Mojo - The Music Magazine

In 1972, Keith Richards, then fuelled by an apocalyptic daily intake of chemicals, revealed his tender side in a way only Keef could: "All you hear about me is when the warrants are out," he complained. "What I resent is that they tried to drag my old lady into it, which I find particularly distasteful." Anita Pallenberg, the stunning Italian-born model/actress and Keith's "old lady" since she ditched the disintegrating Brian Jones in 1967, was to spend 10 years by the side of the Stones' talismanic guitarist. During that decade, Pallenberg would witness the band at their most intimate and their most extreme. More than any other woman granted entry into the Stones' inner sanctum, Pallenberg, with her artistic nous, no-bullshit attitude and passport straight to the heart of the planet's bohemian elite, was someone who could really keep up with the juggernaut - she even made it into the studio, contributing backing vocals to Sympathy For The Devil.

As a couple, Keith and Anita were unstoppable. Threats of deportation, the constant press attention, dalliances with black magic, vast quantities of drugs ("so many people are scared of our lifestyle," Richards once said); even Mick Jagger's on-screen canoodling with Pallenberg in Performance couldn't permanently dent their relationship. And then there was the music. Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street - Anita supported her man through the Stones' greatest recordings. It was, of course, Keith and Anita that rented Villa Nellcôte - the tax-exile haven in the south of France that would double as the playground for Exile.... With son Marlon in tow, Anita, the queen of this enormous run-down party mansion, would desperately try to control the influx of visitors and hangers-on, while Keith and the band tinkered away in the basement studio - not an easy task even for a woman who spoke four languages. Mick and Marianne may have been the toast of the jetset glitterati, but Keith and Anita were the real deal. In the end, it was heroin - one of their greatest shared loves - that tore them apart. After Keith's 1977 Toronto bust, their lawyers suggested it would be better for both if they went their separate ways. A decade of decadent highs and tragic lows lay in their wake. [RB]