ANITA PALLENBERG | THE ROLLING STONES BOHEMIAN STYLE MUSE AND SENSUAL SOULMATE

Anita Pallenberg entered The Rolling Stones’ lives when in 1965 a friend took her to Munich for one of their concerts, and they worked their way backstage. Anita offered The Stones some hash, but they said they couldn’t smoke before a concert– though Brian Jones was ‘kind enough’ to invite her to his hotel room afterwards. They stayed together for two years but he was increasingly abusive, drunk and paranoid. On holiday in Morocco in 1967, Keith saw Brian beating Anita up and grabbed her, threw her in his car and took her back to England. She from then on lived with Keith Richards.

Life with the Stones was fun at the beginning, Pallenberg says, because they were always playing music– but soured once they became a huge money-making machine. She says she didn’t even see them that much, “because at that time no girls were allowed in the studio when they were recording. You weren’t allowed even to ring. I did other things, I didn’t sit at home.”

What she did do– a few films, lots of drugs and tons of screwing around…

Sexy, insatiable Anita Pallenberg with son Marlon Richards.

Author A. E. Hotchner has this to say about Pallenberg’s influence on the development and presentation of The Rolling Stones from the late 1960s and through the 1970s– She played an unusual role in the male-dominated world of rock music in the late 1960s, acting as much more than just a groupie or partner of a band member. Mick Jagger apparently respected her opinion enough that tracks on Beggars Banquet were remixed when Pallenberg criticised them. In the 2002 compilation release of Forty Licks, Pallenberg is credited as singing background vocals on Sympathy for the Devil.

Throughout the decade that she was Richards’ companion in vice, her interest in the occult was a featured style component that marked The Stones concerts and public presentation. Tony Sanchez’s account of his time as Richards’ bodyguard and drug dealer mentions Pallenberg’s strange spiritual practices– ”She was obsessed with black magic and began to carry a string of garlic with her everywhere — even to bed—to ward off vampires. She also had a strange mysterious old shaker for holy water which she used for some of her rituals. Her ceremonies became increasingly secret, and she warned me never to interrupt her when she was working on a spell.”

Anita Pallenberg more than shared Richards’ drug addiction and was charged in the 1977 Toronto heroin arrest that almost destroyed The Rolling Stones. A warrant for her arrest was the reason that police came to search Richards and Pallenberg’s hotel rooms; she pled guilty to marijuana possession and was fined, several weeks after Richards’ headline-grabbing arrest. Richards and Pallenberg separated on the advice of Richards’ lawyers, who believed that if they stayed together, they would end up in more serious trouble. Richards stated that he still loved Anita and saw her as much as he ever did, despite his relationship with his future wife Patti Hansen. In a 1985 Rolling Stone interview, Mick Jagger claimed that Pallenberg “nearly killed me“, when he was asked whether The Rolling Stones had any responsibility for the personal drug addictions of people close to the band.

There were persisting rumors that Anita Pallenburg also had a brief affair with Keith Richards’ band-mate Mick Jagger while the two worked together during the filming of Performance, although Pallenberg denies this. Personally, I wouldn’t put it past either of them, if you know what I mean. They both were easy pickin’ back then .

Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg BK-- Before Keith.

Wild and insatiable Anita Pallenberg proved to be a handful, even for Keith Richards.

Anita Pallenberg's personal style was said to rub off on The Stones and influenced the bands look. I kind of look at her as an early, "dirty" version of Tory Burch.

Often cited as The Rolling Stones' style muse-- Anita Pallenberg is seen here showing the boys how 1970s Bohemian chic is done.