Mollie Marriott

Her debut album began with a breakdown. Now this chip-off-the-old-block is on the up.

“I’m a massive grunge kid. Pearl Jam, Temple Of The Dog, anything by Soundgarden.”

The funny thing about hitting rock bottom, Mollie Marriott reflects, is that there’s often inspiration down there in the dark. “It was what’s known in my family as the epic crash of 2012,” the singer sighs. “I lost friends to suicide. I lost my relationship. I became incredibly ill, had a major operation. It got to the point where I needed to write as an escape. Then a friend said: ‘You’ve got to release this. Let everybody hear your voice.’”

The beautiful, bruised vocals that Marriott unveils on her debut album Truth Is A Wolf sound like a much-needed release valve. But she spent some years swallowing it down. She was just six when her father, Small Faces icon Steve Marriott, died in 1991. And though her upbringing with adored stepfather Joe Brown was glamorous, she saw the price of fame. “Waking up, coming downstairs and seeing Alvin Lee, George Harrison, Jon Lord sat there in the kitchen, that wouldn’t phase me. But some of the things they went through, I saw it all and it frightened me – for a long time. I saw all the bad sides of fame.”

Marriott got a record deal when she was just 12, but when that wrapped up when she was 17 she resisted the inevitable (“I tried hairdressing, make-up, being a chef, dental nursing for three years…”). Even when she embraced music she kept her head down, as a backing singer sharing stages with Oasis, The Who, Robert Plant, Paul Weller. “All the great rock stars, I’ve never seen an ego,” she says. “Then someone’s been on fucking The X Factor for fifteen minutes and all of a sudden they think they’re the hottest shit in the world.”

Few would dispute that Marriott deserves to make her debut album. If you’re expecting Small Faces-lite, Truth Is A Wolf sets you straight, it’s slinking, string-bolstered alt.rock more in thrall to the 90s. “I had rock and blues from my dad, country and gospel from my stepdad, opera from my mum,” she says, “but I’m a massive grunge kid. Pearl Jam, Temple Of The Dog, anything by Soundgarden.”

As well as that head-turning singing voice, there’s an honesty to Marriott’s lyric writing that marks her out. “Transformer is about how I’d transform myself to fit what I thought a partner would want,” she explains. “Run With The Hounds is about the music industry. I’ve already had to legally remove myself from a record company. It’s been a bloody nightmare! Fortunate Fate and Give Me A Reason, I really cried as I was recording them. By the eighth time, our drummer Alex, says: ‘Y’know, Molls, this is all very sweet, but it’s really starting to piss me off now – can we just get on with it?’”

She cackles uproariously, and somehow you know she’s going to be just fine. “To write the kind of stuff I wanted to write,” she considers, “I needed to live a little and experience life. And Lord knows I did that.”

Truth Is A Wolf is out now via Amadeus Music.