Alex Carson
Anita Pallenberg was perhaps one of the most famous rock ‘n roll muses of all time. Affectionately known as the queen of the underground, Pallenberg was a German-Italian artist and model who had close ties to The Rolling Stones. In fact, you couldn’t get any closer to the band than she did.
For a while, Pallenberg was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones founder and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones. After they broke up under abusive circumstances, Pallenberg dated Keith Richards from 1967 to 1980. Over the course of their relationship, Pallenberg gave birth to three of Richards’s children.
As a style icon, Pallenberg was an ‘It Girl’ during the 1960s and 1970s. And while the Stones are undoubtedly legends, Anita was a rock & roll legend in her own right. In fact, it’s well known that she was crucial part of the band’s mystique.
For one thing, she reportedly taught Keith her sinister glare, Mick Jagger her signature wiggle, and Brian Jones how to rock floppy hats and even dresses. If you look at pictures of Keith before and after meeting Anita, it’s like a night and day difference.
Richards shook off his shyness and learned how to strut his stuff just as Pallenberg did. Anita was this otherworldly presence that transformed the band. She was the baddest of bad girls with a wicked grin and looks to kill.
In this facts-packed video, we’ll be taking a look at some rare photos of Anita Pallenberg that show off the sexy side of rock & roll. So, sit back and relax, because this is going to be one wild ride.
Anita Pallenberg’s Early Life
Born on the sixth of April, 1942, in Rome, Italy, Anita was the daughter of Arnaldo Pallenberg, a German-Italian sales agent, part-time singer and hobbyist painter, and Paula Wiederhold, a secretary for the German embassy.
Anita’s family was separated throughout World War II, and she didn’t get a chance to meet her father until she was three. Her dad later sent her off to boarding school in Germany hoping that she would learn the language.
His efforts paid off, because not only did Anita learn German, but early in her life, she would become fluent in four languages.
Pallenbeg got expelled when she was 16. She then spent some time hanging out with the Dolce Vita crowd in Rome before heading off to New York City to engage in untold debauchery over at Andy Warhol’s Factory.
While in the Big Apple, Anita was also active in the Living Theatre. Her first acting role was in the play Paradise Now, which controversially featured onstage nudity.
Anita then started a career as a fashion model in Paris, France. While there, she studied things like picture restoration, medicine, and graphic design. She ended up dropping out of school without receiving a degree.
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Anita’s First Encounter With The Rolling Stones And Her Early Films
In 1965, Anita, who was 22 at the time, was working a modeling job in Munich when she first met the Rolling Stones.
Almost immediately, she started a turbulent relationship with guitarists Brian Jones. Pallenberg’s influence on Jones was undeniable. She helped him find his confidence and encouraged him to experiment with his music.
Anita and Brian did a lot of psychedelic drugs together, but Anita would later tell the Italian newspaper La Stampa that Jones held on to his trips badly – leading him to have nightmares.
In time, Jones got violent toward her. This culminated in him having to be hospitalized after Jones attacked her while on vacation in Morocco. Pallenberg, not wanting to put up with Jones’ instability, ended up leaving him for his bandmate Keith Richards. A year later, Jones was found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool.
The Stones 1966 album Aftermath would be the last musical project that Jones would work on. On that record, Anita’s influence can clearly be heard. While her sophistication and intelligence both intimidated and provoked Jealousy in the other Stones, she ended up playing an unusually large role in the primarily male-dominated rock music world of the late 60s.
Mick Jagger deeply respected her opinion, so much so that he even remixed Beggars Banquet after she criticized it.
Around this time, Pallenberg started appearing in her first films. In 1967, she had a role in the crime thriller A Degree of Murder, which Brian Jones composed. She followed that up with parts in 1968s Candy and 1968s Barbarella, in which she played the Great Tyrant. Her next film Dillinger is Dead hit theaters in 1969.That same year, she appeared in Michael Kohlhaas – Der Rebell, which was filmed in Slovakia. The following year, she appeared in the avant-garde film Performance – more on that one in just a moment.
Anita And Keith Were Perfect For Each Other
After Keith and Anita moved in with each other, they became inseparable. The two would often go on drug-fueled adventures together with their mutual friend Gram Parsons.
After appearing in 1970s Performance, people began thinking of her almost as if she were a bona fide member of the Stones. In that film Mick Jagger plays a washed-up rocker who recluses himself in his mansion. There he was involved in a menage a trois with Anita and Michele Breton.
Eventually, a London Gangster comes along to hide out in the mansion as well. Anita proceeds to seduce him, dresses him up in drag just as she once did with Keith Jones, and proceeds to destroy his sanity. Throughout the film, Anita and Mick appear in several graphic sex scenes.
The day that Mick and Anita filmed their love-making scenes, Keith was across town understandably in a rather foul mood. During that time, he wrote the track Gimme Shelter.
The 70s Were A Blur For Both Anita and Keith
Anita was never one to take things slow. She and Keith blazed through the 70s living at such an astonishing pace that it made “normal” people look like Turtles. The two never stopped partying, and unfortunately, this would prove to be one of their biggest downfalls in the long run.
Anita was always very high-energy. While she seemed to just be wired like that, it didn’t hurt that she and Stones were also doing copious quantities of drugs together.
In 1977, Anita was with the band when they flew to Toronto to play a show. For the flight, she brought 28 pieces of luggage. One of those bags caught the eye of a customs agent who proceeded to search it. Thats when he found several bags of drugs. While she got in trouble, it was the Rolling Stones that took the brunt of the fallout from that bust. In fact, it almost pulled the band apart.
For years, Anita and Keith would both struggle with drug abuse and addiction. Eventually, however, in the 80s, she was able kick her habit. It wasn’t easy, and years of Heroin use led her to contract hepatitis C, but after getting clean, she was able to focus on the more important things in life.
The Death of Anita and Keith’s Son Was A Devastating Blow
As we mentioned earlier, Keith and Anita had three children together. Their first son, Marion Leon Sundeep, was born on August 10, 1969. Then on April 17, 1972, Anita gave birth to a daughter whom she and Richards named Dandelion Angela. Three years later, the couple welcomed their third child into the world, a boy named Tara Jo Jo. Sadly, just ten weeks after he was born, baby Tara died of sudden infant death syndrome.
After the baby’s death, Keith’s mom blamed Anita and claimed that she was an unfit mother. She then proceeded to take Angela to go live with her.
Anita was naturally devastated by all of this. The death of her son was before she got sober, so it’s assumed that instead of handling her grief in a healthy way, she instead leaned harder into her vices.
The Death Of Scott Cantrell
On July 29, 1979, a 17-year-old named Scott Cantrell shot himself in Pallenberg’s bed with a gun that was owned by Keith Richards. The boy was employed as a part-time groundskeeper, but he was also involved in a sexual relationship with Anita.
Richards was in Paris recording with the Stones at the time of the boy’s death, but his son was home.
Pallenberg was arrested, but Cantrell’s death was ultimately ruled a suicide in 1980, despite widespread rumors that the two were playing Russian roulette. A police report, however, stated that Anita was on another floor of the house when the incident occurred.
Anita’s Later Years and Death
After the death of Tara Jo Jo and the Scott Cantrell incident, Anita spent a lot of time on the road traveling with the Stones. Eventually she and her son Marlon moved into a house on Long Island so that he could have a more normal school routine.
In 1981, Richards and Pallenberg split up. Richards would later say that he continued to love Pallenberg and saw her often, even after he met his wife, Patti Hansen.
In her later years, Anita lived in Chelsea, London, where she spent a lot of time gardening. Although she had gotten clean from drugs in the 80s, she did eventually relapse. In 2014, however, she said that she had been sober from drugs for 14 years. She had stopped drinking in 1987, but relapsed with alcohol in 2004 after having hip surgery.
On June 13, 2017, at the age of 75, Pallenberg died of complications from Hepatitis C.
Anita Pallenberg, sometimes referred to as the sixth Rolling Stone, lived a wild life. Her story hardly even seems relatable to those that never lived a rock and roll lifestyle.
In the end, however it was this very lifestyle that would ultimately take her out of this world, albeit in a time-delayed sort of way.
Did you know that Anita Pallenberg had such a profound influence on the Rolling Stones and that she was the mother of three of Keith Richards’s children? Let us know in the comments.
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