We lost Marianne Faithfull this week. Elizabeth Winder’s book about the Stones’ wives and lovers brought a chilling tale of despair and the afterlife and, well, chilled me to the bone.

Here’s excerpts from Winder’s book…

Chapter 17: “Death Is the Ultimate Experience”

“You want pain and suffering? I’ll show you pain and suffering!”

—Marianne Faithfull

It was 1969 and shortly after Brian Jones died, the Stones launched an Australian tour, Mick bringing Marianne in tow. According to Winder’s book, “she popped fifteen blue Tuinals…on the flight to Sydney, then staggered into the airport besieged by paparazzi.”

High, she sat at the mirror sipping hot chocolate and taking more pills. When she looked up, she saw Brian Jones staring back at her through the mirror. Before she plopped into bed with Mick, who was already asleep, she downed a whole bottle of sodium amytal.

Here’s what Winder wrote what Marianne experienced next:

She “found herself lost in a blank gray expanse, no sun, no horizon, no sense of warmth or cold. Just Brian [Jones] in Valenciennes lace and yellow striped pants, hair dyed green like a leprechaun. He was his typical effusive self (“Thank god you’re here, Marianne…thank god you’re here”).

“He took her arm…” and they began to skate. He asked her for things since the other world seemed so boring. She promised to buy him those things when she got back to London. They reached the edge of a cliff…

“I’m so sorry, Marianne,” Brian apologized backing slowly away from her toward the cliff’s edge. “Death is the ultimate experience,” he said with a wink, then jumped off into oblivion.

Marianne survived the suicide attempt in 1969, but that vision of Brian struck me.

And now she’s gone.

Death is the ultimate experience.

NickS (WA) that’s the story. The book is great.