Marianne and Anita, victims of a dangerous addiction to hedonism
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about anita pallenberg was that she managed to live so long. The original fabulous rock chick died this week at the age of 73 — although the music magazine rolling stone claimed she was 75, the final affront.
her fellow veteran rockette Marianne Faithfull posted a tribute to her great friend on Facebook. ‘I really loved her. she taught me so much, especially after we both got clean.’ Which kind of says it all, invoking the glamorous before and the gruesome after of their star-spangled, curdled lives. still, how lovely that they stayed friends, despite the drink and drugs and terrible addictions that claimed and maimed them both. sisters under the track-marked skin.
It is to their credit that both pallenberg and Faithfull managed to salvage some semblance of goodness from the wreckage of their lives. Yet I always felt uncomfortable about the enthusiastic celebration of them by new generations of feminists and fans; wide-eyed devotees who couldn’t see past the velvet floppy hats and sixties hippy chic.
pallenberg may have known how to wear furs and skinny jeans, but she spent her most vital years in a heroin haze. Faithfull likewise.
Yet they are idolised by fashionable celebrities such as Kate Moss and model-turned-designer alexa Chung, and even lionised by Jennifer saunders, who wrote parts for them both in an episode of absolutely Fabulous.
In some respects they are indeed admirable women — but surely their rackety adventures should stand as a warning to young girls, not an inspiration.
pallenberg and Faithfull knew each other for 52 years, since the day they became official rolling stones WaGs — anita primarily with Keith richards, Marianne primarily with Mick Jagger.
each slept with other band members — and richards once admitted he bedded Marianne in revenge after Jagger slept with anita. Which seems to suggest that the free love and sexual liberation of the sixties were constructs that favoured the men far more than the supplicant women.
Look at Jagger today, still cavorting and having babies with girls less than half his age, leaving a trail of broken women and fractured relationships in his wake. he is the patriarchy made flesh, a grizzled stick of selfish lust, a man who never grew up.
at least Keith richards had the grace to acknowledge the death of his former girlfriend and mother of two of his children.
‘a remarkable woman,’ he tweeted this week. Well, at least it was something.
pallenberg was of Italian-German heritage and politely described as an actress, model and fashion designer. at best, she was a dabbler. at worst, she was none of these things. It was said that she was a muse for the stones, but I think that meant she once encouraged Jagger to wear a frilly shirt.
her notoriety and smoky fame stemmed from the men she associated with, not from anything she achieved herself. she dated the stones founder Brian Jones, was rumoured to have had an affair with Mick Jagger and had three children with richards, one of whom died in infancy.
RICHARDS stated, in his 2010 autobiography, that the only reason he was still alive was that the drugs he once took were such top quality — of a pharmaceutical level not available on the street.
One presumes this must also have applied to his druggie buddy pallenberg.
he also stated that they might still have been together if she had been able to give up heroin when he did, in 1978. They split a year later and she struggled on as an addict for another nine years, before entering rehab in 1987. By that time, richards was happily married to the model patti hansen and had two daughters. pallenberg never married, nor found lasting love.
at the same time, Faithfull had her own problems. When she met Jagger in the mid-sixties she had been married, had a baby, separated from her husband and lost custody of her young son.
she went on to make a soft-porn film, miscarried Jagger’s child, tried to commit suicide in australia, was denounced by the Vatican, left Jagger and ended up living rough in soho. she was consumed by drugs for nearly 20 years.
anita has said that the heroin froze her emotionally, while Marianne claimed she was unable to have sex without being anaesthetised by a cocktail of drink and drugs. anita had myriad health problems and had to have both hips replaced. Marianne’s heroin addiction left her with bad circulation, arthritis and hypoglycaemia. Where, pray tell, is the glamour in all that?
What makes it even worse is that they were educated, smarter and more sophisticated than the rolling stone rogues they gave the best years of their lives to — only to be discarded when something more succulent came along.
Too late, they learnt that it is better to write your own song than to be the beauty being sung about. all that leads to is a lifetime of being compared with your younger, prettier self — and found wanting.
In the last years of her life, former wild child anita finally succumbed to middle-class comforts. she did a fashion degree, took up botanical drawing and loved gardening in her allotment.
she grew strawberries, artichokes, leeks and broad beans. ‘Italian things,’ she said, because she was stylish even in horticultural matters. anita pallenberg was not the kind of woman to grow a turnip or a sprout.
Now that she has gone, it is even harder to work out if she was a victim or a survivor of her rolling stones legacy.
perhaps a little bit of both?