How Anita Pallenberg radicalised The Rolling Stones: “I’ve been called a witch, a slut and a murderer”
You don’t need a rock historian to tell you that The Rolling Stones were known for being wild. It’s well documented that the British band took the life of rock and roll excess to its extreme, where the sex and drugs weren’t just served as small trimmings on the side. Most people are familiar with the debauched antics that the group got up to in their heyday, and when you ask any casual fan of music which band took partying the most seriously, the Stones will probably get more than just an honourable mention.
But were the band always a bunch of madcap individuals, or were they influenced by the behaviour of others around them? It’s hard to imagine a world where Keith Richards wasn’t vacuuming any finely ground substance up his nostrils, but there’s a case to be made that he became a man transformed once he had been drawn into the world of Anita Pallenberg.
Best known outside of her link to the Rolling Stones as a movie star and model, the Italian played roles in films during the 1960s, such as Barbarella and A Degree of Murder—the latter of which featured a score composed by the band’s late Brian Jones. Yet, on the side of her career on the silver screen, she played a large part in corrupting the band and introducing them to a world of extravagance.
While initially romantically involved with Jones, Pallenberg was perhaps better remembered as the partner and muse of Keith Richards, and in her own words, she claims that upon first meeting the guitarist that he “was so shy”.
Far removed from the Richards that people immediately think of, it was supposedly Pallenberg’s doing that turned the guitarist from meek to maniacal. If it wasn’t the fact that she jumped from a relationship with one bandmate to another that tested the inter-group dynamics, then it was her fiery personality and unpredictable nature that proved to shake things up.
In the trailer for Catching Fire: The Story Of Anita Pallenberg – a documentary based around her memoirs – there is a testimony of her fierceness from one of the couple’s close friends, Sandro Sussock, that really captures the kind of energy that she brought to the camp.
“There was a lot of drama. Anita was sometimes furious and screaming and terrorising everybody,” says Sussock. “And then an hour later, she would appear and serve you tea. She was creating a constant chaos.”
If this isn’t enough of an indication of the sort of person the band had in their presence, the rest of the documentary is incredibly revealing when it comes to telling the story of her involvement with the group, with testimonies from other friends and family scattered throughout alongside her own recollections of the period.
While it’s hard to say whether it was solely her influence that pushed the Stones in the direction of this unrestrained lifestyle, it’s evident that her presence was felt among the members – chiefly Keith Richards, who describes her character as “Machiavellian” in the documentary. If Keith Richards is even labelling you as being without any moral code, then there’s no doubt you’re mad as a hatter.
