Anita Pallenberg
Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer.
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I felt from Anita an unmistakable electrical charge. She was so clever, so European, so built...She exuded a stylish and playful decadence that was at once intellectual, sultry, and mischievous. She was so perfectly Continental. She made quite a lasting impression on me that night.
I was too independent for Mick. I wasn't proper enough for him. He's a chauvinist. I wouldn't put up with that. Keith, surprisingly, is not. Though I feel sorry for Patti [Hansen]. I love her and think she is a marvellous woman, but I would not want to be in her shoes now. It's such a lonely existence, living with a rock 'n' roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more. I know when Keith is working on his music nothing else matters to him. He can be in a room with fifty people and he won't nothing anything but his guitar. A woman, to live with a rock star, must find her ways of independence.
That song is about a few other things as well. And Anita is one of them. I was breaking up with her around that time. I'd said, "Look, if we clean up together, we'll stay together". Well, I cleaned myself up. But she didn't. And I realized that I couldn't sleep with someone who had a needle beside the bed. I was too fragile at that point. I loved her, but I had to leave.
That boy of 17 who shot himself in my house really ended it for us. And although we occasionally saw each other for the sake of the children, it was the end of our personal relationship.
Fate, I respect a lot. I never regret anything.
I knew her since we were first hanging out in London with The Rolling Stones. She was a real nasty person. She would do anything to upset her girlfriends. I don't know her anymore.
At first I'm sure Anita wanted to protect Brian from what she thought was our cruelty and callousness. Coming in like that she couldn't realize how the scene developed. Or how impossible it was to deal with a dead weight like Brian. They had incredible fights. And she used to beat the shit out of him every time. He would start a fight. Obviously she was tougher than him. He always was walking around with his ribs bandaged or his eyed blackened. Anita felt Brian was somebody who could be sensitive and obviously she felt he needed support. When he started paying her back by trying to beat her up, she began to realize.
I decided to kidnap Brian. It sounds ridiculous but they even made a film about it, about kidnapping a pop star ['Privilege'] starring Paul Jones. This was the original story, Brian seemed to be the most sexually flexible. I knew I could talk to him. As a matter of fact when I met him I was his groupie really. I got backstage with a photographer, I told him I just wanted to meet him. I had some Amyl Nitrate and a piece of hash. I asked Brian if he wanted a joint and he said yes, so he asked me back to his hotel and he cried all night. He was so upset about Mick and Keith still, saying they had teamed up on him. I felt so sorry for him. Brian was fantastic, he had everything going for him, but he was just too complicated.
Mick seemed to delight in Anita's sharp mind, her vicious streak that made her somehow very different from Marianne. For a while she seemed to dominate him with the same, almost supernatural hold she had over Brain & Keith. Once I heard Anita listen to a tape of 'Stray Cat Blues' as Jagger proudly waited her tell him (as all the other lackeys had done) how brilliant it was. "Crap," she said when it had finished. "The vocals are mixed up to high, and the bass isn't loud enough." Mick, with the basic insecurity of every creative artist, was so unused to hearing someone dare criticize his work that he at once went back to the studio and had the number remixed.
They looked at me like I was some kind of threat. [Mick] Jagger really tried to put me down, but there was no way some crude, lippy guy was going to do a number on me. I was always able to squelch him. I found out that, if you stand up to Mick, he crumbles.
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