One of the coolest people to ever walk the planet....Anita Pallenberg
was born on January 25, 1944 in Rome, Italy. A definite swingin' chick for
the 60s, a fashion icon for generations to come, Anita Pallenberg was without a doubt
THE unsung "it" girl of the day. Modeling, filmmaking, breakdowns, drug busts, deaths,
Keith Richards, and
the terribly long recovery and aftermath of the 1980s...Anita Pallenberg has proven herself
having lived a very intense and dangerous life. She is a survivor in every meaning of the
word.
In her heyday and to this day she possessed talent, looks,
attitude, obvious intelligence, and an international cool to intimidate just about anybody,
including the Rolling Stones.
Growing up in Italy, Her father
Arnaldo, was an artist, as was her entire family. He painted and played piano. Her
mother, Paula Wiederhold was a secretary at the German
Embassy in Rome.
She had a
sister who was disfigured in an electrical accident as
a child, so her parents were sort of
expecting a "fresh" start with a new child. That's where Anita comes in. They
wanted a boy, and were going to name this boy, who
would actually be Anita, Martin.
The Pallenbergs were pan-European, and Anita
spoke four different languages. She went to a Swiss
school in Rome, but she skipped classes, and was sent
off to another one. She went to a boarding school in
Bavaria which had 180 boys, and only 20 girls. She did
fantastically in Latin and pottery. She was expelled
from this school too, for hitchhiking to
Munich for kicks.
She met Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones after a show in 1965 ,
whom she later left after suffering months
of physical abuse from Brian,
for fellow Stone Keith
Richards in 1967, a loss from which Brian is said to have never recovered.
Brian feel head over
heels in love with Anita and it is well known she may have been the only woman he ever
loved. According to Chrissie Shrimpton (early girlfriend of Mick Jagger)
"She was like
no one anyone had ever met before, she was foriegn, exotic, very extrodinary looking. All the
old school girls become redundent once Anita came along, they had to be more edgy and more
fitting, and the ones that couldn't keep up got pushed aside, as I did."
Anita
and Brian Jones Circa 1965
Anita in 2002.
