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by Shane Watson
Anita Pallenberg is everywhere. Open any magazine and
there she is, looking out at you through that dirty blonde
fringe, the tease with the fox-fur jacket (Dolce and
Gabbana) and floppy hat pulled down over kohl-rimmed
eyes (Marni). This winter the look that's emerged as the
frontrunner is straight out of the German actress, model and
Rolling Stone muse's late Sixties wardrobe: skinny cords,
tasselled hipster belts, chunky fur jackets. She was the
inspiration for Bella Freud's last winter collection, "And now
I use her as a reference point all the time," says Freud. "I've
included her in things I've done for Jaeger. I like the way
she wears masculine clothes - that taking from the boys and
giving to the girls." What is more, Anita Style is going strong
for 2002: Luella Bartley's spring collection is packed with
the rock 'n' roll siren's signature looks.
"I guess the girls like it
because it's really
casual." Pallenberg grins
her signature bad-girl
grin, still intact though
she's 55 and a
grandmother. "I mean,
in those days, I always
thought the one who
was really stylish was
Bianca, she was so
perfect with the white
hat and the suit and the
stick. I wasn't into
designers at all. I'd go to
Granny Takes a Trip, sit
there, have a joint and
pick something. So
much of it was about
getting ready, sitting
around smoking."
Sitting in the Picasso
Caf� on King's Road, "the only place that's still here from
the old days", a pixie felt hat shielding her eyes from view,
the sleeves of her tweed coat pulled down over her
knuckles, Pallenberg seems an unlikely fashion icon. But,
then, it isn't the cut of her coat that fashion is so greedy to
reference so much as the essence of Pallenberg, official
high priestess of the rock 'n' roll fantasy. Once upon a time
the hat with the mini with the boa was an accident, the
sartorial result of what Pallenberg calls her "gipsy life. We
didn't have time to change, we'd stay up all night and go to
Stonehenge at dawn. You'd be in your satin miniskirt out in
the middle of nowhere."
Her voice is a low, exotic blend of soft German inflections
and lazy Rolling Stones vowels, picked up during the years
she spent with the band between the ages of 24 and 40, first
as Brian Jones's girlfriend, then as Keith Richards's. It's
pretty much all she has to show for them, besides the flat in
Chelsea that Richards bought for her when they separated
at the start of the Eighties. "Well, we travelled a lot and
there was a lot of nicking in those days or 'swapping' as we
called it," she grins. "Marianne [Faithfull] always accused
me of nicking her Ossie Clark snakeskin jacket. She still
does."
She's perplexed as to why she and Marianne continue to be
singled out for attention: "The two things we had in common
were the drugs and the blondehair thing, but then all the girls
looked like that in those days." Maybe it's because they
were the ones who lived the rock 'n' roll life. Anita shrugs.
She was happy to hitch her fate to the Rolling Stones'
coat-tails. She claims to have never fulfilled her potential as
an actress because she didn't have a manager, but
presumably it was also because the band came first. "Yeah,
Keith would say, 'What are they going to pay you?' and I'd
say '�20,000, whatever', and he'd say, 'Well, don't do it and
I'll give you the money'. He'd buy me out basically," and she
laughs.
Still, you can't help feeling that the Rolling Stones took the
best of these girls and then left them to fend for themselves
in the real world where there are no limos waiting at the
kerb to pick you up when you fall. Pallenberg seems
vulnerable still: "Oh, I can't even go for a coffee on my
own," she says, lighting another cigarette. She likes to play
bass guitar "but the amplifier doesn't work now". When she
told Keith that she had taken up the bass he said, "Why
didn't you do it back then, you could have saved us all those
problems with Bill Wyman?" It's not something that could
ever have happened, of course. "Never," she wrinkles her
nose, "it's a real macho band. Sometimes, when Marlon was
a baby, we ended up on stage, me with my baby, rocking
him to sleep, and Mick would say, 'Get her out of here'. He
didn't want anyone upstaging him."
Who knows, maybe Jagger was thinking of Marlon's
eardrums. But for the most part, like the rest of the world at
the time, he saw Pallenberg as a bad influence. A foreigner
who was more streetwise than the rest of them ("When I
met her, Marianne was really straight, like a Laura Ashley
girl") and something of a drugs connoisseur (she first caught
Brian Jones's eye by going backstage with a joint in 1965).
The drug-taking got out of control.
When Pallenberg announced she was pregnant with
Richards's child, Marlon, in 1969, it was 11 days after Brian
Jones had been found dead in his swimming pool and less
than a week since Faithfull had been rushed to hospital in a
drug induced coma. Seven years later Richards and
Pallenberg were on the verge of meltdown after the death
of their third child in infancy. They finally split at the start of
the Eighties and in 1987 Pallenberg went into rehab. Does
she ever wish she had ended up with Keith (both Pallenberg
and Faithfull are single and live alone)? "Only when I see
other people, like the thing of having a soulmate." Was he
her soulmate? "Yeah, he was a friend first and then we
became lovers. But he's too much into the lifestyle he's
always lived. He goes to bed twice in a week. Not even to
bed, to lie on the couch or whatever. But he is untoppable, I
guess."
Lately, Pallenberg has been looking at lots of pictures of
them in their untoppable days, researching a book about the
making of the cult 1970 film, Performance, which she
starred in with Mick Jagger. For her it's the less painful
alternative to writing her autobiography. "The emotional
process is so difficult, it's just not worth it. And then life is
not finished anyway." The question remains: would she
have done it any differently? "You know, you have your
time; it's an experience, I guess." Her dark eyes glisten
under the hat as the memories tip over into darkness:
"Loads of good people lost their lives."
Suddenly she is overwhelmed and excuses herself to go to
the bathroom. When she returns she has shrugged off the
ghosts and recovered her pride in having been there and
done it without compromise. "I kind of felt always at one
with myself. That's why I wouldn't have cosmetic surgery
or anything. It's me, you know." She pouts disdainfully.
"Courtney Love, I don't like any more. She was tanned the
last time I saw her, you know - the ultimate whitepallored
creature." She shakes her head in disbelief at the sell-out
that is Courtney. "I feel sorry for the men now actually ...
all these, like, aggressive women. There is no mystery," and
she ducks further under her hat and takes out another
cigarette.
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