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For most women, the thought of turning 60 and surviving breast cancer, all in the same year, would prompt a personal crisis of epic proportions.

Marianne Faithfull, on the other hand, has already lived a life that makes such monumental events seem almost mundane.

"I did feel my body had let me down a bit," the former princess of London's Swinging Sixties says of the lump in her breast, discovered last year in the middle of a world concert series.

Now safely recovered, after surgery and a six-month respite, Faithfull has resumed the tour, which will bring her to Vancouver tonight.

"But I could never understand how people talk about this battle," her Blondeness continues, her husky voice rolling in over the phone line from Los Angeles like a thick English fog.

"I don't see [cancer] like that. I see it like a sort of surrender," she says, almost pluckily.

The sexualized analogy is somewhat fitting for a one-time junkie aristocrat, who has spent a lifetime mythologizing the glamour of pain.

A Catholic schoolgirl from a privileged background, Faithfull was raised in a hippie commune by her mother, the rebellious Austro-Hungarian Baroness von Sacher-Masoch (the niece of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the writer who put the "masoch" in masochism).

As a nubile teenager, Faithfull was discovered by Andrew Loog-Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones, who dubbed her "the angel with big tits."

As Tears Go By, her 1964 hit, was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

And the rest, as they say, is sordid history.

During her tempestuous five-year career with Jagger, she left her husband, artist John Dunbar; lost custody of her son, Nicholas; slept with both Richards and Brian Jones; cavorted with sorceresses in the caves of Italy (and was accused by the Vatican of being a witch); suffered a miscarriage eight months into a pregnancy; and had a heroin habit so serious that Jagger threatened to leave her unless she got help.

Their affair ended badly, after an attempted suicide that put her in a coma for six days.

She spent the next two years living on the streets of Soho, penniless, anorexic and high on drugs.

In 1979, she emerged from self-imposed exile with a permanently scarred voice and Broken English, an album of pure genius. Six years later, after suffering a broken jaw and a jilted lover who jumped out a window, she finally ditched her drug dependency for good.

Cancer? Ha, a mere pimple on the plague.

"It was very frightening," Faithfull concedes. "I grew up in a generation where, if you got cancer, you died. Of course, now we're living in a different time. They can do extraordinary things."

Not quite extraordinary enough, though, to slow the spread of cancer for a tour.

"I was so stupid. I remember saying to my doctor, 'Can't I do the tour and get the intervention when I get back?' "

Or frightening enough to quit smoking. "I've tried," she says, pausing for a haul. "I quit for six weeks. I didn't like it at all. I'm using patches. And I've cut down a lot, which is the best I can do at the moment."

Faithfull, who now lives a relatively quiet existence between homes in Dublin and Paris with François Ravard, her manager and lover of more than 13 years, admits that she was very lucky.

"They found it so early. I went straight in and had it dealt with. I didn't have to have chemo or radiation or anything. Nobody knows what will happen, really. And I don't want to think about it. I'm answering your questions because I'm being polite. But it's over. I'm better. The only message I got from it, for everyone, is to check all the time. I had gone a long time without a mammogram, which I will never do again."

If there is one concession from the whole ordeal, her infamous bust got a lift.

"Big breasts are a bit of a bore, you know," Faithfull says, laughing. "It wasn't really fashionable when I was young. I wanted to look like Twiggy. They're a bit smaller now. They did give me a bit of a lift, which is a good thing. They look better."

In her alternative career, as an actress, Faithfull recently starred in the Sam Garbarski-directed film Irina Palm, as a 50-year-old widow who is so desperately in need of money that she unwittingly accepts a job in a sex club.

"In my music performance, I'm always trying to get it closer to what I'm really like. Whereas, with acting, I'm really interested in roles that are completely different to what I'm like."

So does she still feel sexy, at 60, after cancer?

"I don't know about that. I'm still alive and I'm still a sexual being. Hmm, I don't know."

Faithfull says the best thing for her right now is to sing. "It's what I love to do. This is not a promotional tour. I can literally do what I like, and I am."

On the new tour, rechristened Songs of Innocence and Experience, Faithfull has been singing a handful of rarities such as Something Better (the A-side of Sister Morphine) and Without Blame (a song by Senegalese musician Ismael Lo), neither of which she has performed live before.

"It's a lovely show, a very acoustic show, with a trio. It's not rock and roll, as such. It makes my voice more of a central point.

"I'm obviously going to mix it up. I'm not going to do a whole show of unknown songs. But it has to stay exciting for me. That's very important. I don't ever want to be in that position where I'm just going through the motions."

Marianne Faithful performs at Vancouver's Centre for the Performing Arts tonight, at Edmonton's Winspear Centre on Thursday and at Calgary's Jubilee Auditorium on Saturday.