The ballad of Lucy Jordan

A title which inevitably brings to mind the film "Thelma and Louise" by Ridley Scott and which could have been called "The wild ballad of Thelma and Louise".

The heroine, Lucy, dreamed of a other life than that of a housewife in the suburbs. But now she knows it's fucked up !

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never

Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.

So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing

Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

"The ballad of Lucy Jordan" is a song created by the American Shel Silverstein and performed by the group Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. In 1979 the title takes a new dimension in the album "Broken English" by Marianne

Faithfull. Marianne Faithfull makes it a feminist hymn.

For 15 years the press was sated with her affair with Mick Jagger, her journey as a well-born girl who sank into drugs, alcohol and the streets.

And for her this record will be her last and afterwards she will die.

What I have to do, before I die, is to show what is in my stomach. Say who I am.

I am not a victim. I'm not a brainless kid.

I am Marianne Faithfull and this is what I am worth.

"The ballad of Lucy Jordan" is the chronicle of a despair but it is also the story of what could have been Marianne Faithfull's life.

She escaped it by entering the world of Rock'n'Roll. She paid a heavy price.

She thought "Broken English" would bee her last album and then she die. But the disc imposes her as a full-fledged artist.

At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever

As she rode along through Paris with the warm wind in her hair...