"Aren't you staying for lunch?" How could one ever say ‘no’ to that when it’s
Anita Pallenberg who’s asking it? It
all happened last year during the days of the fourth and (so far) last visit of
the Stones to Buenos Aires as part
of the Latin American Olé Tour, which had started a few days earlier in
Santiago de Chile, and with 10 more shows to go after the three in Argentina,
closing on a high note in Havana, Cuba. This time, in order to avoid fans leaning
out at the hotel doors, or even camping out, looking to catch a glimpse of the
band, the Stones’ machine had come up with a new strategy, which was splitting
them into different locations. Then Jagger
stayed at the Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt, and Ronnie Wood at the Faena Hotel, while the Four Seasons (where the
whole band was in all previous visits, taking over the luxurious Álzaga Unzué
mansion, at the back of the hotel) was the headquarters of both Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.
As
it’s been happening for at least the last 25 years (eventually, as the Stones’ kids
grew older), taking them on tour became a usual thing. Children, wives, and
even parents (during the band’s first time in the country in 1995, Keith had
even brought dad Bert with him) ended up joining the party as they wandered
around the world. But never ex-love partners. So I felt already too skeptical
when an English girl friend that had come to South America to see some of the
shows (and who was also staying at the Four Seasons) told me she had seen Anita
Pallenberg in the afternoon taking a swim at the hotel’s pool. I denied her
statement right from start. Anita hadn’t been close to the band for 35 years or
more, at least since she stopped being Keith’s love-mate, and even when they
were together, she was never one to show up on tours much often. “Anita? No
way! You must have seen somebody that looked like her” Less likely to happen in
South America, I thought to myself. I then asked her if she somehow had a
chance to talk to the woman. “No, I didn’t”, she admitted, “but I sure can tell
it was Anita. She was swimming next to me, she had a leopard bathing suit…” I
could have kept refusing it on and on, I was sure she was clearly mistaken. At
the end of the day, I thought again, everybody sees everybody’s look-alikes all
the time. In fact the last time Anita had visited far away South America was
around Christmas in 1968, when along Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and (Marianne’s then) boyfriend Mick Jagger took
a boat all the way to Brazil, spending their holidays in the city of Matão
(countryside of the São Paulo state, where Keith got the inspiration to write
“Honky Tonk Women”), and then moving to Rio and Bahia, before heading for a few
days in Perú. At the time, Anita had already become Keith’s steady girlfriend
after he rescued her from the arms of his fellow bandmate Brian Jones (her
original lover, with whom she shared an idyllic relationship before Jones,
paranoid and currently dealing with one too many addictions, became violent
with her) My friend’s theory about Anita’s sight in Buenos Aires 48 years later
was, to say the least, unthinkable. However, as I was pacing the hotel lobby
next day to meet another friend, who was also staying at the Four Seasons, I
happened to see a woman walking by away enough from me who looked a lot like
Anita (eventually, Anita in those days, whose older image I was familiar with
after I had seen some new pictures of her on the internet a few months earlier)
The woman rushed out of one of the elevators, going somewhere else. It all didn’t
last for more than a millisecond, and wondering if I hadn’t actually imagined
it (or, worst case scenario, if it wasn’t somebody resembling me of her), I
decided to move on.
 |
| Photo: Michael Cooper |
But
it all became true the day of the second show of the Stones in La Plata. A
while before the concert began, as I was having a drink at the VIP area, once
again I saw the lady I briefly spotted at the hotel the previous day, who now
was about five meters from me, walking towards one of the tables. I was still
quite dubious, I won’t deny it. More over, nobody attending the VIP seemed to
notice that singular woman, elegantly dressed, with a hat, and walking with a
cane. The possible fact it was actually her, going unnoticed by the others, no
matter what, was also likely to happen. Only that she wasn’t on her own.
Besides her was my friend Adam Cooper,
which led me to start wondering if somehow I could have been wrong from the
beginning. To anybody not familiar with his name, Adam is the son of Michael Cooper, the legendary
photographer mostly famous for being the one who shot many of the English rock
and pop stars in his home country during the ‘60s and ‘70s and, and even more important,
for being the one who did the Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Their Satanic Majesties Request covers. That’s right, those two album covers.
 |
| Anita and me at the VIP in La Plata |
Adam
has been living in Buenos Aires for at least 20 years (where he organized many photo
exhibitions showing his father’s works, as he also did abroad) and whom I’d first
met shortly after his original arrival to Argentina. But long before that, when
he was still the little boy living with his father in Chelsea, London, in the
mid-‘60s, with his mum mostly out of the whole picture, and because of dad
Michael’s friendship with the Stones, he had found a sort of surrogate mothers
in both Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg. Not just one, but two, as if
that weren’t enough. Marianne and Anita cuddled him, invited little Adam home
to play, making him part of a memorable and amazing cultural scene he would only become aware of as
he got older. Plus the fact I knew Adam used to get in touch with them quite
often after all these years, no matter the distance. This time there was no
doubt that the woman my friend had seen by the hotel’s pool, or the one I’d
seen at the lobby, was the same one. And that was Anita Pallenberg. I ended up
swallowing my words, as I watched her chatting with Adam in the midst of the cacophonous
rumble at the VIP area before the Stones’ second show in La Plata, while I
slowly approached them. I greeted Adam and then introduced myself to Anita,
telling her about my joy to see her visiting the country, and finally asked her
to have a picture with her. Something against my own ethics, by the way. For
some reason I never ever felt comfortable asking for a picture, period. Not only
because I never found it right to invade anybody’s area, but actually mostly
because a photograph without a story behind is nothing but that, an image born
by ways of a lens and a button that’s pushed down, lacking naturalness, and
turning out into a forced, artificial kind of situation. Without a before, without a during, and also lacking an after.
Add to that I didn’t like the idea Anita could think I was just another fan
looking for a picture to display on Facebook. Anita had always been one of my
favorite female icons (that is, besides my devotion to the lives and times of
the Stones, of which she played, needless to say, a major role in) So then Anita,
the lady, gently said ‘yes’, displaying her trademark smile. It didn’t last for
longer than 2 minutes, I’d say even less than that, and so I decided to leave
them alone for better. I actually wouldn’t
have been interested in taking any pictures had I had the chance to talk
to her instead, as talking always comes first. Out of there, away from the
noise, and in the right place. I’d
later apologize to my British friend for my stubborn reluctance to her story.
 |
| Anita at the Michael Cooper's exhibition at the Konex (Photo: Adam Cooper) |
Two
days later, on Friday February 12, the weather was already awfully soaking wet by
the time it dawned. The hottest February ever in history, according to the
local meteorologists. There was still one final Stones’ show at La Plata’s
Estadio Único next day but, once again, and despite the unbearable temperature,
I had to go back to the Four Seasons to meet a fellow friend from New Zealand
who was also in Buenos Aires for the Stones concerts. We had agreed to meet in
the early afternoon but, given the weather conditions, I decided to leave from
home earlier, which led me to arrive to the hotel before I expected. It was
only a few minutes after my arriving to the Four Seasons that there I came
across Adam again who, polite as usual, approached me to say hello. I asked him
why he was there, and he replied he had an appointment with Anita, they were
going to have lunch together at one of the hotel restaurants. I didn’t hesitate
for a second, and next thing I was telling him how important it would be for me
to finally have the chance to exchange a few words with her (more than a minute
and a half, at least) now that we were in the right place to do so, away enough
from the concert craziness. “Sure”, he said, “right now she must be coming down
in the elevator” I confessed to him all I actually wanted (and whoever is
reading this, please believe my very words) was just to walk them up to the
restaurant table, and then I was done. As I said before, I’m not the kind of
person who likes to interfere with anything, let alone something I wasn’t
invited to in the first place. Anita showed up in a matter of seconds,
elegantly dressed, bohemian style, in a leopard pattern printed dress and
purse, flashing her classic smile. After greeting us gracefully, we started
heading to the Nuestro Secreto restaurant, which can be accessed right from the
very entrance of the mansion. Once again, I knew time would be never enough to
have a proper chat, so far for me, but nevertheless I was happy enough to be
with them and have a word in the meantime. Plus there was no way Anita could
have remembered about our brief meeting at the stadium. We reached the restaurant
five minutes later and, as promised, I said goodbye to them. That’s just when
she unexpectedly invited me to have launch with her and Adam. "Aren't you staying for lunch?" In the right place now. And in case it all
happened because she felt sorry letting me go, she gave me another of those
killer smiles confirming that she really meant she was inviting me to join
them. “Oh, I’d love to stay!” “Sure, have a seat”, she confirmed, which I instantly
agreed to while getting ready to be part of an unforgettable one-of-a-kind
moment. I can’t actually remember now what we ordered to eat (quite weird for somebody
as insanely thoughtful as me), but the three of us sure drank mineral water.
Some details may always escape my mind. That’s the price one pays when you put
much attention to a woman with an overwhelming personality like Anita had to
say, someone who lived and survived (nearly) anything, when other personal
issues take second place and you prioritize her knowledgeability above all, addressing
literally any topic, which she proved to know quite much of.
 |
| Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Chuck Wein, Anita Pallenberg and a guest. Warhol's Factory times. |
Readers
may wonder why I didn’t ask her about all those facts and stories we read again
and again over the years. But what was there to ask? And what would have been
the outcome anyway? The answer is, they’re all pretty well-known, then why asking
about them again? After all, this was no interview, this wasn’t me the
journalist meeting her. No journalistic duties involved this time then, but
just an informal and regular conversation. It was lovely and extremely
funny to enjoy Anita’s great sense of
humor throughout the two hours or more we’d been there. I just let it flow. Had it not been so, I would
have sure asked her about the days when she was expelled from a German boarding
school at 16, or her times at Andy Warhol’s Factory after she arrived to New
York. Long before her entry into the world of the Rolling Stones, Anita was
already a class A rebel with enough skills (out of her amazing physical beauty,
she managed five languages) that she made best use of. That’s one of the
reasons why listening to all she had to say was such an amazing experience. And
although it was mostly English we talked (in Anita’s case, with a strong
Italian accent), she would often come up with a few single words in a different
language. She told us how much she loved the hot weather above all, and that
she was always running away from the cold. That’s why, she explained, she
shared her time in at least four different destinations in the world, mostly in
Keith Richards’ house in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, “where the weather was always
nice”, or in other places that also belonged to Keith , like the Redlands
country house in West Wittering (located in West Sussex, England, yes, which
was scene of the famous February 1967 police raid) or the one in Cheyne Walk,
right by London’s Chelsea Embankment (where she started living with Keith in
1969), or even her native city of Rome where, as much as I remember, she told
me she used to have, or still had a sister living there
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| Anita and Mick Jagger during the shooting of “Performance” (1968) |
Clouds
of artificial smoke coming out of her electronic cigarette, extremely tanned
and with her skin slightly wrinkled, the then 73-year-old Anita still carried
the sex appeal that had been a permanent trademark all though her life. And whereas
she no longer had that fresh beauty so typical of her when she was younger, her
particular way of speaking, coupled with an established femininity, still made
her a very attractive woman. And that halo all around her! There’s something rather
strange that always happened to me whenever I had the chance to meet somebody I
admired, or wished I’d ever meet in person, being it for an interview or, such
as in this opportunity, that of a fortuitous encounter, and that’s in a way or
another, I always feel that person isn’t actually there in front of me, in
spite getting this endless collage of images and intermingled stories that
remain away from what is really happening at the very moment you’re talking to
them. It mostly felt like it every time I had the chance to meet somebody with
a heavy history behind, that I really admired, or meant a lot to me. That’s
when I’m not able to separate all that from the true reality, as redundant as
that may sound. It’s like one dimension within another, while both get
constantly blurred on the fly. For that reason, meeting Anita had little to do
with the actual fact of being there with her, instead making me feel I was
watching an unlimited short film where the thousands of images of her I saw
over the years, being them photographs or footage, came one after another non-stop,
taking me to a parallel dimension. Which is a probably the same that could
happen to anybody into the lives and times of the Rolling Stones, as it’s
undeniable that Anita Pallenberg epitomizes a crucial element in the band’s history.
Because, to put it this way, if there’s no certain amount of danger involved,
there’s no rock and roll at all. And I’ve always believed Brian and Anita were
the first ones to come up with that pinch of danger in the Stones, something which
they’d go along with in their formative years and beyond. Brian gave the Stones
their original style and attitude, anticipating which would come later, while
Anita with her piercing gaze and dangerous bad
girl aura was just the icing on the cake, an irresistible dish on the table.
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| Brian Jones, Anita and Keith in Tangiers, Morocco, 1967 |
That’s
the main reason why, all through the lunch, I wasn’t essentially able to take
my eyes off her, while another shot of a thousand images crossed my mind, and all
that now taking place only a few inches from me. All those pictures of she and
Keith, Anita seducing Mick while shooting Performance
(which led to the very first rift between the Glimmer Twins), Anita “the Great
Tyrant” who controls the underground city where Jane Fonda landed in Roger
Vadim's science fiction film Barbarella,
or another of her film roles, in A
Degree of Murder, which original movie soundtrack by ex boyfriend Brian
Jones remains unreleased to this day. Instead, I chose to look and listen to
her, while (once again) that endless number of images kept going through my
head with Anita in the leading role, the Stones’ muse par excellence, and no way it could stop. The full blooded “it
girl” during much of the ‘60s and ‘70s, who after all this time couldn’t help
but give you a crushing smile, that very one an English magazine once referred
to as "that witchy smile", the kind of girl everybody wanted to have.
 |
| On the set of "Barbarella" (1968) |
 |
| Another picture of Anita at the Konex, with Silvia Cooper, Adam's wife (Photo: Adam Cooper) |
Before
jumping on the elevator that would take us back to the ground floor of the
hotel, I considered having a picture with her: “Anita, I hate to say this, but
I’d love a picture of the day I met you” “Oh no, sorry, I’m not wearing any
make-up”, she reacted, flashing another of her classic smiles. That’s when I
realized that, after all, and against any logic, at least this time a thousand
words would be worth an image. To my surprise, there came an unexpected bonus. By the time we got to the main
entrance of the Four Seasons, amidst some 35-odd degrees, Adam asked us to wait
for him outside as there was something else he needed to do, which turned into
about 10 minutes of me and Anita all alone sitting on one of the benches right
by one of the hotel doors. Under the
blazing sun, she asked me to get her another bottle of water. I was back with
the bottle in a matter of seconds to find her taking one of her Camels from her
purse, then tasting it like it was her first cigarette that day.
 | ||
| With director Volker Schlondorff during the filming of "A Degree of Murder" (1967) |
Just last year, as I was about to travel to England, an interview with Anita had been almost confirmed (where I would have asked her all those questions I had in mind and had to keep to myself the day we had lunch), but then I was informed she broke one of her ribs, so it was postponed for another time, which now won’t ever happen.
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