Anita Pallenberg, at 73, muse to Rolling Stones
Anita Pallenberg, the former girlfriend of Keith Richards and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and — briefly — a paramour of Mick Jagger, died Tuesday at 73.
No details of Ms. Pallenberg’s death or her whereabouts were reported. She lived in London, however.
Her death was confirmed by the Associated Press and in an Instagram post by Stella Schnabel, a close friend and the daughter of painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.
“I have never met a woman quite like you Anita,” Stella wrote on Instagram.
Ms. Pallenberg and Richards became a couple in 1967, after he wooed her away from fellow Stones guitarist Jones, who reportedly beat Ms. Pallenberg while they were visiting Morocco with Richards.
Leaving Jones for Richards caused a rift in the famed English rock band that contributed to Jones being ousted from the Stones in June 1969. He drowned in his swimming pool a month later.
In her 1994 autobiography, Jagger’s former girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, credited Ms. Pallenberg for transforming the Stones.
“How Anita came to be with Brian is really the story of how the Stones became the Stones,” Faithfull wrote. “The Stones came away with a patina of aristocratic decadence that served as a perfect counterfoil to the raw roots blues of their music.”
Ms. Pallenberg and Richards were together for 12 years, although they never married. The couple had two children, son Marlon, now 46 (whose first words, reportedly, were “room service”), and daughter Angela, now 44. They had a second son, Tara, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1976.
A rock princess, Ms. Pallenberg sang background vocals on the Stones’ classic “Sympathy for the Devil.” By all accounts, she was a force to reckon with, as Richards acknowledged in “Life,” his 2010 memoir.
“I like a high-spirited woman,” he wrote. “And with Anita, you knew you were taking on a Valkyrie — she who decides who dies in battle.”
Ms. Pallenberg was born Jan. 25, 1944, in Rome. After being kicked out of school at 16, she lived in Rome, New York and Paris, where she became a model. By the time she was in her late teens, she had appeared on the cover of Vogue and other magazines. But the life of a model did not appeal to her.
“I could make a living out of it and that’s basically what I did, but I was not like the models of today,” Pallenberg told the Guardian newspaper in 2008. “I didn’t like photographers too much, I didn’t like the fashion world. I still don’t.”
A worldly woman who developed a fascination with black magic, Ms. Pallenberg was fluent in four languages when she became involved with the suitably impressed Richards.
“She knew everything and she could say it in five languages,” he once observed. “She scared the pants off me.”