| 29th January 2007 10:34 PM |
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| gypsy |
HEAD TO HEAD
UBER-CHICKS ANITA PALLENBERG AND MARIANNE FAITHFULL COME CLEAN ON SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK 'N' ROLL
Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull became friends back in the 60's and their names will be linked forever with their respective boyfriends at the time-Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Recently, Marianne stayed with Anita whilst writing songs for her latest album, and Anita took the opportunity to find out whether Marianne's life is all work, rest or play.
AP: Darling, you look fabulous-full of beans and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. What's your secret?
MF: Well, I try to lead a reasonably healthy life and I try to eat well and I walk a bit. I think it's my work and friends really.
AP: Passion.
MF: Yes, passion. Love, feeling for people.
AP: Because at this age you and I should be sitting around playing bingo and spending days at the hairderesser's.
MF: Oh, I do all that.
AP: No, but I think you're blessed and I think I'm blessed too. I mean, we have been damaged darling. I don't know about you but I feel, after all those years of indulgence, it's a miracle we're alive.
MF: I know and I do think of that, actually. I think of it a lot and it makes me very grateful for life.
AP: We're lucky we're not HIV positive.
MF: I went through that when I first got clean. I had my first HIV test and really expected to have it. Since then I've had the test every five years and I've got less and less nervous about it because I changed my lefe, changed the way I live. I don't shoot up, I don't have casual sex. I don't even want casual sex anymore. I like sex with people I know and love. It takes me a long time to unfold to a place of sexual safety.
AP: Yeah, I am the same. That actually means less sex though. I mean I never was one for a lot of sex. Whenever people talk to me about the 60's, they do a kind of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" and they go, 'Ha, ha. You've done it all.' I say, 'What, me? Speak for yourself.' I was really a one-man woman.
MF: You were with one man, all the time.
AP: And, in those days, those guys were very chavinistic and very jealous...
MF: And very busy! That's why we started to become such good friends, because with guys like that we had to find things to do, so we dressed up and went out.
AP: Dedn't we just. But, y'know, I've been celibate for quite a long time really.
MF: Well, I've done time on that coal-face too.
AP: How long have you done?
MF: I don't know. Five years?
AP: I've certainly done about two years I'd say.
MF: Well maybe five years is a bit of an exaggeration. I tend to block my life off in five-year periods, but I think I may be making that up. Maybe a year or two, but not for too long a time, thank God, because I love sex and I need it. But not so much that I have to go off to rooms with strangers-it would terrify me.
AP: I've never done it like that, but I had a wild period in the last days of my drinking, y'know. I remember I once found myself in a room I didn't know, with this guy, and he said, 'Come down for breakfast,' because it was, like, the morning after. When I got down for breakfast, this whole weird-looking family is sitting there staring at me, with demented faces, y'know, people that are not all there.
MF: Like a scene out of Deliverance.
AP: Yeah, exactly. And I kind of freaked out and thought, 'Wow, this is where drink gets me.'
MF: Just yesterday, when I was writing this song, I needed to get some cigarettes, so I went down to the garage to get them and I was wearing my little Azzedine Alaia short black leather skirt and my boots, and this guy, a complete stranger, came up to me and said, 'Do you want to go and make mad, passionate love?' and I said, 'No.'
AP: It does still happen like that, doesn't it?
MF: Yes. Extraordinary isn't it? But I can't deal with all that sort of stuff, that's why I live in Ireland, why I don't go out much. I put my sanity first and a lot of the time it means that I'm not really aware of who I am in the world, and sometimes I get a flash and I'm delighted. But I don't dwell on it because, in a way, the most important thing for me is just to live and be as close to a human being as I can.
AP: I've always been interested in Jung and one day I really would like to do some Jungian sessions. What I really like about Jung is that he said that the best therapy is to build a sandcastle a day because for me, it explains the whole point of existence. You build your sandcastle, then the water comes in and destroys it so the next day you go and build it again, and that's what I try and do. For me, every day is important and I try and do as much as I can or whatever I feel like in a day, and then the next day is another day, and that helps me. That's how I think about drinking and drugging and all those things, y'know. If I don't do it today, maybe I won't do it tomorrow, but I'll just live today for today because mayb etomorrow I might get pissed. Who knows?
MF: After my father died recently I asked my doctor about Jungian psychoanalysis and he said it meant going for three or four sessions a week for the next seven years. It's a huge commitment and I'm not sure I can do that, but I have been reading a lot of books about it and I've just started noticing my dreams and keeping a diary.
AP: What kind of dreams do you have?
MF: The best and biggest dreams I get are if I lie down in the daytime and have a nap and then I get very interesting dreams that actually show me something.
AP: There's one person who often crops up in my dreams-and I always have to come to terms with it. Jagger.
MF: I'm not at all surprised.
AP: So whether I'm receptive to his psyche or whatever...
MF: I wouldn't be surprised. He comes into my dreams too.
AP: He has the quality of a sorcerer...
MF: An archetypal quality. The archetype has come up in a lot of books I've been reading. I love the Persephone one very much. I understand it a bit because she was taken into hell by the king of Hades and, in the end, a deal was cut that she stayed six months in the underworld and then she comes back to earth for six months, for spring and summer. When we talked last night about your mother's death and my father's death, it put into perspective all that American bullshit about "If I stay very thin and exercise and never have a drink, I will not, in fact, get older and die. I will get younger and live forever." It's a narcissistic theory and the reality is quite different. The reality is that whatever we do, we're going to get old and die.
AP: Well, yeah, the body does fall apart. You once told me you were going to spend your old age on the stage.
MF: Yeah, that's what I said.
AP: And I thought that was so marvelous...
MF: When this is all over, I mean I can't quite imagine it, but it's a matter of priority to make this record.
AP: The last record?
MF: The last. No, I dont' think so, it won't be the last. But in my head I always pretend it is the last record-it's a way of making me do it right. "After this, nothing" but it's not true.
AP: Well it sounds like a good way of operating.
MF: It's a way of bringing adrenaline and urgency I think, sort of "I've got to get it done, I may never get another chance," and that gets me to do it. But I thought, when nobody really minds what I do and I'm allowed to do anything I like-which of course I am really, although I like to pretend I'm not-then I'd like to do things like Beckett plays and Chekhov, things like that.
At this point, Anita takes her umpteenth phone call during the course of the conversation.
MF: Your phone is a nightmare. I cannot believe how much it rings.
AP: Well it rings twice as much when you're here-at least half the calls are for you. Anyway, that was a friend of mine from New York saying she's got a Hockney and a Warhol she wants to sell. You knew Andy didn't you? Doesn't he mention you in his diaries?
MF: He does. He was very sweet about me. I had no idea he liked me. It was one of those odd things where I rather liked him but was very shy. Some friends that I was hanging out with took me round to the Factory because I guess they knew that Andy would like me.
AP: I think I met him early on, like in 1963, in a telephone booth or something. He said in his diaries that he met me before I met The Stones, like he was the first one to meet me. I would love to have a portrait by him of me. Maybe we can do one up ourselves.
MF: Yeah, make one up ourselves. Andy wouldn't have minded, he would have understood that totally. We'll have to get busy girl!
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| 29th January 2007 11:34 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
Thanks, Gypsy. Very good read. I was especially intrigued by the remarks on Jung and Jagger-as-Sorcerer-Archetype. I think there's a whole world of Stones-related topics regarding Jung, the Western Esoteric Tradition, the connection between rock'n'roll and West African music/drumming/magic (the same word in some West African languages often denotes all three), etc. I would find that more interesting and germane than American football (or real football, for that matter), TV and reactionary politics.
"Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals."--AL I:37-38
[Edited by Brainbell Jangler] |
| 30th January 2007 02:55 AM |
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| FotiniD |
Great read Gypsy, thanks a lot! Love the dynamics between Anita and Marianne and their view of what has happened in their lives. Reading Marianne's autobiography this time around and it does put a lof things in perspective. |
| 30th January 2007 03:26 AM |
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| gypsy |
I'm glad you enjoyed the interview! Here's a photo from a shoot for Scene magazine.
Anita & Marianne, 1998:
-Photo courtesy of Luke Foreman |
| 30th January 2007 01:17 PM |
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| SheRat |
quote:
Brainbell Jangler wrote:
"Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals."--AL I:37-38
[Edited by Brainbell Jangler]
Okay, wanna hear the weirdest thing? My gpa was off the boat from Sicily and his last name (my mother's maiden name) was Cefalu, which is a port in Northern Sicily.
And since we're going to Italy for our honeymoon, I thought we'd go there just to see where my gpa was born.
So I'm researching it, and what do I find out??!?!?!
"Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily in 1920. The name was borrowed from Rabelais's satire Gargantua, where the "Abbey of Theleme" is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum", The College of the Holy Spirit."
WTF??? Was Crowley in Cefalu when my gpa was born in 1929? CRAZY.
You can bet we'll be visiting whatever's left of this place when we go!
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| 30th January 2007 03:09 PM |
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| 1 |
The only one talent these women have ever had was their "beauty" in their prime, and nothing else.
Sadly, they aged in a very awkward way, and ther jibbjabbing is quite embarassing.
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| 30th January 2007 03:11 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
1 wrote:
The only one talent these women have ever had was their "beauty" in their prime, and nothing else.
Sadly, they aged in a very awkward way, and ther jibbjabbing is quite embarassing.
You're kidding, right? |
| 30th January 2007 03:42 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
quote:
SheRat wrote:
Okay, wanna hear the weirdest thing? My gpa was off the boat from Sicily and his last name (my mother's maiden name) was Cefalu, which is a port in Northern Sicily.
And since we're going to Italy for our honeymoon, I thought we'd go there just to see where my gpa was born.
So I'm researching it, and what do I find out??!?!?!
"Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily in 1920. The name was borrowed from Rabelais's satire Gargantua, where the "Abbey of Theleme" is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum", The College of the Holy Spirit."
WTF??? Was Crowley in Cefalu when my gpa was born in 1929? CRAZY.
You can bet we'll be visiting whatever's left of this place when we go!
Your mother's name was Cefalu??? Whoa. That would be enough to get you a High Priestess spot in any number of Crowleyan outfits, even if none of your other special qualities did. I think Uncle Al was tossed out of Sicily by Mussolini in 1923.
It is often written, I think inaccurately, that Crowley borrowed the Abbey of Thelema name from Rabelais. "Thelema" (Greek for "will") is the Word of the Law in Liber AL.
http://oto-usa.org/crowley.html |
| 30th January 2007 03:43 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
quote:
1 wrote:
The only one talent these women have ever had was their "beauty" in their prime, and nothing else.
Sadly, they aged in a very awkward way, and ther jibbjabbing is quite embarassing.
One great thing about the Stones is that they attract fans of a wide range of intelligences. |
| 30th January 2007 04:37 PM |
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| texile |
quote:
1 wrote:
The only one talent these women have ever had was their "beauty" in their prime, and nothing else.
Sadly, they aged in a very awkward way, and ther jibbjabbing is quite embarassing.
i was always impressed with thier intelligence but
to me,
they seem a bit stuck in time now.....
they talk like its 1968 and its passe.
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| 30th January 2007 05:20 PM |
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| Soldatti |
quote:
texile wrote:
i was always impressed with thier intelligence but
to me,
they seem a bit stuck in time now.....
they talk like its 1968 and its passe.
I agree.
Thanks gypsy for the interview. |
| 30th January 2007 05:50 PM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
SheRat wrote:
Okay, wanna hear the weirdest thing? My gpa was off the boat from Sicily and his last name (my mother's maiden name) was Cefalu, which is a port in Northern Sicily.
And since we're going to Italy for our honeymoon, I thought we'd go there just to see where my gpa was born.
So I'm researching it, and what do I find out??!?!?!
"Crowley, along with Leah Hirsig, founded the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily in 1920. The name was borrowed from Rabelais's satire Gargantua, where the "Abbey of Theleme" is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum", The College of the Holy Spirit."
WTF??? Was Crowley in Cefalu when my gpa was born in 1929? CRAZY.
You can bet we'll be visiting whatever's left of this place when we go!
What a weird story.
Cefalu is nice. Mrs Gazza and I spent a week there just three years ago.
Thats a good (and strange) interview, Gypsy. Only pity is it wasnt longer. Thanks for posting it.
[Edited by Gazza] |
| 30th January 2007 07:38 PM |
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| Brainbell Jangler |
There are some good shots of Cefalu and the Abbey on this link:
http://home.foni.net/~madachilles/NonZeppelin/Crowley/abbeyof.htm |
| 30th January 2007 08:06 PM |
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| LadyJane |
GREAT read, gypsy.
These are fascinating women and true survivors.
LJ. |
| 30th January 2007 08:23 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
LadyJane wrote:
GREAT read, gypsy.
These are fascinating women and true survivors.
LJ.
And still hot IMO... i hope when I'm there age, I look that good... Both those women gve me pangs when I see pics of them in their youth. Even still Anita looks like she can work a room and command attention and Marianne still has the lost girl, that'll break your heart smile. |
| 3rd February 2007 10:33 PM |
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| jaggergurl |
that was a great read...wow.. two very interesting women, and the picture fits the article perfectly, thank you for posting and sharing it!!  |
| 4th February 2007 01:48 PM |
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| fireontheplatter |
quote:
texile wrote:
i was always impressed with thier intelligence but
to me,
they seem a bit stuck in time now.....
they talk like its 1968 and its passe.
yeah it is a bitch getting older.
often times i find myself in the same position.
long live the 60's
everybody say ow |
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