Whatever you might expect to find in an old shoe box of your late mother’s, it probably isn’t a scorching memoir of her time in the 1960s and 1970s as the muse and lover of the Rolling Stones. But then again, your mother probably isn’t Anita Pallenberg.
Pallenberg was a mesmerising force of the swinging sixties: an actress and model who found fame after an early relationship with Brian Jones and then a thirteen year love affair with Keith Richards, which resulted in three children. It is the eldest, Marlon – father to Ella Richards – who found his mother’s secret memoir. He has now turned it into a documentary film, Catching Fire, which premiered at Cannes this year and at the London Film Festival this weekend. The North American film rights were snapped up last week by Magnolia Productions, which plans to release the film next spring.
Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill directed the documentary, which features the voice of Scarlett Johansson as Anita, based on the words Marlon discovered in her unpublished memoir. Marlon himself appears in the film alongside his sister, Angela, and their father, Keith Richards. ‘Typical Anita,’ her son, Marlon told The Guardian this week, of discovering a treasure trove in her secret memoir. ‘You never knew quite what she was up to. She always had a plan – always.’
So who exactly was Anita Pallenberg? The Italian-German model was born in 1942 and raised in war-torn Germany. She went to boarding school, where she became fluent in four languages, but was expelled at 16. She subsequently spent time in Rome and in New York, where she acted and also became a brief fixture of Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory scene.
But it was a chance meeting with the Rolling Stones, while on a modelling assignment in Munich, that would forever change the course of her life. She fell into a two -year relationship with Brian Jones, who allegedly turned violent after a particularly bad drugs binge. Jones would eventually die from a suspected drug-related accident in his swimming pool in 1969.
It was Keith Richards who ‘rescued’ Pallenberg from Jones. The two entered into a near two decades long relationship which placed her once again at the beating heart of the Rolling Stones. She would become irretrievably woven into the mythology of the iconic band – (allegedly suggesting the ‘owl sound’ in Sympathy for the Devil ) and appearing in their controversial 1970 film Performance. The latter included a tryst with Jagger that infuriated Richards and spawned two of the band’s greatest hits: Richard’s plaintive love song Gimme Shelter and Jagger’s resigned You Can’t Always Get What You Want, when Pallenberg remained with Keith and became pregnant with Marlon.
She would have three children with Richards. A daughter, Dandelion Angela, was born in 1972 (but is known by her middle name). Their third child, Tara Jo Jo, died in his cot aged ten weeks and provoked Keith Richards’ mother to declare Pallenberg an unfit mother; taking Angela to live with her. Marlon would stay with his mother. Pallenberg’s struggles with drug and alcohol abuse were well known and, though she would relapse into alcoholism over the years, she was 17 years sober from drugs at the time of her death.
Far from being a mere muse, Pallenberg was a force to be reckoned with (called everything from a ‘rock n’ roll goddess’ to a ‘voodoo priestess’) a renowned wit and intellectual whose madcap antics left even famed partier Keith Richards struggling to keep up. She was known for intimidating the band intellectually and for criticising musical direction and actually having her feedback taken up. Famously, tracks on Beggars Banquet were remixed at her suggestion. As her son Marlon notes in the film: ‘She had bigger balls than all of them!’
Her career would see her feature in films from Barbarella in 1968 to Mister Lonely by Harmony Korine in 2007. In the 1990s she would retrain as a designer, studying at Central Saint Martins, and end up working at Marc Jacobs.
The film aims to reframe Pallenberg away from simply another ‘Stones hanger on’ and perhaps even introduce her to a whole new generation. Though, of course, Pallemberg, who died in 2017, aged 75, was not above sending herself up or playing on her Stones’ pedigree. In an episode of Absolutely Fabulous in 2001, in which Edwina hallucinates while attempting to lose weight, she appeared with fellow Stones girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull played God and Pallenberg played the devil.
In one of her final interviews, given in 2016, Pallenberg opened up about her mortality: ‘I am ready to die. I have done so much here. My Mum died at 94. I don’t want to lose my independence. Now I am over 70 and to be honest I did not think I would live over 40.’
