Still can't believe how bad that Marianne Faithfull gig last night was...

MICK Jagger's former muse, '60s icon, drug abuse survivor Marianne Faithfull is rarely defined by her musical career alone, even after the release of her most successful album, Broken English, back in 1979.

But Faithfull soldiered on, the sweet girly voice that began her folk-singing career metamorphosing into a cigarette-ravaged husky drawl.

Despite middling musical success, Faithfull became, like others of her era, famed for her collaborations and, later, as with her latest album, Easy Come, Easy Go, her ''interpretations'' of songs. Always a risky conceit.

Faithfull, at least at Friday night's performance (the first of three), lacked both the charisma and the voice to pull off covers such as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Salvation, Dolly Parton's Down From Dover, or Billie Holiday's Solitude.

It wasn't only that Faithfull's once-sexy voice seems to have very little range - it was a sell-out show and many fans seemed appreciative just to be so near to her - or the fact she had to read the lyrics to many of the songs (her own included; she even forgot the name of the song she co-wrote with Nick Cave), but the fact she seemed so ill at ease on stage.

Faithfull rarely smiled, looked decidedly bored during a couple of the guitar solos, and seemed to have little to no rapport with her seven-piece multi-instrumentalist band.

The musical direction lent a distinct cruise-ship feel to the evening - while tight, the band made the down and dirty Stones song Sister Morphine (co-written by Faithfull) sound like an MOR Robert Cray number.

Even during her big hits - Broken English and When Tears Go By - Faithfull looked as if she'd rather be anywhere but on stage.

Worse still, some of her audience members looked as if they felt the same way.

@'The Age'