But Faithfull was also becoming addicted to cocaine and she felt “destroyed… and judged as a bad mother” after the police gloried in revealing that they found her wearing nothing but a fur rug in a highly publicised drugs raid in 1967 that saw both Jagger and Richards convicted.

She left Jagger three years later as her life spiralled out of control and ended up living rough for nearly two years in London.

Addicted to heroin, she lost custody of her child and attempted suicide.

When she next appeared in public on a US television show in 1973 dressed as a nun to sing “I’ve Got You Babe” with David Bowie, her fine, faltering voice had gone, to be replaced by a deep whisky-soaked rasp that would later become her trademark.

Six years later her album “Broken English” was a revelation, not just because of the change in her voice and the way she unsparingly exposed the depths to which she had sunk, but because it was a musical tour de force.

It revived her career. But her drugs demons had not been tamed, and now living in the United States she hit the wall again in the mid-1980s.

Living legend

Having come out of rehab, she moved back to Ireland — a refuge for her throughout her life — and began reinventing herself as a jazz and blues singer.

It was there that she began to hone her musical talent, inspired by her interest in pre-war Weimar Germany, and revive her acting career, playing the mother in Pink Floyd’s rock opera “The Wall” in 1990.

In the mountains south of Dublin, she also wrote the first volume of her autobiography, which was published alongside “A Collection of Her Best Recordings”, featuring her old friends Richards and Stones drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ron Wood.

Her reputation continued to grow with a string of albums featuring collaborations with Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and PJ Harvey and Nick Cave.

She was now a living legend, playing herself as God in the British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous” — Pallenberg played the devil.