Farewell to Anita Pallenberg, who has died aged 73. Forever doomed to be labelled as a Rolling Stones girlfriend (that’ll happen when you had relationships with two of them and a rumoured affair with a third), who was always more interesting that that. Artistic muse, occultist, heroin addict, model, fashion designer and actress, Pallenberg was one of the icons the 1960s – an underground artist with a decidedly overground entourage, or vice versa depending on how you look at it.
Her films include some of the most iconic of the late 1960s – Performance, Barbarella, Candy – and in later years, she worked with maverick directors Harmony Korrine (Mister Lonely) and Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales, 4:44 Last Day on Earth). She hung around Andy Warhol’s Factory and the Stones arguably did some of their best work under her influence. She was friendly with Kenneth Anger and some claim she helped finance his film Lucifer Rising.
More to the point though, she was somehow representative of an era of hedonism, decadence and dyonisian rock ‘n’ roll excess that has long since gone. There are still a few threads running from that time – the late 1960s to mid 1970s, a time distant by decades in years but centuries in attitudes from our present day – but with Pallenberg’s death, one more has been cut.
