Marianne Faithfull, the songstress who helped spur music's British invasion and was a muse to the Rolling Stones, died Thursday at 78.

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull was born in Hampstead on 29 December 1946. Her mother was Baroness Eva Sacher-Masoch, a Hungarian, half-Jewish former ballet dancer who had fled the Nazis in World War II.

Marianne Faithfull's first hit, "As Tears Go By," was recorded when she was just 17 years old after she met with the manager of the Rolling Stones at a party.