night as part of Yoko Ono's Meltdown. Marianne did talking and singing and Bill did guitar playing and miscellaneous guitar fanciness. No band this time.

Marianne had a rapturous welcome and launched in 'Broken English' to open her show. She was on for about 1.5 hours and it was very much a songwriters set with Marianne name checking the writers of the songs and a few words about them or her response to them. It was nice hearing her talk about the songs she sings and mentioned an album due out next year that she's making with Bill and with Steve Earle.

She sang three songs from 'Broken English' and the rest were from the 80s onwards with two exceptions. She sang her first hit from 49 years ago, a song she proudly said was written for her but not who wrote it (although we all know), 'As Tears Go By', and she gave us a touching version, almost of a mature woman looking back at her younger self. I couldn't help but think of her with her hair cut short for the video of 'We Love You' while she sung that song.

She also gave us 'Rich Kid Blues', a song she said she has only recently come to terms with since it reminded her too much of her bleak years as a heroin addict living rough in London. For some obscure reason mentioning being a heroin addict brought cheers from some misguided people at the back of the hall - Marianne certainly wasn't proud of it and looked pained.

At one point she lit up a cigarette on stage (which also brought cheers) because she needed it and then realised she had nowhere to stub it out so dropped it in her glass of water. She said it was due to the emotion of the show and I believe her. She also said that she hates being disapproved of by Yoko for smoking so she pretends she's given up smoking when she's with Yoko. Cat's out of the bag Marianne!

People were shouting out the songs they wanted to hear and that annoyed me. Marianne has probably spent weeks deciding on just the right running order so she's hardly likely to drop all that planning and practicing with Bill to play the song you want. So why do it? And why do people turn up late for gigs with clearly advertised start times? And by late I mean an hour late. What's that about? Get a watch!

Favourite songs were 'Vagabond Ways', 'Crazy Love', 'As Tears Go By', 'Tower of Song' and 'Strange Weather' (which was the encore). I also liked 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams', 'In Germany Before The War' and 'She'.

I will always love the 'Broken English' album which I remember buying on cassette way back when and she sang three songs from it - 'Broken English' opened the show, 'Working Class hero' which she said she'd better get right because it was Yoko's Meltdown, and 'Ballad of Lucy Jordan' which closed the show - her version of the song is perfect, a vision of bleak loveliness, sadness and hopefulness.

By the end of the show she seemed to be more relaxed and welcomed the standing ovation. I look forward to seeing Marianne play live again, hopefully next year to promote the new album.