A fashion model and actress, Anita Pallenberg had relationships with multiple members of the Rolling Stones, prompting Keith Richards to write "Gimme Shelter" and Mick Jagger to write "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Anita Pallenberg’s key to the world of rock ‘n’ roll was marijuana and a bit of hashish. When she offered the drugs to Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones backstage at a 1965 concert in Munich, Germany, he invited the fashion model back to his hotel room — and into the band’s inner circle.
In the years that followed, Pallenberg became an important part of the band’s image. She was romantically linked with Jones, guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards — whom she dated for 13 years — and frontman Mick Jagger. That meant that Pallenberg had a thrilling front row seat to the rise of one of the biggest bands of the 20th century.
Collection Christophel/Alamy Stock PhotoAnita Pallenberg and Mick Jagger in the controversial 1970 film Performance.
But it also meant that she’s often relegated to a footnote in the Rolling Stones’ larger history. And with fame came great tragedy as well.
This is the story of Anita Pallenberg, whose life was featured in the documentary Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (2024).
The Murky Beginnings Of Anita Pallenberg’s Story
Some sources suggest Anita Pallenberg was born on January 25, 1944, in Rome, Italy. However, family members told The New York Times in 2017 that she was actually born on April 6, 1942. And though it was widely reported that Pallenberg was born in Rome, her son Marlon Richards reported that she was born in Hamburg, Germany.
For her part, Pallenberg seemed to have little interest in fixating on the past. While discussing her childhood in war-torn Europe in her unpublished memoir, she remarked: “I didn’t learn to walk — I ran.”
By 1963, Pallenberg had run all the way to New York City. Beautiful, stylish, and a self-described “wild child,” the 21-year-old aspiring fashion model soon found herself immersed in the city’s most elite artistic circles, rubbing elbows with artists and writers like Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol, and members of Warhol’s Factory like Edie Sedgwick.
Two years later, however, Anita Pallenberg found herself back in Europe. In 1965, she attended a Rolling Stones concert in Munich, where she’d fatefully cross paths with the band’s guitarist: Brian Jones.
Becoming A Muse To The Rolling Stones
Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty ImagesAnita Pallenberg and Brian Jones in 1966. They had a volatile and violent relationship, and Pallenberg eventually left Jones for Keith Richards.
As Anita Pallenberg watched the Rolling Stones perform during their 1965 Munich concert, she was immediately drawn to guitarist Brian Jones. “He was the most beautiful one in the group and he had striking intelligence,” Pallenberg recalled in her memoir, according to PEOPLE.
She snuck backstage, where she offered Jones marijuana and hashish. Jones invited Pallenberg back to his hotel room, and before long, they were a couple. Pallenberg was frequently photographed at Jones’ side, and soon became a familiar sight as the Rolling Stones toured the world.
But though Anita Pallenberg’s life looked glamorous from the outside, her relationship with Jones was volatile. The guitarist’s drug use had ramped up, and he was purportedly physically abusive. According to Rolling Stones legend, in 1967, Jones’ bandmate Keith Richards rescued Pallenberg from a beating — and, in the aftermath, Pallenberg left Jones for Richards.
Richards offered Pallenberg “a different kind of love” than she was used to, according to a 2024 Vanity Fair article. The early days of their romance, she recalled, were “a good time in my life.”
McCarthy/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAnita Pallenberg and Keith Richards. They were together for 13 years.
Anita Pallenberg’s personal happiness dovetailed with her professional success. She acted in a number of films, including Candy (1968), Barbarella (1968), and Dillinger Is Dead (1969).
In 1968, she also filmed the controversial film Performance (1970) with Richards’ bandmate Mick Jagger. The sexual tension between them was such that it inspired two Rolling Stones songs: Richards’ “Gimme Shelter” and Jagger’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” While Pallenberg initially described her flirtations with Jagger in the film as “method acting,” she later confessed in her memoir that she did, in fact, sleep with him.
But the good times did not last. As the 1960s faded into the 1970s, Anita Pallenberg found herself facing tragedies on more than one front.
Drugs, Deaths, And A Dramatic Breakup: Anita Pallenberg’s Volatile Years In The 1970s
Around the time that Anita Pallenberg filmed Performance, she started using heroin. Before long, she and Richards habitually used hard drugs. “We were f—ing junkies, for Christ sake,” Richards remarked in Catching Fire.
As their drug use grew, so did their family. Pallenberg gave birth to their children Marlon in 1969, Angela in 1972, and Tara in 1976.
But their domestic life was volatile. Pallenberg and Richards were constantly on the run from the law because of their drug use, and Vanity Fair reports that Marlon remembered finding heroin needles in flowerpots during his childhood. In Catching Fire, Marlon recalled having a “shambolic and hectic” upbringing in which his family moved 20 times.
Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock PhotoAnita Pallenberg with Keith Richards and their son, Marlon, in 1969.
Then, in 1976, tragedy struck the family when Tara died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) just 10 weeks after his birth. Richards was on tour at the time.
“I was heartbroken,” Anita Pallenberg later said of her son’s death. “Keith never blamed me… but I blamed myself.”
Tara’s death had profound implications for the family. Afterward, Richards sent Angela to live with his mother, which he called “incredibly sad” but “the only decision.” Shortly thereafter, Pallenberg and Richards separated.
Pallenberg left Europe and moved to South Salem, New York with Marlon. But she would experience another shocking tragedy in 1979, when a 17-year-old boy she’d befriended named Scott Cantrell shot himself in the head while at her home. Cantrell purportedly died while mimicking a Russian roulette scene from the movie Deer Hunter. Ten-year-old Marlon was downstairs.
“It was someone’s life, and I had my back turned,” Anita Pallenberg later recalled. “I felt like some nasty person who caused death and destruction around her.”
Over the course of the next few decades, she would make a fresh start.
The Rebirth Of Anita Pallenberg
After the turbulence of the 1970s, Anita Pallenberg made several big changes in her life. She went to rehab, started acting again, and earned a degree in fashion and textiles from a prestigious London art school. She took aspiring model Kate Moss under her wing, and even became friendly with Richards.
Magnolia PicturesAnita Pallenberg and Keith Richards reconciled as friends after their separation and remained close until her death in 2017.
And Pallenberg also started secretly recording and writing her memoirs. After she died on June 13, 2017, Marlon and his children found 13 tapes and a manuscript at her London apartment.
These documents later became the basis for the 2024 documentary Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg. The film attempted to shift the focus on Anita Pallenberg to remember her as her own woman — and not simply as a muse of the Rolling Stones.
But Pallenberg herself seemed to have few regrets about her unbridled enthusiasm for the band, which led her into the arms of Jones, Richards, and Jagger — and on countless adventures.
“I’ve always been a hanger-on,” she remarked in Stephen Davis’ 2001 book Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. “Whenever I liked something, I really got into it. How better to get into it than to be with them, you know?”
After reading about the life of Anita Pallenberg, discover the wild stories of some of rock’s most famous groupies. Or, learn about 24 musicians whose legacies have been tainted by their history of sexual misconduct.
