Anita Pallenberg: The Woman Who Shaped The Stones
And The Dismissal of Women Who Rock
The Rolling Stones are inarguably one of the greatest bands in music history. From their grungy sound to their air of decadence, the Stones were a blues band that became rock royalty. To suggest they accomplished this with no outside help, however, would be gross negligence of the woman whose influence had reached nearly everything the band did from 1965 onwards: Anita Pallenberg.
Anita Pallenberg, once dubbed “the woman who out-Keithed Keith Richards,” was a fiercely tenacious German-Italian model and actress. Pallenberg was born in Rome, Italy, in January 1942, the daughter of an Italian travel agent/artist and German secretary. She spent her childhood in German boarding schools, becoming fluent in five languages. Wild and willful, Anita would be expelled from school at 16, effectively kick-starting her modeling career. She began modeling in Paris and Rome, eventually making her way to New York, where she would join Andy Warhol’s eclectic crowd and take to the stage as an actress.
Pallenberg’s success in modeling and acting came not only from her beauty but also from her ability to command attention. All eyes were always on Anita — to stand next to her would be to vanish into thin air. She radiated a sense of evil glamor — a naughty glint in her dark-rimmed eyes, a wickedly toothy smile almost too wide for her face, and a string of garlic always on her person — to ward off the vampires, of course. She was one of a kind and hypnotic, traits that would work in her favor.
In 1965, Anita happened to be in Munich for a modeling assignment precisely when The Rolling Stones rolled into town — she had to see them. Never one to abide by the rules, Anita attended the concert, and while most people were finding their seats, Anita found her way backstage, straight into the lion’s den. She would come face to face with five skinny musicians, jittering with excitement and nerves as they geared up for their show. In her peculiar German-Italian-Cockney accent, she confidently offered the band some of her hash (which they would turn down, claiming they needed to be straight for their show — how times would change), catching the eye of guitarist and Rolling Stones leader Brian Jones. This chance meeting would spark the beginnings of a two-year-long relationship between Anita and Brian and a lifelong entanglement with The Rolling Stones.
Anita seemed as if she were made of magic. Her presence had completely renewed Jones’ confidence, and her support encouraged his musical experimentation. Their relationship, however, was far from a fairytale. The pairing of Jones and Pallenberg was turbulent and even symbiotic. The two would grow to physically mirror each other, sharing wardrobes and adopting the same hairstyle.
Together, they spent their days drowning themselves in LSD, effectively increasing Jones’ paranoia and penchant for violent rampages. The pair would engage in brutal physical fights, typically started by Brian and finished by Anita, who, by all accounts, would “beat the living daylights” out of him.
The Stones would quickly understand that Pallenberg was not one to be toyed with. She may have been as pretty as a flower, but she was tough as nails. Once compared to a valkyrie, Pallenberg would become a bona fide matriarch who instilled terror in the Stones with her grit and intellect.
1967 would bring a shift in The Rolling Stones’ dynamic when Keith Richards bore witness to one of Brian Jones’ violent attacks against Anita while on vacation in Morocco. Pallenberg’s knight in shining armor, Richards would rescue Anita and take her back to England, where she would soon move in with him. Her influence on the Stones’ dynamic truly shone when she left Brian, for, at the same time, he would be reduced to the sidelines by the rest of the band. Brian would never again be considered the leader of The Rolling Stones.
Keith and Anita would remain together for 12 years, but Anita was far more than a girlfriend or a groupie. She was a rockstar in her own right, exuding strength, determination, and intellect. Her opinions were well-respected and often held considerable weight in the studio. Most notably, the Stones had remixed nearly all of Beggars Banquet to win Anita’s approval before its release — a relatively unique position of power for a woman in the world of rock during the 60s. She had also inspired some of their biggest hits, including Gimme Shelter, She’s A Rainbow, and Beast of Burden, on top of lending her voice to backup vocals on tracks like Sympathy for the Devil.
Anita’s influence had even extended to what the Rolling Stones were wearing. While the late sixties were generally a fabulous time for fashion, Anita had also had a helping hand in the Stones’ style. With her considerable knowledge of trends and clothing, Anita guided the band away from their standard R&B uniform of jeans and starched button-up shirts and towards sheer extravagance. Suddenly, the Stones were the pinnacle of fashion, adorned in vibrant pants, floppy hats, and fur coats. Keith seemed to abandon his closet entirely, opting instead to wear Anita’s clothes.
Pallenberg would also introduce the band to her friends in high places, from Federico Fellini to Andy Warhol to Robert Fraser (a man who would also become deeply entangled in the world of the Stones). She was friendly with Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and had acted in films alongside Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando (who had attempted to seduce her — and Keith. Nonetheless, he was the namesake of their first child, Marlon Richards). She, alongside Marianne Faithfull, imparted onto the Stones her knowledge of cultural and literary references, themes that would soon appear in their lyrics. Sympathy for the Devil, for instance, was directly inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita — a novel given to Mick Jagger by Faithfull.
Anita’s influence on the Rolling Stones is not a matter of opinion but fact. She single-handedly carved out a place for herself in the world of rock and roll, a world dominated by men, and sprinkled her influence all over one of the biggest bands in history — all while wearing pink hats and feather boas. To overlook her contributions would be a grave lapse in judgment, and yet it is an omission repeated time and again regarding not only Anita but the many other women in rock. To reduce women like Anita to sideline characters — just a groupie or a girlfriend — is to reduce the women who had earned respect from rock icons like Keith Richards or Mick Jagger. It is a practice that occurs far too often in a genre of music that, like it or not, would cease to exist without women.
Perhaps because rock is far from perfect, because it is rough around the edges, often gritty and loud, it is deemed unfeminine. It is a genre that has grown to be represented by men who wear leather jackets and speak in gruff voices, but the truth is that rock is rooted in femininity. Even tracing back to rock’s roots in the blues, we see some of the most successful songs are centered around women. From Muddy Waters’ Good Morning Little School Girl to Elmore James’ Shake Your Money Maker, it is evident that women are time and again the subject of the blues and, subsequently, rock, a genre almost entirely supported by fangirls.
We would not have rock as we know it without fangirls. The success of The Beatles is undeniably what paved the way for bands like The Rolling Stones or The Who or Led Zeppelin to follow in their footsteps, but it could not have happened if not for the support of their fanbase, largely comprised of young girls. Who do you think was buying all of these records, listening to The Beatles sing “I want to hold your hand!” or Mick Jagger cry out “She’s a rainbow!”? More often than not, it was a girl dreaming of being the woman these pretty English boys slinging guitars were singing about. And yet, time and again, music’s muses are dismissed from rock history or boxed into categories such as groupies, trophies, crazed fangirls, or flat-out villains (perhaps the name Yoko Ono springs to mind). The dismissal of women in the world of rock is rooted in blatant sexism and misogyny and it is something I cannot understand or condone, nor is it something that has ceased with the passage of time.
Anita Pallenberg’s influence was profound and I refuse to let her and women like her be forgotten by time or diminished by men. She was a veritable force and more of a Rolling Stone than you or I will ever be.
