Anita Pallenberg, Rolling Stones muse, dies at 73
June 15, 2017
Anita Pallenberg died Wednesday in the city of Chichester, in southeast England, of unspecified causes.
Pallenberg's relationship with the Rolling Stones began in September 1965, when she went backstage after a gig in Munich and met the guitarist Brian Jones.
Born in Rome, Pallenberg moved to London and became Jones' lover, but, after going on a trip to Morocco with Jones and Keith Richards in 1967, she returned to London with Richards.
"Then he turned into a kind of schizo. He got aggressive and abusive," Pallenberg said of Jones in an interview with the now defunct magazine Cheap Date.
Richards became a regular user of cocaine and heroin and Pallenberg also fell into addiction, which intensified while they were at Nellcote, a villa in the south of France, where the Stones recorded "Exile on Main St." in 1971.
The couple went on to have three children: a son, Marlon, born in 1969; a daughter, Dandelion Angela, three years later; and in 1976 another son, Tara, who died of pneumonia when he was 10 weeks old.
Posting on Twitter on Wednesday, Richards called her "a most remarkable woman."
Actress and model
Born in German-occupied Rome toward the end of World War II, Pallenberg was the daughter of Arnold "Arnaldo" Pallenberg, an Italian travel agent and amateur artist, singer and piano player, and his wife, Paula, a secretary at the German embassy.
After being expelled from school at 16, Pallenberg found work as a model and met the Italian film director Federico Fellini, novelist Alberto Moravia, and directors Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Pallenberg also lived in New York and was a part of the scene surrounding Andy Warhol's Factory studio.
She went on to appear in "Barbarella," the 1968 science fiction film about a future world government starring Jane Fonda.
In 1970, Pallenberg and Stones frontman Mick Jagger starred in the film "Performance" by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell.
'Profound' influence
The Stones' personal assistant Jo Bergman told The Observer newspaper in 2008: "She, Mick, Keith and Brian were the Rolling Stones. Her influence has been profound. She keeps things crazy."
Singer Marianne Faithfull, who was involved in the late 1960s with Jagger, described Pallenberg as a lifelong friend in a tribute on Facebook.
"She taught me so much, especially after we got clean; it was very good, and so much fun!" Faithfull wrote. "Farewell my love, go well."
jbh/cmk (AP, AFP)