You could tell she was different from the other Rolling Stones groupies. Dressed in a tan fur jacket, tight jumper and Ossie Clark miniskirt, she looked nothing like the usual Swinging Sixties models – just knee socks, babydoll dresses, thick eyeliner and thick mascara – when she showed up backstage in Munich in 1965 .
Everything about her experience suggested it, from her elusive accent to her handcrafted leather gladiator sandals. Her first words were perhaps not surprising in the context of the 1960s. “Want to smoke a joint?” she asked the band. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards eyed her suspiciously. They had never used drugs before. The only coke they had was mixed with rum.
She glanced at Brian Jones. “Yes,” he said. ‘Let’s do that. Come back to the hotel.’ The woman followed the Stones to Berlin the next day. Her tours were girlfriend-free zones, but it was here that Brian flaunted his adorable new love: the hedonistic, beautiful, multilingual, 23-year-old German-Italian model and actress Anita Pallenberg.
“When I first saw Anita, my reaction was obvious, ‘What the hell is a girl doing with Brian?'” recalls Keith. Anita herself was to give the answer later. She was drawn to his emotional intelligence and delicate looks, she said. “Sexually, I like both girls and guys,” she said, “and Brian seemed to blend both genders at the same time for me.”
Anita, the partner of Brian Jones (pictured together in December 1966) and later Keith Richards
Rolling Stone Keith Richards and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, December 9, 1969
Sixty years ago there were rockers but no rock stars – the concept just hadn’t been invented yet. Compared to the cosmopolitan Anita, the Stones were like five scruffy teenagers, awkward and hopelessly naïve.
Jagger, then 22, slouched like a teenager on stage. Richards was still wearing pants his mother had bought. “Except for Brian, all the Stones were actually suburban places back then,” Anita told a biographer many years later.
But within a few years, they would become the unassailable superstars we know today. And they got all their pride and glamor from four women: Anita, the partner of Brian and later Keith; and Marsha Hunt, Marianne Faithfull and Bianca Jagger, partners of Mick.
It was the women who opened the doors to art and literature for them, introduced them to their friends in politics and high society, and provided the inspiration for the songs. The stones have never been as powerful as in their orbit.
But the women themselves would ultimately pay a heavy price to be the consorts of the rock gods. Caught in the maelstrom of the world’s greatest rock band, they fought hard to maintain their identity. Her own music contracts failed. The money ran out. Her reputation was sullied.
Marianne initially served as an antagonist for the Stones due to her virgin image, but was later humiliated after being found in a drug bust wearing only a fur blanket. The pressure was so unbearable that she almost took her own life.
Bianca fled the totalitarian state of Nicaragua only to be captured by Mick, a totalitarian husband. Anita’s own outrageous behavior more than matched Keith’s – but while he was celebrated, she was mocked and humiliated.
I think it’s time to challenge this common wisdom and narrative. It’s about time these four women were given their rightful place in rock history.
ANITA
After the infamous meeting in Munich, Brian soon became one of the hottest and most intoxicating couples of the 1960s. He and Anita were crazy, evil and dangerous as they cruised around London in Brian’s black Rolls-Royce, captivating the world’s press.
Fellow rocker Pete Townshend of The Who said he was smitten with the pair, who he said seemed “to live on a higher plane of decadence” than anyone he’d ever met.
Under Anita’s influence, Brian reinvented his look, styling himself with Edwardian ruffles, William Morris prints and Oscar Wilde ruffles. Being the same height and weight with matching blonde hair, it was easy for them to switch clothes. They spent hours trading jewellery, scarves and velvet trousers. “When Brian showed up in Anita’s outfits,” Marianne wrote, “that was the beginning of glam rock.”
After the infamous meeting in Munich, Brian soon became one of the hottest and most intoxicating couples of the 1960s. He and Anita (pictured) were crazy, evil and dangerous
Mick and Keith were in danger of being left behind. Until now, the London scene had been dominated by late 1950s rockers in shabby leather jackets brawling in pubs. But a new aesthetic emerged. Suddenly it was hip to read poetry, to talk about cosmology and conceptual art.
Due to her continental background and strong social sensibilities, mixing crowds came naturally to Italian-born Anita. Through her, the Stones soon associated with their aristocratic hipster friends, as well as old Eton art dealers and politicians. The fascination was mutual – and unlike anything previously experienced in British society.
“How Anita came to be with Brian,” Marianne wrote, “is actually the story of how the Stones became the Stones.” She almost single-handedly started a cultural revolution in London by bringing the Stones and Jeunesse Doree together [gilded youth].’
In 1966 Anita and Brian were photographed for Vogue. But not everything went well with Rock’s first couple, the relationship ended in violence.
In the early days, their struggles were of a childish nature. He would tear up her books on mysticism and magic, she would light his Scalextric. But it soon became common for Anita to be covered in bruises.
The end of their relationship came during a trip to Cannes. “It just wasn’t worth it anymore,” she said. “I was fascinated by his talent, but all the side effects weren’t worth it.” Brian didn’t like the fact that I was working [as an actress and a model]. When I got home with this thick script, he ripped it in half. Jealousy.’
Anita hadn’t been interested in Keith at first – she was scrawny and terribly shy, crouched over his guitar and averted his gaze. He had none of Brian’s fallen angel hipness, but in his own quiet way, Keith was more comfortable with Anita’s self-control and his natural reserve made him more than happy to take a backseat. “She knew everything and could say it in five languages,” he said. “She scared me to death.”
Keith and Anita stayed together for 13 years and became parents to three children. In their orbit, he blossomed.
“Keith was a really shy little guy – he couldn’t get out of his own way,” recalls Anita. “And I had this Italian energy and outgoing personality, so it was really easy for me.” And somehow it finally came out. He began writing songs and singing them himself. I thought it was wonderful.’
Like Brian before him, Keith seemed to be becoming more androgynous, but also somehow more sexual. An aura of brooding malevolence began to pervade: headbands, black eyeliner, spiked bracelets, and talismanic charms.
“See pictures of Keith before and after Anita,” wrote rock journalist Rob Sheffield. “It’s like the difference between Buddy Holly and Jack the Ripper.”
Now he came to himself and dived deep into his creative self. He no longer clung to Brian or Mick. Thanks to Anita, Keith managed to tap into something that would make the band more relevant than their flower child peers.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which he wrote at their Sussex country home, was released in May 1968 with a promotional film showing the band in gothic attire, most of which belonged to Anita. It topped both the UK and US charts.
Although he had angered her at first, even Mick appreciated how Anita refreshed and energized the band. He began to pay more attention to her and even sought her approval. “Mick seemed to enjoy Anita’s sharp mind,” wrote Stones collaborator Tony Sanchez. “One time I overheard Anita listening to a cassette of Stray Cat Blues while Jagger patiently waited for her to tell him (like all the other lackeys had) how great it was.
‘Damn!’ She said. “The vocals are mixed too high and the bass isn’t loud enough.” “Mick was so unaccustomed to hearing someone criticize his work that he immediately went back to the studio and had the number remixed.”
Only a fool would call Anita a muse. She was so much more than that – the central axis of the band. “At the Stones’ rock ‘n’ roll table,” wrote pop culture writer Robert Greenfield, “Anita is the key. Whoever owns her, has the power.”
MARIANNE
She had come into the Stones’ life at a drunken record label party a year before Anita. She recalled all four Beatles being there along with the Stones, fooling around like “spotty schoolboys”. “My God,” she had thought. “What horrible people.” At the time, just 17 and a convent student with dreams of being a singer, she had gone to the event with her older boyfriend, John Dunbar.
She was approached by flamboyant Stones manager Andrew Oldham. “You have a modern face.” “I’m interested in you,” he told her. “I can make you a star.” Marianne declined the meeting, but a week later a telegram arrived with a Decca contract attached.
Like Anita, Marianne was of European origin – her mother was the Austrian aristocrat Baroness Eva Erisso. She was also cultured and well educated, and had once planned to go to Cambridge or the Royal Academy of Music to study classical singing. Although Marianne was initially attracted to Keith – she later admitted she had “the best night of her life” with him – she fell in love with Mick during a song festival in San Remo, Italy.
It was a compelling story for the media: young love, the rebel wins the angel, set against a chic backdrop of continental music.
Unlike Brian, Mick was conventional through and through – Swiss bank accounts and Sunday crossword puzzles – and had a penchant for the upper class. Before 1967, the books on his bedside table were all James Bond novels. All that changed when he met Marianne. “I taught him to open up to a whole new world – theatre, dance, paintings, furniture, fabrics, architecture,” she wrote.
Marianne fell in love with Mick during a song festival in San Remo, Italy (pictured together around 1967).
Mick had never been to ballet, so Marianne took him to several performances of Marius Constant’s Paradise Lost at the Royal Opera House. Of course, Mick fell in love with Rudolf Nureyev, whose stern, extravagant facial features resembled his own.
His sexually charged style inspired Mick’s stage antics, and the ballet’s shocking finale – Nureyev jumped into his lipstick-red mouth – kept reappearing on subsequent Stones tours. Ultimately, the red lips became the band’s cheeky logo.
Mick stuck to Marianne’s words – she even aroused his interest in the history of lace. Through her, Mick got to know poets and artists. When the American poet Allen Ginsberg came to town, she invited him to her flat in Marylebone. Ginsberg sat at the foot of her bed, Marianne and Mick were naked in it.
In these moments, Marianne could see Mick’s boundaries breaking before her eyes. Here he was, the rowdy playboy, chatting naked with a poet 17 years his senior about William Blake and the Marquis de Sade.
Marianne was not only his girlfriend, she was his creative partner. “What Mick liked about me was the way we discussed his ideas for his songs.
“I was better educated than him. I was very good with words. And when Mick was working on the lyrics for a song, he would go over them with me.”
When Marianne lent him her copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Mick took the book’s apocalyptic themes and worked them into his 1968 hit single Sympathy For The Devil we were together did some of his best work,” Marianne remarked years later.
His songs seemed so much more important than the pop songs she sang – songs she hadn’t even written. “It made me feel like I was doing something creative.”
“I think women can slip into that.” Living through a man. To let someone use them and not think it’s weird at all.’
At the time, she did not question whether her work deserved credit. But she later told an interviewer, “Now I find it very odd that I’m making myself available to him like this.”
“Sister Morphine,” a song she co-wrote with Mick and Keith in 1969, was the death knell of their relationship. “I’ve lost heart. “I couldn’t take it and broke up,” she said. “I could imagine Mick being the undisputed champion and winner of rock ‘n’ roll. I should have just accepted my fate and been Mick’s muse. “The role of a muse is one of the most acceptable for women, but it is terrible.”
At this point, when the relationship finally fell apart, she and Anita became casual lovers, bathing together and trying on each other’s clothes. “I had a lot more in common with Anita than with Mick,” wrote Marianne.
Years later, Marianne admitted to having loved Anita. “I would have done anything for her,” she admitted.
MARSHA & BIANCA
Raised by women, black American singer Marsha Hunt was intelligent, educated, and independent, and had no interest whatsoever in the lifestyle the Stones were adopting. Arriving in the UK in 1966, she worked her way around the London blues scene before being offered a role in the legendary 1960s musical Hair.
In 1969, she appeared on “Top Of The Pops” in hot pants and a bolero top that revealed her breasts every time she raised her arms. “Part of the reason was that I was tired of English roses,” she explained.
It was this departure from the English rose chanteuse that caught Mick’s eye and asked her to perform on a promotional shoot. Marsha said no.
Mick, always encouraged by a woman’s refusal, was delighted. He showed up at her apartment unannounced after midnight and grinned sheepishly in the doorway. He seemed like a lost schoolboy invited to tea, and Marsha did just that. That night they laughed so hard that she feared they would wake up her roommate – the kind of laughter that Mick hadn’t seen in his life for a long time, with his constant worries about the band, women and lawyers.
Raised by women, black American singer Marsha Hunt was intelligent, educated, and independent, and had no interest whatsoever in the lifestyle the Stones were adopting
To Marsha, he seemed inexplicably lost, and she could tell that Jagger, the world’s most famous rock star, was desperately lonely. Why was he so open with her while often being aloof and distant with others? Whatever the reason, Marsha felt he needed to confide in her.
And although she had slept with him since the first night, she saw him more as a friend than a lover. Mick admiringly referred to their unwavering reliability as “crap”. The side he showed her was gentle, vulnerable and sincere. Marsha became pregnant with his first child and thus played a key role in his life.
But when their daughter Karis was born in 1970, Mick was already intrigued by the woman who would become his first wife.
Growing up in the twilight of Nicaragua’s crumbling oligarchy, Bianca Perez-Mora Macias was as far removed from the 1960s zeitgeist as one could get. She had no interest in acid, druids, or mysticism.
Everything about her was angular and stern, from her cheekbones to her political views. She was everything Anita couldn’t take. Mick fell in love immediately.
Bianca was unlike any girl he had ever been with. She was shocked by the obvious vulgarity of rock culture – her fondness was for lawyers and politicians.
She quickly became Mick’s new confidante and he was dependent on her support. The Stones’ 1971 Goodbye UK tour was extremely rough – just the way Anita and Keith liked it. But Mick needed consistency and control, and Bianca provided that.
The shows were extremely erratic and there were frequent delays, often leading to angry booing from the audience. Mick feigned nonchalance and then secretly let himself fall into Bianca’s arms. But the relationship was not to last. He began sleeping with Anita shortly after their marriage in St. Tropez, and in 1976 he met young Texas model Jerry Hall, his future partner and mother of four of his children.
Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, pictured with Bianca Perez-Mora Macias (Bianca Jagger) at their civil wedding in Saint Tropez, France on May 12, 1971
When Bianca told him about a book on nutrition she was working on, “I thought he’d say, ‘This is wonderful.'” Instead he said, “Why do you have to write a book?” Why throw away a year of your life ?’ “Mick is kind of a misogynist in a way,” she said.
“I don’t know if he would be too happy if I was that successful. “Men don’t want you to be independent because then you escape them.”
After years of heroin addiction, Marianne finally took control of her life and released an album entitled Broken English in 1979 which became a bestseller. She then went on to have a successful career, collaborating with artists such as Damon Albarn and Nick Cave.
Anita also got clean and studied textiles at Central Saint Martin’s. She later became a respected fashion designer before her death in 2017.
She lives on through her swashbuckling rock ‘n’ roll style, which designers regularly reference. Kate Moss, Alexa Chung and Courtney Love all cite Anita as their main style icon.
After two decades as a singer and actress, Marsha turned to writing, authoring six novels, two memoirs and a book about Jimi Hendrix and founding the Saga Awards for Black British Writers in 1995.
Bianca became a humanitarian activist whose work she continues to this day and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards.
The Stones’ golden age ended in 1972 with the release of their album Exile On Main Street. Now it was all about the concerts and the brand.
In the end, it was the creative women who surrounded her who, as the decades have shown, were the real rebels, progressives and misfits.
Your rightful legacy remains undiminished.
- Adapted from Parachute Women by Elizabeth Winder, to be published by Hachette on July 27th, £25. © 2023 Elizabeth Winder. To order a copy for £22.50 go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25. Promotional price valid until 07/30/2023.