HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS

Writer and polemicist (1941-2017)

Poet, playwright and actor Heathcote Williams initially conceived “Why D’Ya Do It” as a lyric for tina turner to record, before Marianne Faithfull convinced him to let her have it instead. Set to a churning rhythm, the song became the controversial mini-epic that closed her 1979 comeback, Broken English. Faithfull herself called it her own Frankenstein, a bitter, expletive-ridden rant at an adulterous lover: “Why’d you let that trash/Get a hold of your cock, get stoned on my hash.”