Still, fans flocked, some more than once, to see the singer with the long bangs obscuring her face -- and to see a train wreck. Yet despite her condition, and with the help of veteran Memphis soul musicians backing her up, she managed in three days in August 2005 to record her now critically lauded seventh album, The Greatest.
About two weeks before its release in January, Marshall said, she lost her mind: "I was looking at death. I wanted to die." Holed up in her Miami apartment for seven days, she turned off the phone, played Miles Davis on repeat, stopped eating and sleeping. She drank to oblivion and prayed to die.
Susanna Vapnek, a painter, came over to check on her friend. Marshall was acting bizarrely, obsessively chasing "bad spirits" around her apartment with a lighter and sage. Vapnek bathed her and stayed by her side. Eight hours later she took Marshall to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, where she was admitted.
Confined for psychiatric treatment, Marshall recalled refusing to bathe, hiding from her reflection and wanting to be drunk. "I asked God, I said, I'm tired, I can't do this," she said. "I was asking him to just take me." She was terrified by the other patients who screamed at night and were comatose during the day.
After seven days in the hospital she was allowed to leave. "It was like I was in glue," she said of the heavy doses of lithium given her.
Even though The Greatest was getting good reviews, a tour in support of the record had to be postponed because of her problems. Her label, Matador, estimated that it lost more than US$100,000 on marketing and promotion, paying her supporting band (including a onetime member of Al Green's band) and canceled shows.
Once the tour got under way in April, Matador bought insurance to be on the safe side. But now that the tour is a success, and the album has sold more than 100,000 copies, Matador is rereleasing the record, with new album cover art and a new promotional push.
The onstage anxiety is still there, Marshall admitted. But she said her self-hatred had abated, and in its place stood a woman ready to engage her fans.
On the heels of 11 shows in September, she plans to take October off to relax and then resume touring in Europe in November. Her next album, Sun, is already written, and she talks of a second covers album; top of the list are James Brown and Billie Holiday songs.
Like Will Oldham, another indie-folk rocker who is currently starring in the film Old Joy, Marshall is considering a foray into acting. She said that the cult director Wong Kar-wai invited her to play Jude Law's ex-lover in the movie he is now shooting. Wong, she said, told her he was in the habit of playing The Greatest for his actors before each scene.
Marshall spoke of auditioning to join the cast of Saturday Night Live next summer. Then again, maybe her future involves domesticity. She said she was ready for a relationship and wanted to have children.
"My favorite things in the world are cookin', kids and animals and falling in love," Marshall said, "but you don't get to do that all the time."
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