'with making records and acting I have to work from a sense of relaxation and not striving and not worrying about it. And that's where drugs were very bad for me. They handicapped me'

'If she had nothing more than her voice, she could break your heart with it...' a love-struck Ernest Hemingway once said about Marlene Dietrich. Listening to Marianne Faithfull I can relate: over the phone from Paris, her familiar gravelly tones are bruised, sexy, Joanna Lumley posh but with a warm brandy huskiness that's ineffably debauched.

She's talking about her new album Horses and High Heels. Recorded in the voodoo realm of New Orleans, it's a kaleidoscope of moods, packed with the raw emotions expected from the grand dame of art rock. From the churning guitars that open first track, 'The Stations', it's instantly recognisable as a Marianne Faithfull album. The music is varied, but like all her best work, the songs are dramatic, emotive and confessional.

'I think that's my relationship to the public. It's not exactly confessional,' Faithfull demurs. 'But it's always, "Well, now let me tell you about the past." It's a sort of closeness, I feel, where I open up - which I don't do normally.'

A particular highlight is her transcendent cover of 'Goin' Back', one of Dusty Springfield's finest moments. It's a reminder that when Faithfull made her recording debut in 1964, her peers were Lulu, Cilla Black and Petula Clark. But while they now seem like time-warped kitsch fossils, Faithfull has maintained her mystique, holding the public fascinated as her persona evolved over almost fifty years of popular culture: convent school girl turned pop ice maiden; Girl on a Motorcycle; fallen angel; punk diva; heroin-ravaged tortured artist; elegant survivor. Most musicians would kill for her longevity and durability.

'I know. I've sort of somehow managed it. I've had to do a lot of work on myself, get my self-esteem and my confidence back. And learn to trust everything: trust life, trust the creative process. And to work with the right people.'

The diversity of her fans is a testament to her enduring allure. Who does Faithfull see when she looks into the audience?

'I see a great mixture and I'm very, very pleased with it. I'm really happy that such a wide range of people come to see me. There are old fans of my age. And then there are all sorts of other people I've picked up along the way. And there are lots of young people - that's what I really like.'

The first half of Faithfull's career as an ethereal pop waif was short-lived and overshadowed by her turbulent relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. In the past Faithfull has been dismissive about her 1960s recordings, but recently her attitude has softened.

'I think they're great. For a long, long time I couldn't really appreciate them. I was only turned outwards towards what was coming, to what I was going to do next. But now I've begun to allow myself a tiny bit of nostalgia. I've never had a nostalgic bone in my body. But I'm allowing myself to feel these things now.'

As a 60s 'girl singer' Faithfull says she was permitted a surprising amount of creative control.

'I was allowed a lot. I could do whatever I liked. I was never controlled. I mean, there was I suppose the image - the "angel" image was created by (Rolling Stones manager) Andrew Loog Oldham's press guy. And I found that a great weight on my back, I must say. But actually what songs we recorded, how we did them, writing – all those things, I worked with (producer) Mike Leander and we were able to do what we wanted. Nobody was controlled.'

This belies the consensus that Faithfull didn't truly express herself as an artist until 1979's vitriolic Broken English album.

'I think that's not really fair, but I used to think that myself - I think people got it from me. I think I did express a lot in my early work. But it seemed so unreal, when the 60s were over and I was back living with my mother looking after [her son] Nicholas with no money. It almost felt like nothing had happened. And my little records were also very overwhelmed by The Stones. I think I felt that - it didn't seem like important work. I was very, very hard on myself.'

After her romance with Jagger imploded Faithfull's life unravelled into heroin addiction, alcoholism and extreme poverty. I hadn't intended to mention drugs, but Faithfull herself brings the subject up: when I mention she has a new film due out in 2012 (Faithfull has been acting almost as long as she's been singing and has an interesting if erratic film career: she's worked with everyone from auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard and Kenneth Anger, to schlock-meister Michael Winner) she talks ruefully about missed opportunities.

'It took me a long time to really get it together,' she admits. 'Look, my big problem was taking drugs. It put me back. It didn't help me in my work at all. I lost confidence. I lost tranquillity. Which are very important: with making records and acting I have to work from a sense of relaxation and not striving and not worrying about it. And that's where drugs were very bad for me. It handicapped me.'

As rock's great diva of despair, Faithfull comes second only to Nico, whose troubled life and career has many parallels with hers. She clearly identifies with the doomed Teutonic chanteuse (Faithfull wrote a song about Nico in 2002) and when she talks about her, you realise Faithfull is partly talking about herself and the fate she narrowly avoided.

'I'm so lucky – and I know it – that my life worked out so well. I felt a lot of compassion for Nico, that she had such a hard time. Obviously a lot of that was to do with drugs, too. If you take a difficult life anyway and then add that, it'll get much worse. I just felt it was very tragic story and I felt a lot of love for Nico. I think she tried really hard. She did make a couple of great records – I love The Marble Index . I value her a lot, and I don't think she was really valued in her lifetime.'

Faithfull's wilderness years ended in 1979, with Broken English. Lauded by Camille Paglia as 'one of the most important works ever produced by a woman,' the album was a raw wound, launching a radically different Marianne Faithfull: an embittered punk harridan in black leather, rasping outbursts of bile in a guttural nicotine-stained croak. It still casts a shadow: with the release of every new CD, a critic inevitably says, 'Her best since Broken English.' Is she sick to death of hearing that?

'Well, yes and no. I don't really mind. I understand. What I don't understand is why, when they do those "100 Greatest Records of All Time" lists, they don't put Broken English in. I find that odd. It doesn't really matter. I love Broken English but obviously what I would prefer would be to have people go with me in my work.
They've all got something really special, my records. I love Vagabond Ways , I love Kissin' Time , I love Before the Poison .
I love my late Island records. I think they were very good. But I hadn't found my way yet – I was still looking.'

There's a sense of autobiographical progression to Faithfull's body of work. Surveying her discography is like watching her life unfold, giving the listener an insight into where she is now.

'That's what I want. So that we can all move together. My fans do go with me, and it's fascinating. I read about it, I check what they think on Facebook and Myspace. I like to see their notes and their comments. They do keep up with me; they do exactly what you said. They take it as information about where I'm at now. And this new record is very much about that. It's not a sad record at all. Yes, there are some serious songs: 'Goin' Back' is quite moving. 'Past, Present and Future' (her unexpected cover of the Shangri-La's song) is really funny. I don't think it's a sad record at all.'

Just as vital as Broken English was 1987's Strange Weather, which Faithfull says 'positioned me in a way that I could have a long career.' Recorded after Faithfull finally kicked heroin, the album offered downbeat versions of vintage blues and jazz laments and established her as a smoky-voiced interpretive singer. Like the best melancholic music (think Chet Baker, Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin ), the album's bleakness goes beyond depressing to become healing, a release.

'It's like the blues,' Faithfull agrees. 'You listen to the blues and you feel better. That's my feeling about it. Sad songs can help one to feel better.'

By the time Faithfull applied the scorched ruins of her voice to the Kurt Weill songbook (on 1996's 20th Century Blues ) she was confidently evoking great mid-century torch singers like Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Marlene Dietrich: think of the ravaged tragedienne of a certain age in a black dress, smoking a cigarette onstage.

'That's really where I'm coming from,' Faithfull concurs. 'I'm not trying to sound pretty, anyway!'

Another turning point was writing her unapologetic autobiography Faithfull in 1994.

'I think it helped me. I think the autobiography gave me more self-esteem for myself. It made it all real for me: my life became more real to me. That was a good thing. It was very hard work. David [Dalton: the biographer with whom she collaborated] and I re-wrote it three times to get it right. And I didn't feel it as cathartic at the time, but I've realised since that it actually was cathartic.'

The most romantic song on Horses and High Heels is 'Prussian Blue'. It's a love song, but about a city rather than a man: Paris, where Faithfull is now based. The French have embraced her as one of their own.  

'I remember when I first started going to Paris in the 60s as a little pop singer. They really liked me, they loved my work and I remember thinking, when I'm older I'll come and move here.

There are various levels to that song. One of my ideas was to write a song about colours – oil paints, because they've got such beautiful names. But obviously that wasn't enough; it had to have real emotional content too, so I talked about where I go for my AA meetings, which is an important part of my week.'

I propose to her that Parisians probably appreciate Faithfull as a present-day Juliette Greco or Jeanne Moreau. And her 1960s contemporaries in Paris, Jane Birkin and Francoise Hardy, are both still active and recording interesting music.

'They've got more of a tradition of this kind of artist, yes. In fact I consciously took Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve as life models, not in terms of singing – just a way of being. They're comfortable in their skin as women. It doesn't matter, getting old – they still work.'

It's gratifying to see Faithfull enjoying her hard-won serenity, and be able to draw on her volatile past without being destroyed by it. Faithfull specialises in tragic songs, but her life stopped being tragic a long time ago.

'Oh, ages ago,' she purrs. 'I'm really well, I'm really happy. I love my work. I wouldn't do it if I didn't.'

Asked about the future, she cites doyenne of French chanson Juliette Greco as an inspiration: still recording, still touring, still vital in her 80s. And she's already working on a new song to be called 'Give My Love to London'.

Still, there's something reassuring that Faithfull still describes herself as a very decadent person, even without drugs.

'I think it's an attitude, a thing that you're drawn to. I don't have to live it out, I don't have to act it out or do anything that is decadent, actually – and I don't. But I'm still like that, in my heart.'

Marianne Faithfull's new album Horses and High Heels (Dramatico Records) is released on 7 March. Her world tour begins on the same day and takes in UK dates at The Sage, Gateshead; 23 May; Barbican Centre, London; 24 May and The Assembly, Leamington Spa; 26 May.
See mariannefaithfull.org.uk for further details

Click here to read Graham Russell's extensive interview with John Waters

'I consciously took Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve as life models, not in terms of singing
– just a way of being.
They're comfortable in their skin as women'