Original subtitles

I've been called a witch, a slut, and a murderer.

I've been hounded by the police

and slandered in the press.

Maybe people confuse me with the characters

I played in films.

Like I'm an empty sign

on to which they project their fantasies

and their shortcomings.

But I don't need to settle scores.

I'm reclaiming my soul.

I write as a woman

searching for another adventure.

We're not a nostalgic family in any way.

Yes, we had some great times,

and some were not that great.

But we don't reminisce about those sort of times.

It just wasn't in our nature.

My mother, especially,

is not someone who'd dwell in the past at all.

Melancholy.

Anita never suffered from that sort of thing

or at least never appeared outwardly.

She was just like, "Yeah, well, that was that. Let's move on."

So when she died, me and my children

started going through documents and drawers

to try to find legal papers.

And I was really shocked to find Anita's manuscript

right there perfectly typed in the box.

Quite astonishing.

It was important that eventually she said something.

And that's what it is.

Her intention was not to be a housewife

or the wife of anyone really.

Not even Keith's.

She had bigger balls than any of them did, probably,

in a lot of ways.

I mean, Anita, she was a unique piece of work.

I mean, I've never quite figured it all out.

Basically, I was trying to keep up with her

most of the time.

And the most of the time, it was fun.

This isn't really an autobiography.

It's more like memory images.

A traveler's tale through a landscape

of dreams and shadows.

I don't think the lawyers will like it very much.

We had no secrets with each other.

Anita and I, we had quite an intense friendship.

As soon as we saw each other, you know,

we rushed to each other and hugged each other.

And, for her, it was so easy and uncomplicated

because it was kind of understood from the beginning,

there's no sex between us.

So let's find a different kind of relationship.

I was looking for an actress

that wouldn't look like an actress.

I asked a fashion photographer whether he knew anybody.

And he said, "Yes, I do."

"I just photographed her on the highest German mountain,

the Zugspitze,

and she's absolutely incredible and wild."

Anita had vulnerability.

Even though she was like a tough cookie,

there was a really, like, an earnest quality

in her as well.

I thought if she remains

as natural as possible in front of the camera,

so much the better.

I was extremely close friends with Anita,

but I always wondered

whether she had any family.

I never really knew what was with her father,

what was with her mother.

Did she have a sister or a brother?

She would never speak about it.

[in English] I was always a wild child,

rebellious,

causing my family problems.

They said acting was for prostitutes.

That I'd dirtied the Pallenberg name.

My father was a classical musician.

My mother did everything she could to please him.

My great-grandfather was the painter Arnold Bocklin.

Famous for his paintings of bestial satyrs

and sleeping nymphs.

Bohemian aristocracy.

We lost everything during the war.

My earliest memories are hearing airplanes

dropping bombs.

I didn't learn to walk,

I ran.

We were moved around in cattle cars.

Sliding doors, chaos, heat.

It affected me deeply.

The war in Rome,

it was a terrible period.

So repressive in all senses.

And the situation at Anita's home was the same.

The parents, they were old-fashioned.

Very conservative.

No hugging, no kissing,

no hotness of the heart.

And I think that Anita really couldn't stand it.

It was not for her.

She was done in a different way.

She wanted to be hugged, she wanted to have affection.

She wanted to feel things.

She loved to feel things.

Anita and I were going in the same school,

the German school.

We had nuns.

German nuns. Can you imagine?

Of course, you want to break the rules.

And in the night, four, five, six of us going up

and trying to smoke cigarettes at 16, you know?

And they got us.

We were the devils.

Anita was my teacher in everything. Always.

She loved Fats Domino.

And she taught me how to do rock and roll

with that one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

And showing with the feet.

Dancing and pulling and pushing.

♪ She's my boogie woogie baby ♪

She was my myth. I wanted to be her.

I want to be Anita.

♪ Boogie-woogie, baby Boogie all the time ♪

She was a sparkle.

She was sparkling, you know?

Where she was walking, it was going tick, tick,

tick, tick of sparkles of the eyes she had.

The way she was looking. The smile she was having.

The way she was moving.

The way she moves.

This was Anita.

America, because of the jeans, the music, the rock and roll,

America, of course, it was the dreamland to go.

We really wanted to go to America.

All of us.

At 19, I escaped to New York.

I hardly spoke any English,

but when I got there, I had an awakening.

It was 1963, the year President Kennedy was shot.

With a few addresses in my pocket

and some Italian charm,

I slid into the downtown scene.

I washed Jasper Johns' brushes.

I met Andy Warhol

and his rabbits.

At a party, Allen Ginsberg collected pubic hair

from famous people.

He didn't ask me.

I loved the feeling of culture exploding.

Being in New York,

Anita and I were great friends

and hung out always together.

We were grooving along in our own scene.

And she quickly became a very close friend.

I came from this artistic family as well...

...so we had that in common.

Anita had an amazing life force

an amazing joie de vivre, you know?

She had a view about the arts,

about pop art, about a lot of things.

And, I mean, who could look like Anita?

I was never a serious model.

I hated the hairdresser, false eyelashes,

and all that shit.

But modeling sent me all over the world.

And it was in Munich

that I first met The Rolling Stones.

It was 1965.

♪ I wanna Tell you something, baby ♪

Mick wasn't dancing in those days.

He was still playing maracas.

Keith was really shy.

♪ 'Cause it's alright ♪

♪ Yeah, it's alright ♪

The concert was wild.

♪ It's alright ♪

Police had to push the audience back.

Mick got so scared, he had to hide.

I loved every minute of it.

It sounds ridiculous, I know,

but my friends dared me to kidnap one of them.

I got backstage

and noticed Brian Jones right away.

He was the most beautiful one in the group.

And he had striking intelligence.

I offered the band some hash and Brian said yes.

No need for kidnapping.

We became inseparable.

Everybody said we looked like twins.

Yeah, I believe that two people can fall in love very quickly.

And I think they can find out about each other

very quickly if they're in love.

My doppelganger.

My Brian.

It was time to leave New York.

When we moved in together,

our flat in London became a crash pad for everybody.

Brian had got this apartment

with his new girlfriend, Anita.

Anita was, even to us,

who've been around. She was incredibly intriguing.

It was difficult to put into words.

Her knowledge of things was just fantastic, you know?

I found myself going round to Brian's more and more,

and not to see Brian, of course, but to see Anita.

The flat was an incredible mess.

They never decorated it.

I don't know what we all found so fascinating.

I think it must have been Anita.

She really brought something to The Stones.

She was only 23

but I was only 18.

♪ He walks along Singing his fairy song ♪

♪ Picking up magic That grows at his feet ♪

I was making music.

And I was acting.

And I fell in love with Mick.

But neither Anita nor I wanted to be with them

because we wanted some of their power.

We had our own power.

You know, Anita broke through

a sort of very sexist time.

And she demanded that people follow on her terms

rather than on anybody else's terms.

And her influence was a tremendous one,

especially on Brian.

You know, she got him far more sophisticated than he was.

By then, I was in London, playing in a pop band.

I was part of the whole Rolling Stones scene,

and that's when the psychedelics come in,

where suddenly there's this

whole other dimension that opened up.

We started doing acid and I stopped modeling.

You couldn't do both, and I loved acid.

But things got a little spooky

when Brian started to have bad trips.

He saw monsters falling out of the cupboards

and enemies everywhere.

He had terrible asthma

and he started taking amphetamines.

STP, Mandrax, barbiturates, Dexedrine,

all prescription fucking shit.

We are in the swimming pool of a motel

which happened to be by the roadside and...

He started to become aggressive.

Some typical Georgia idiot, you know?

And Georgia is full of idiots.

man: Anything that you'd like to say right now

- before the camera rolls out? - Goodbye.

- Goodbye. - Goodbye.

His sudden rages scared me.

I had to learn to stand my ground.

He would hit her.

It was really awful.

And Anita fought back.

She would just punch him straight back

and really hurt Brian,

'cause he was quite weedy.

Brian was very weak, you know?

That's why he was so cruel and

physically violent, I think.

But she never complained, no.

She just got on with it.

When I was sent my first film script,

he was so jealous he ripped it up.

man:

I did it anyway.

man:

I'd read in a newspaper

an article about a prostitute

who, in a brawl, had killed her pimp...

...and felt no guilt about it,

so she hired two guys.

The three of them drive

to the countryside to dispose of the corpse.

[in English] But they have such a good time

in the countryside

that they forget about the guy in the trunk.

On the windshield,

we had written on a little paper,

"Fuck the message."

Meaning this movie has no meaning.

I was very surprised when one day,

she showed up with Brian Jones

in the small town of Munich, a Stone.

It was obvious that Brian was very much

depending on her affection.

He was very insecure.

Anita told me that

Brian would like to do the music for the film.

Of course, I said yes.

If you are offered a Rolling Stone

to score your movie, in those days,

I mean, you triple the value of your film.

At first, he was very, very serious about it

and he had wonderful ideas.

But two months later,

we could hardly get him to the studio.

He had somehow lost it.

Keith was there,

but probably to play the guitar,

and he saw how everything was going down the drain.

He started to give a hand

and more and more took over.

Things have been running a little fray in the band,

so I thought I'd sort of mend fences with Brian.

And at the same time, I have to admit,

I found Anita fascinating.

There's that thing across the room, you know?

The elephant in the room. Hmm.

At that time, the band, to me, was, uh...

It was my baby.

So, you know, it's a very delicate situation.

When Keith was there, Brian wouldn't hit me.

So thank God for Keith.

Looking after Brian became so difficult,

I ended up downing vodka and...

God knows what else every night.

Trouble was coming.

Brian swallowed drugs in front of a reporter

and set off a wave of busts.

reporter: A national newspaper had tipped off the police

that it would be worth their while

to raid Richards' home for drugs.

Jones admitted that he'd allowed his flat in Courtfield Road

to be used for drug taking.

reporter: The jury have had to decide

did Keith Richard know of the LSD,

which police found in his jacket pocket.

I got busted with Mick in my house.

It was an acid trip.

I mean, we were all just coming down.

There's a knock at the door.

It was the law.

So we've been busted, and now we're out on bail.

And, uh...

run away was our first, you know, manly response.

So that was-- Let's run away just for a bit,

until we have to turn up in court, you know.

So we arranged this trip.

"Let's go to Morocco."

I end up in my car with Anita and Brian.

It has gone from an apartment

to this very intense car ride.

We stopped in Paris.

Got incredibly stoned for a couple of days.

But our aim is to get to Tangier.

And then one day,

Brian falls incredibly ill.

He was very asthmatic

but I don't think it was asthma.

Brian, sometimes, he takes so much shit

that he just needed to be revamped a few days

in machinery.

And the decision was to leave him there.

I presumed that Anita would stay with Brian,

so I was very surprised the next day

when Anita's going, "Let's go."

And now there were two.

At first, I felt bad leaving Brian behind.

But then it was a relief.

I knew my way around Europe.

I felt more in control.

Keith and I smoked hash, big spliffs and poppers.

And we played songs,

a secretive communication with records.

I couldn't hide it.

I found him very attractive, very sexy.

My night with Keith was a revelation,

to have someone loving and tender.

He'd look at me and I'd melt inside.

The next day, we tried to pretend it didn't happen.

We had to be really careful.

If Brian found out, he would kill us.

Suddenly, Anita, from just being

this... I don't know.

To me, at the time, a very confusing situation,

made everything clear.

I was bursting in love with Anita.

Her independence,

her absolute determination to be

whatever you'd so-call "free."

It bewildered me to start with.

And then I started to realize

that both of us were these war babies, you see?

The war permeated your whole upbringing.

Anita just wanted to fucking kick it all over.

But then by the time we got to Marrakesh,

Brian has rejoined us.

Now it's getting complicated.

Brian didn't finish his treatment.

Everyone was on edge.

That night, he picked up two prostitutes

and told me to join in.

I refused.

He ordered room service and started throwing it at me.

Silver, cutlery, glasses.

I was terrified.

And that's when Keith arrived.

He said, "We can't go on like this."

"Let's split."

I can remember our trip back to London.

It wasn't a lover's escape.

I was a wreck.

We just abandoned Brian.

We left without telling him.

But I couldn't take it anymore.

reporter:

When the picture was finished,

we had the premier at the Cannes Film Festival.

- reporter: - Yeah.

reporter:

reporter 2:

[in English] At first, Anita was camera shy.

And then quite the opposite.

She loved it.

man:

She did all kind of clowning

for the photographers

and enjoyed the whole circus.

To walk down the red carpet and all the glamour,

it was fantastic.

There was all of the entourage.

Keith, Stash,

a whole bunch of people,

all dressed in the most extravagant ways.

man 1: Say something. Say something groovy.

- man 2: Say something groovy. - Wow.

- man 1: Oh, wow. - man 2: Oh, wow.

But also, of course, as the composer of the movie,

Brian was there.

I found myself in this position

of having to go to Cannes with Brian,

who otherwise wouldn't go.

Brian had an unspoken mission to get Anita back.

He was very contrite.

He realized that he did absolutely everything wrong

during the Morocco incident.

Anita was very kind.

And, you know, she could have hardened

and said, "I refuse to see you."

She was very tender.

After the premier,

we had a wild night of celebration.

Everybody got stone drunk and stoned otherwise

and falling all over each other.

She was the queen of the group, and that, she enjoyed.

The day after, late in the morning,

I come into Anita's room in the hotel,

and there was Keith having breakfast in bed.

All I went was, "Uh-uh."

I never really understood quite what she saw in me.

For some reason,

she found me as mysterious

and as attractive as I found her,

which is just incredible.

reporter:

It was a different kind of love

than I was used to

and it was a good time in my life.

Keith was still shy.

That's just his nature.

I brought him out with my Italian energy.

Back then, he looked like a lion,

all natural and never more cool.

I was considered, for a while,

to be like the best dressed man in the world.

It was because I was wearing Anita's clothes.

She had an amazing eye.

She was the leader in fashion.

Since Keith went with Anita, he changed the way of dressing.

It really changed. Fantastic.

You see Anita on Keith.

Anita is a charger. She really charges you.

When I think about it,

in those early days, it was fun.

The Stones would play a town.

Then I'd fly to meet them.

Then I'd fly home again.

You know, Brian always carried a torch for Anita

long after it was

proven that they couldn't get back together.

But I think by then,

Keith was much more confident of his relationship with her.

Don't you find respectable people terribly dull?

You're joking, aren't you?

I've only known the most respectable people.

Oh.

My career was taking off.

I was consumed by Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang,

and all the classics.

This is Krankeit,

I want you now. Come.

He wants me.

I was working a lot.

Mostly in European films.

Pretty avant-garde movie-making.

The doctor says no touching.

Disappointed?

She was a very talented actress.

She had a great career ahead of her.

Hello, pretty, pretty.

Hello.

I played a tyrant in Barbarella.

My idea of a quiet summer.

Do you want to come and play with me?

For someone like you, I'd charge nothing.

You're very pretty, pretty, pretty.

My name isn't Pretty, Pretty. It's Barbarella.

producer: Start.

I was on the set once or twice.

Jane Fonda was the exact opposite of Anita.

Both incredibly good-looking with personality

but Jane Fonda, a hard worker, very driven.

And Anita just laid-back,

but since she was intelligent, she got away with it.

Tell me, my fancy, fuzzy freak.

What do think of when you make love to Barbarella?

Anita, in those costumes,

she completely forgot herself.

So I'm your little one-eyed wench.

I'm also The Great Tyrant.

That's nice.

So she became very imperious.

I'm not talking about him. I'm speaking of the angel.

I suppose it was method acting.

She really believed she was the Black Queen.

I would fear for anybody that crossed her.

I remember once,

I happened to say, "Oh, that's nice."

And she turned on me, "Nice?"

"Nice? I hate the word nice."

photographer:

People started treating me like a star

and I kind of loved it.

But whatever fame I had,

it was nothing compared to The Stones.

man:

I was producing the film

for Warner Bros

called Performance.

Very unusual movie.

That's how I met Anita.

She was always gonna be in the film.

It was written for her.

She had a very kind of incisive and biting sense of humor.

She got right to the point, you know?

Who are you? What do you want?

The script was very decadent, very sexy.

When I heard Mick was going to join the cast,

I was wary.

It all felt a little too close.

Mick's character

is a retired rock and roll musician.

He is a recluse,

living in a kind of ramshackle home in Notting Hill.

He's got his two girlfriends there,

sort of ministering to his needs.

Do you think I should wash my hair?

Uh-uh. No.

They're very happy together as a family.

They don't want the outside world to come in.

That is what happens, of course,

when James Fox arrives in the house.

He is the outside world.

Oh, very nice.

And that sets up

this very powerful strange relationship

between the characters in the house.

What's wrong with the lights?

Yeah. Artificial energy.

It's pulsating into the voltage.

Drugs were the ultimate rebellion.

And they were everywhere on set.

Not just the old hippy variety of hashish and acid.

We were doing cocaine and heroin.

James Fox was a professional actor

and we were intimidated by him.

You know where I'm going, pal?

I do.

Like children, we teased him.

You never had a female feel.

No. Never.

I feel like a man.

A man all the time.

That's awful.

He almost flipped out.

There's nothing wrong with me.

I'm normal.

That brought Mick and I closer together.

Uh, can I use the blower up here?

We ain't got a blower up here.

What in God's name has he done to his hair?

We've seen it. We caught it in Hamburg. Your act.

- Oh, yeah. - It was fascinating.

Mick had never done a movie before

and he liked my confidence.

We were spending more time together,

me and Mick.

Yes, no?

Yes, no.

The funny thing is,

I never really fancied Mick at all,

but you spend eight days lying in bed together,

giggling and taking dope just to produce two minutes of film,

and what the hell do you expect?

Performance was replicating

the feeling of that time.

Sex was something much more casual.

Something that you did without any commitment.

All of us could see Mick had fallen in love with Anita.

He hadn't declared it but it was so obvious.

Salud.

When Anita and Mick did Performance,

I knew I had to leave town.

I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it.

I know Keith had a very difficult time.

woman:

Well, I'm making this while he's making that.

It upset him terribly.

He filmed himself on the outside looking in

at the most important people in his life.

It was very difficult for him.

How Keith responds is he writes "Gimme Shelter."

♪ Ooh, a storm is threatening

♪ My very life today

♪ If I don't get some shelter

♪ Ooh yeah, I'm gonna fade away ♪

♪ War, children

♪ It's just a shot away

♪ It's just a shot away ♪

♪ War, children ♪

♪ It's just a shot away

♪ It's just a shot away ♪

Keith never spoke about it.

He just stayed silent.

The most unnerving reaction of all.

I was relieved when the film ended.

I never felt Mick's charm the way other women did.

In any case, all we ever talked about was Keith.

We were never peace and love kind of people.

But we wanted to reassure each other

that everything was okay.

So we decided to take a trip together.

Mick, Marianne, Keith, and I.

Crossing the Atlantic on a freighter,

we must have seemed pretty eccentric

to the people on the ship.

We had great outfits for strolling down the decks.

Beautiful Marianne was always dressed top to toe.

Long gloves, hat, she was like a Tennessee Williams character.

And I was pregnant.

The last thing I expected from this relationship

at that point was

that she actually wanted to have a child.

I was flattered but at the same time, I thought

"This is gonna be a whole new chapter, you know?"

And I said, "Are you sure about this?"

And she said, "Absolutely. Absolutely."

"If I'm gonna have a baby, I want you to be the father."

And I said, "Okay. Then we're in for it. Let's go."

I knew it was time to get off the hard drugs.

To help, I got a shot of morphine

from the ship's nurse.

♪ Here I lie

♪ In my hospital bed

♪ Tell me, Sister Morphine

♪ When are you Coming round again? ♪

♪ Oh...

I thought of her as Sister Morphine for the song.

I made her into Sister Morphine.

I had to visualize it to really write it, you know?

♪ Oh, you see

♪ That my pain is so strong

Between Marianne and I, there was love.

But her relationship with Mick wasn't working anymore.

When we arrived in Brazil,

Marianne didn't like the heat or the mosquitoes.

She decided to go home.

You know, it broke my heart to do that

but I had to leave.

I think it was inevitable.

Although I did love Mick,

we were completely unsuited, I'm afraid.

Mick and Keith and I pressed on to Peru.

We had a suitcase full of money

and we wanted to be far, far away from everybody.

♪ I saw her today At the reception ♪

Mick tried to catch me on my own sometimes...

♪ A glass of wine...

...when Keith was drunk and passed out.

He'd say we should run off together.

But his flirtations were half-hearted

because he knew I was pregnant.

That's when he started to write

"You Can't Always Get What You Want."

♪ You can't always get What you want ♪

♪ You can't always get What you want ♪

♪ But if you try sometimes Well, you might find ♪

♪ You get what you need ♪

♪ Ah, yeah ♪

Anita is in a lot of those songs. Absolutely.

♪ And I went down To the demonstration ♪

She's a muse, I'm sure, though not just for me.

I mean, for several other songwriters

that I can think of.

♪ Sing it to me, honey

♪ You can't always get What you want ♪

♪ You can't always get What you want ♪

There always has to be some kind of friction

between Keith and Mick.

And they need someone in the middle

to bring it all out.

Brian used to say that too.

♪ You get what you need

♪ Ah baby, yeah ♪

He came close to the edge many times.

Who didn't in our group?

But the loss of Brian, it was a dreadful tragedy.

People think of Brian as a sort of ghost,

but he had his own

extraordinary outstanding talent.

Although, he was a very good swimmer,

he had taken a lot of Mandrax before he went in the pool.

And Brian was very weak, physically, anyway.

Poor Brian. I felt very sorry.

Although it was a shock when it actually happened,

nobody was really that surprised too.

There are people... I'm sure that everybody's got

those things about certain people.

- Everybody knows people that... - woman: Mm-hmm.

...you just have that feeling

that they're not gonna be 70 years old ever, you know?

That not everybody makes it, you know?

I was shocked and I felt guilty.

He just kind of flickered out like a light, you know?

The last time I'd seen Brian

was when we were all singing together on the demo

for "Sympathy for the Devil."

♪ When the blitzkrieg raged And the bodies stank ♪

But I hadn't really spoken to him since.

♪ Pleased to meet you all ♪

♪ Hope you guess my name Oh yeah ♪

After he died, she went kind of mad

and she spent all her time putting pictures up of Brian

in the house she shared with Keith

and then taking them all down again

and then putting them all up again.

♪ I shouted out Who killed the Kennedys? ♪

I was seven months pregnant when he died.

I started to have visions

that Brian would reincarnate himself as my baby.

It was very scary.

My son was born in August 1969.

He was a perfect eight-pound baby. Healthy.

We didn't have a name and Keith said,

"Marlon Brando called up today."

And I thought, "Marlon. That's a good name."

"We'll call him Marlon."

♪ Hey, babe What's in your eyes? ♪

♪ I saw them flashing Like airplane lights ♪

♪ You fill my cup, babe That's for sure ♪

Somewhere around there,

Keith wrote on the spot "You Got the Silver"

and then sang it to her.

And it was so beautiful.

They really did love each other.

♪ You got my heart You got my soul ♪

♪ You got the silver You got the gold ♪

♪ You got the diamonds From the mine ♪

♪ Well, that's all right... ♪

Keith was very tender with Marlon.

He would change him, take him for walks,

things that fathers didn't always do in those days.

Things were pretty rosy for about three months,

then Keith went back on tour.

Marlon was too tiny to travel, so we stayed behind.

By this point, Keith didn't care

for me acting at all.

He offered me money to stop working.

He didn't understand it wasn't about the money.

It was just something I wanted to do.

Keith, in his own way, is very possessive

of friends and lovers.

He resented anything that would take her away from him.

He didn't want his woman to work at all.

It wasn't acting, particularly, it would have been anything.

And I think it was difficult for Anita.

She was so talented in her own right

and sort of kept down in a way, you know?

Honestly, I was confused. I felt betrayed.

But the rule with the boys was "never show emotion."

Heroin makes you feel warm, like you belong.

It seemed like a solution.

I was on my own with Marlon for months.

I stopped breastfeeding and I gave him bottles.

When Keith came back, I was very stoned.

I went to dry out at a clinic where they do a sleeping cure.

You talk to a therapist and then they knock you out.

You sleep it off.

I wanted so much to get better.

I wanted to be a good mother.

But it didn't work.

I spent a week banging my head against the walls.

Eventually, I climbed out the window.

The great escape.

While I was trying to get well,

Marlon and Keith had gone to France.

The Rolling Stones had tax problems,

and we all became exiles.

Our new house was right on the Mediterranean

and the thought of starting a new life together

was very appealing.

Then Keith decided to make a record in our home.

♪ I wanna tell you 'Bout a dance ♪

♪ That's goin' around ♪

Everyone wanted to come and visit.

We were inundated with people arriving

to start work on the new album.

♪ Don't move your hands ♪

♪ Don't move your lips ♪

♪ Just shake your hips ♪

♪ Do the hip shake, babe ♪

First time I saw Anita with Marlon

was in the south of France

when they were doing Exile on Main St.

♪ Well, if you don't know ♪

Anita adored Marlon.

Such a sweet child.

Keith had set up a studio in the basement,

and it was a zoo.

There were dozens of people hanging around,

taking drugs, doing whatever.

You had no idea who would be there

and what state of mind they'd be in.

It's just a crazy atmosphere.

I was the only one who could speak French

and I was over-responsible for everything.

It was like running a hotel.

There were 20 to 30 people to feed every day.

Mommy, Daddy.

Mommy.

Follow me. Come with me.

Marlon had all the toys he wanted,

but there was not that much time for him.

He had to be part of the music, and he was.

He'd be up all night sometimes listening to people playing,

and he'd be screaming.

It took me a long time but I think by then,

I realized that Keith's music came first.

Everything else came second.

We showed up at Nellcôte in the summer of '71,

I was eight and a half.

My father was a drug smuggler

and he was tasked with bringing cocaine

to Mick Jagger's wedding to Bianca.

My old man and Keith

were all in the same kind of scene,

and my mother was in that scene.

Ultimately, my mother didn't come

because she was...

recovering from a stint in an asylum.

I recognized, even as a kid,

that Anita was a force of nature,

striking and charismatic.

She was the alpha in the room until Keith came along

and then they were both sort of co-alphas.

Can you turn the piano up just a bit?

You know, just like the off...

Charlie, did you get that? We're gonna try that...

Everything sort of became nocturnal

'cause Keith was nocturnal.

man: Yeah, which amps are you coming out of, Keith?

My brother and I would sit down there and watch.

man: So we listen to it.

There's a broken string on that one there, it has to...

Everyone was just sitting around a lot

waiting for Keith to, you know, come to.

All right. We're about to sing here.

By now, Keith had a heroin habit too.

And he was secretive about it.

It should be down in there.

He would go into the bathroom

and shut the door,

so you never knew how much he was taking.

Keith would invite people over,

and they'd stay all hours.

And it was her job to kick them out,

throw them out violently.

Generally, she'd kind of storm in

and throw her Germanness around

and they'd leave pretty quickly

'cause that was something he couldn't do.

He could not get rid of the hangers-on.

They were happy to sit there and just sort of stare at him

while he basically snored.

Anita became a bit of a bodyguard.

I have no idea what it felt like

to be the queen in this castle of, you know, dissolute men.

But there weren't a lot of women in the house.

She couldn't stand it.

She had to hold the whole situation

in her hands.

And there were really people around, I think,

that must have been very annoying for her.

But that's the part of being famous, no?

She was fierce,

and, you know, she would snap.

But not at the kids.

She was generous and funny to the kids.

And then we were there for a month and a half or so,

and my mother passed away.

My dad sort of went on a bender.

I remember her navigating it,

trying to figure out what she could do

and, um...

Fuck. I'm sorry.

She filled the vacuum of a surrogate parent, you know?

And she was lovely like that.

Her thing was trying to give us joy.

Anita used to dance with the kids.

We'd Jumpin' Jack Flash it.

There was a lot of boogie-woogie piano playing,

which the kids loved.

There were no bedtimes. There was no structure.

One night, she cut a line

and I said, "Can I have some?"

And I could see her trying to compute.

She said, "Okay. Well, just this little bit."

So I had my first little bump with Anita.

Uh, it never happened again.

She knew she made a mistake.

reporter: In Nice, France, today,

police disclosed that Mick Jagger

and the four other members of The Rolling Stones rock group

have been charged with illegal use of heroin.

A warrant was issued

for the arrest of guitarist Keith Richards and his wife

who failed to appear.

My parents, they were quite blatant

about their drug use.

So eventually the police were called for some incident.

It was very dramatic.

Policemen outside, all that sort of thing.

There was a warrant out for both of them,

and we had to leave France pretty quickly.

We split before the cops raided the house.

My motto was "forward, forward, forward."

"Never look back."

I remember having to leave a lot of my toys

that were sent away, packed up, and put in storage

and never sent on.

That's how it was.

Living such a shambolic and hectic sort of lifestyle,

you'd lose things anyway.

I mean, just lose things.

In like three years, we probably moved house

about 20 times, at least.

And possessions you leave behind,

you never see again.

We couldn't go back to England.

The police in England, they're always watching,

watching the houses...

I remember being very fearful when we were living in London.

We'd go back to our house in Cheney Walk

and they'd immediately draw the curtains

and start staring out the window all the time

looking for the cops.

There was this sort of

Bonnie and Clyde thing about it.

I mean, we actually, literally, were running out of houses.

One suitcase and a kid zooming off

with cops in the trees.

The reason we're in Switzerland,

is it's the only country in the world that would have us.

We're fucking junkies, for Christ's sake.

We got a nice place in Villars.

A simple little cottage.

A ski chalet with meadows and a stream.

One of the earliest memories I have

was my sister being born in Switzerland.

It was a beautiful Sound of Music sort of day.

Alps, trees, sunlight.

The hospital was down the mountainside

from where we lived.

I remember running down this hill,

ran up to this plate glass window

and in the plate glass window was a nurse holding my sister.

It was just amazing.

It was wonderful to have a sister.

My daughter had a square smile

just like mine.

But her birth was traumatic.

She was two months early

and I was still trying to get clean.

We laid low in Switzerland.

The cops couldn't get us here.

I was given the name Dandelion when I was born.

I completely blame my brother for that one.

Some evil vendetta.

Having a baby sister, maybe he was like,

"Yes, you shall be named Dandelion."

Maybe Marlon will tell you his middle name.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Marlon Leon Sundeep Richards.

Leon Sundeep spells LSD.

So I went to my father and I told him.

I said, "Is this coincidence or is this intentional?"

And he chuckled and he said,

"Your mother had a sense of humor, didn't she?"

In Switzerland, we are a normal family

with growing children.

And we are outside a lot.

We play

and we do all of the things that families do.

In the winter, we are skiing and tobogganing

almost every single day.

Switzerland actually was quite happy,

and it felt like a skiing holiday.

Everyone wearing snow suits and all that sort of stuff.

The ski run was down the road.

Literally, just walk out the door, get up on a ski lift,

go up to the top, and then you'd ski down the mountain.

You'd ski right to your house.

It was a very domestic time. It was a very settled time.

Keith and Anita were really good skiers by this point.

To learn to ski when you're like

in the deepest depths of addiction

is just unbelievable.

I mean, it's nothing you'd generally take up.

It's not the idea of like, "Oh, I'm gonna, you know,

go down a mountain every day,

do massive shot of heroin

and gonna go on the black run."

We met these wonderful rich boys in Geneva.

They turned out to be very loyal.

The best friends we ever had.

When I meet Anita,

she was a very unpredictable person,

which is something I liked.

You know, in Switzerland, in social dates,

to meet somebody unpredictable

is like putting a bit adventure in your life.

She had values

and then she would throw them out of the window in one second.

You know, to us, she was somebody like dangerous.

You know, we loved her.

She created this anarchy that we needed.

I was surprised to see them

move into that tiny chalet lost in Villars.

You know, I mean, what the hell were they doing there?

And enjoying themselves, it seemed.

But there was a lot of dramas.

Anita was sometimes furious and screaming

and terrorizing everybody, you know,

and throwing things around.

And then an hour later, she would appear.

She would serve you tea.

She was creating this constant chaos.

If anything was bothering her,

she wouldn't wanna talk about it.

And I'd say, "Oh, we have to sit down and talk about this."

It was not an option with Anita.

You know, it was, you know,

a plate come flying through the room.

I think junk, for her, was almost necessary

just to suppress the energy.

There was a maelstrom in her head.

She was agitated by voices

that she couldn't control sometimes.

Keith said that he was taking a lot of drugs

because of the pressure of being a Rolling Stone.

We were always waiting for the drugs to arrive.

I would try to stop Keith and he would try to stop me,

but we never stopped ourselves.

The straight road had been lost.

They never went to bed

before six or eight o'clock in the morning.

They are not in a state of taking care really of the kids.

Marlon was considered an adult.

One night,

we're all going to see Dr. Feelgood.

And Anita rambles about something.

And Marlon, you know, he leans in front of the camera.

He says, "Mama, don't talk. Don't talk."

- Mama, don't talk. - All right.

Marlon was a commanding force.

And he had a lot on his shoulders.

A lot on his shoulders, 'cause he was sometimes

the man in the house.

We were constantly being left alone

while Keith went off on tour.

I think after the first tour we did,

my mother found it too exhausting

having a small child on tour.

Being a mother,

she found a very chauvinistic environment.

Very ugly.

It's a very unhealthy environment,

psychologically, physically, and definitely mentally.

It was only there for the four or five people

who were on stage every night.

There was no interest in anyone else, really.

The Stones had become a corporation.

The guys in suits.

The nebula of yes men.

The wheel was set in motion.

It was a totally different scene.

The band was like an organism,

a multifaceted one.

Jade Jagger calls it the Org,

or the Bus is another good word she calls it.

The Bus comes first.

You can get off the bus, you can get on the bus,

but the bus is always going somewhere

and it's always on the move.

The Bus isn't healthy and you have to get off it.

When he came home, Keith got stoned a lot.

He also spent a lot of time sleeping.

But one night, we got romantic

and I fell pregnant again.

My parents told me we're gonna have another baby.

They were very excited.

I remember Anita thinking it was a

sort of new lease on life.

It brought them together more, obviously,

for a short period of time at least.

For him, you know, the more, the merrier really.

But then he didn't really have to deal with, you know,

for, A, childbirth and, you know, B, child-rearing.

Tara was a beautiful baby.

I was over the moon.

I was constantly with him in my arms.

Tara was born prematurely.

And I do remember him coming home and seeing him

and then him having to go back to the hospital quite a lot.

Back and forth, back and forth.

There were complications.

My parents were very concerned about that.

I remember being at the hospital,

helping her out.

Keith wasn't around

and Anita was, at that time,

I guess a bit alone.

She was supposed to have people looking after her.

They just weren't, at some point,

and left her on her own.

And I think Anita felt abandoned by everyone.

On that fatal night, I was at a party.

Suddenly the phone rang

and I don't know how she found me.

I don't know who found me.

She was screaming and she was...

She was in a state.

I went to the house.

This house was just like chaos itself.

I tried to make Tara breathe

but the kid was cold and stiff.

I think I fainted at one point.

It was so difficult.

Anita was completely out of control.

She cried. She screamed.

She was... She was... it was terrible.

She had this animal thing that came out, you know?

Like she wanted to... She wanted him to be alive.

And it was an extremely sad moment.

Keith was in Paris the night I believe he heard.

There's a bit of footage from the concert.

He insisted on going on stage that night.

The band, from what I gather, was saying,

"No, you can't. Your son's just died."

But he insisted the show must go on.

I supposed he played very well. Very, very well.

Yeah!

Tara had died a crib death.

He was only 10 weeks old.

I was heartbroken.

The Swiss doctors told me it wasn't my fault.

But if I'd been more together, could I have done something?

Keith never blamed me.

He's not like that.

But I blame myself.

I had a nervous breakdown.

Tara, he's never... he's never really been

talked about, to be honest,

but his memory's there.

But Marlon and I find it hard, and my mom never talked about it

and my dad never talks about it.

And I think maybe now, as we're getting older,

we probably should have...

probably could've talked to Mom about it a bit more, but...

It wasn't really much of a topic, shall we say.

It was never really brought up much again.

It was too painful.

I think they just couldn't cope, either of them.

I had to take Angela and put her with my mother,

'cause it was incredibly sad for us.

But given the circumstances, it was the only decision.

I think we were in a hotel.

I don't know what hotel we were in

but my nan and Bill came and picked me up.

And my mom was just... She was just in bed.

She didn't really know that I was leaving.

She didn't say goodbye.

She was pretty much out of it, I would say, probably.

And my nan and Bill came and got my little suitcase,

and that was it, I just went.

I don't know what I was told at the time.

I think I was just going there for a little while

while my mom was just sorting herself out,

and my dad was as well.

Angela would have been four years old.

Just went on permanently from then.

We were split up.

She stayed in England

and we went to live in the States.

Maybe it was just a new start.

Maybe that sort of thing.

I mean, it's somewhere different.

Yeah.

It was like a new life.

My idea of America was The Brady Bunch.

But we were in the middle of nowhere. Upstate New York.

My parents weren't getting on very well at that point.

Keith was, I think, just doing his sort of shit,

fucking off and disappearing for weeks on end.

It was basically a lawyered decision

to some degree that they should...

He was either told to like, you know,

choose The Rolling Stones or choose her.

You can't have both

because you're self-destructing if you stay with her.

And I'm sure she told the lawyers

to go fuck themselves.

And she probably threw something at them.

I moved in with Anita and Marlon

in July of '78.

Anita hired me

to be the governess or nanny for Marlon.

My masters was in Special Ed.

And it was my understanding from Anita

that he was "home-schooled."

He had never been to school.

And he was eight.

But Marlon was amazing.

He was a brilliant little boy.

And I just tried to normalize suburban living,

going to school,

being an eight-year-old kid having fun.

Anita was just in this very small...

closed provincial community,

bored out of her mind,

just getting off of the loss of a child,

and she was dependent on the record company

for just about everything.

They had quite a bit of control over her life.

She did not have possession of her own passport,

so she was pretty much at their mercy

and needed to ask permission to travel.

She was a caged animal.

I think she was really angry, yeah.

I think the whole situation wore her down after a bit.

She was very lonely up there.

And she befriended this young guy.

He was 17, 18-ish.

Scott and his cousin

did a lot of odd jobs around the community.

They seemed to kind of be knockabouts.

Anita was very lenient, very laid-back,

and, you know, "Help yourself."

They were just friends until...

until they weren't.

You know, he might not have been a minor,

but, in my mind, he was just...

he was just too...

He was a kid.

My grandmother kept me very sheltered

about my mom and my father's lifestyles.

But I'd go out there in the summer holidays

and see them.

The relationship was definitely a bit stifled.

Old-fashioned, my nan would say.

She just didn't really see what was, you know,

what was going on or understand it.

And, you know, she was...

She was bad mom in my nan's eyes.

When Keith's mom came to visit with Angela,

Anita treated her like she was made of glass.

She just would sit and look at her

and, you know, talk about her dress,

and admire her.

Admire her.

And I think she was longing

but she didn't wanna get too close

'cause she knew they were leaving.

She held a lot against Doris,

the reason why she didn't have Angela with her.

It was the last day of school, July 28th, 1979.

I was like ten.

I'd just finished summer school.

Got off the bus.

No one was home really. At least, I didn't think so.

So I walked in, made a sandwich.

Sat down, turned the TV on.

man: It was an exciting time ten years ago today.

Watched this ABC Special on the moon landings.

Neil Armstrong: Houston, the Eagle has landed.

I didn't realize Anita was even in the house.

And then I hear a loud bang.

And then a scream.

Anita came down in a night gown, just covered in blood.

Screaming, saying, "Oh, my God. Scott's blown his head off,"

or shot himself or something like that

and freaking out.

She was losing her shit. Losing her shit.

I remember running upstairs rather morbidly.

The TV was on.

They'd been watching Deer Hunter.

And the Russian roulette scene came up

and he decided to emulate it.

And, unfortunately, he lost.

I remember going around the room

because I was always taught as a child to clean up.

If there's anything dodgy around, get rid of it.

There was like drug paraphernalia around,

so I kind of scooped it into a bag or something

and threw it in the rubbish.

And then I remembered, "Oh, shit, the pistols."

The guns in the house were Keith's.

So I kind of took those and put those away too

'cause I knew the cops were coming.

And there was 25 cop cars around.

They hauled her off to jail, I think, for a bit.

Searched the house for dirty bits, all that.

It was very, very dark.

We were drifting a little anyway.

It was at that point, I had to actually say to Anita,

"I'm not living with you anymore."

I really had to say, you know, "Look, I have to leave."

It wasn't safe to stay there.

We pretty much moved out that night.

That was it. We were out of that house.

She had to go off and be coached by lawyers.

I was whisked off to Paris to stay with my father.

The next time I saw her was like four months later.

She was living in a hotel in New York.

All I heard was the click of a gun.

It was someone's life and I'd had my back turned.

I felt like some nasty person

who caused death and destruction around her.

I slid further into the depths of heroin addiction,

scoring on the streets of Alphabet City.

I started stealing drugs from my friends.

I sat in the Mudd Club

and watched my former self on video.

I felt totally at the mercy of dark powers,

the living dead.

She just descended. Descended pretty badly.

She painted herself into a corner pretty much.

She was such a nightmare that I think

basically she was her own worst enemy.

In the end,

it was the alcohol that brought me down.

I was so drunk, I'd fallen off the bed.

And that's where they found me.

But I survived.

I wasn't sure that I would.

By that point, especially,

she'd seen enough people dying off.

She knew that if she didn't clean up,

it would be her.

Yeah.

She went off and did some rehab.

She went to one place

in the middle of nowhere pretty much.

All the counselors were these huge ex, like, military types.

She had to sit in the middle of this room with her sponsor,

and me and my sister and her sister.

And she had to read out like a massive essay

she wrote to each of us with what she'd done wrong to us

over the years and apologize to us.

And it was heartbreaking. It really was.

I thought I'd broken all the bridges.

I thought the children wouldn't wanna know me anymore.

It's been a very difficult journey

for me and Marlon.

Sometimes we had... my dad.

He sat down with me one day and he explained it all

and broke down.

Yeah, it's hard.

Just, you know, they weren't in a good place.

But I've never wanted an apology.

I just think if you're proving yourself

and changing your life and wanting to do better,

I'll take that as an apology.

In NA, when you're in recovery,

we look back at our past,

we look at everything that we've done,

and assess it.

We don't judge it but we assess it,

and we don't leave anything behind closed doors.

When Tara died,

it must have been extremely difficult for Anita.

Keith certainly wasn't a father in the...

in the normal sense of the word.

To me, she was one of The Rolling Stones.

She certainly was one of the boys.

But nobody was there to help her.

She had a lot of strength and...

I mean, I don't know how she survived so long.

I would like to bring Tara's ashes to Rome,

to the family grave.

Can I lay to rest the ghosts

that have haunted me for so many years?

I still feel young,

but I look in the mirror and I realize that I'm not.

I started writing.

It was difficult at first

but the memories came flooding back.

I knew I had to understand myself

and the people I grew up with,

and not be daunted that everyone else

thinks of them as giants.

I don't regret anything.

All the fires I had been through

had been like a cleansing,

and fires are extraordinary.

But I've gotta get my own thing going again.

She really had two acts in her life,

and the first act was very different from the second.

To her credit, she got herself together.

I mean, not many people did. My old man certainly didn't.

She got herself together. She got sober, you know?

She got the wake-up call.

I think the desire to not be a victim saved her.

She wanted to achieve things.

By the time I was at secondary school,

she was just much more involved in my life.

And that's when she started to go to college.

So we were both students. It was quite funny.

She said it wasn't easy being that person in there.

But she said it was great, and she worked really hard.

I think that gave her a great deal of confidence.

A great deal of confidence.

She was so proud of herself,

and we were all very proud of her.

I have this picture of her with her hat

and her certificate,

grinning, when she graduated.

Yeah, she talked a lot about going to art school.

I think she probably found herself,

like her true self,

'cause there was nothing,

you know, none of that Stones thing.

She was a student. She was with other students.

And she was just like Anita.

I didn't know her when she took drugs, so... But...

she was so interesting without them.

Anita loved Kate.

She, you know, took a lot of inspiration

from the young people she was with.

She loved hanging out with young people.

And Kate sort of credited her with her style.

And that's when she got this reputation

as a fashion icon.

I knew about Anita, like, as an icon.

She was one of my heroes before I met her.

man: She is a historical figure.

She's Anita Pallenberg

and this is a woman who has lived a very intense

and dangerous life.

She had the best style.

I mean, I still try to recreate that stuff.

It was the original bohemian rock chick

that people still aspire to today.

Anita did not agree with plastic surgery.

She thought it was naff, very unchic.

She just had such a strong personality.

She didn't give a fuck.

And she was everything you want a rock star to be.

Or like just the...

For me, everything you want a woman to be.

You know, we are talking about a one-off here.

What I loved about Anita was...

Well, there's a naturalness about how she operated

and a sort of... almost an innocence about it,

even in its most Machiavellian form.

She was my woman. [laughs]

We stuck together through a lot.

But it was a total experiment really,

and it was a hell of an experience,

but she made a man out of me, and...

My dad's always said that, "I've always loved your mom

but I just couldn't live with her,"

which, I'm sure, she probably would say the same

about him at the time as well.

Keith's a decent guy.

He's no angel, but neither am I.

We've been through too much together to fight.

He says he's probably gonna die on stage.

His truth is different to my truth.

It's funny how life comes around.

I started acting again.

Where's my change?

What, it's $50 a piece?

Change? Take your change in coconuts

I used to wipe your ass, for Christ's sake.

Well, we're even then.

Get off home, back to your mommy.

The moment, yeah. Oh, my God.

Well, it's pretty heavy.

I never thought I could look even remotely like the Queen.

But they managed to...

Even now, the other day,

I saw it on TV and I said, "My God, I look like her."

Like, I don't know, I felt part of a social structure and such.

Having lunch at the Queen's house

at Buckingham Palace and all of that,

it's just, for me, it's not where I come from.

And James Fox from Performance...

Do you like my physique?

...he and I end up in bed again.

You think people will come?

Of course, they will.

They will come to see the greatest show on Earth.

The scene in bed with James Fox,

we kind of did that very kind of quietly,

because we both kind of were traumatized

by the way we look.

Obviously, we've both grown older,

so we gotta play it all very down

and didn't do any kind of crazy things in it.

And so, that's fine.

It's just fine.

I hope I haven't cleaned my dirty laundry in public,

but writing this has helped me emerge in my own eyes.

Reading over what I've written, I get a lump in my throat.

But it doesn't need to be a doom and gloom kind of story.

♪ Crawling

♪ Over your window You think I'm confused ♪

♪ I'm waiting For the divergent wasp ♪

♪ To complete my current ruse

♪ You use a plate-glass screen ♪

♪ To protect my chosen target

♪ But there's An air-pellet hole ♪

♪ I can crawl through to you

♪ I am the fly in the ointment ♪

♪ I can spread more disease Than the fleas ♪

♪ Which nibble away At your window display ♪

♪ Yes, I am the fly In the ointment ♪

♪ I shake you down To say please as you ♪

♪ Accept the next dose Of disease ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ Yes, I am the fly, I am the fly ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ Yes, I am the fly, I am the fly ♪

♪ I am the fly, I am the fly

♪ Fly in the, Fly in the ointment ♪

♪ I am the fly