Anita [Pallenberg] and I went to Rome that spring and summer [1967], between the bust and the trials, where Anita played in Barbarella, with Jane Fonda, directed by Jane’s husband Roger Vadim….
We lived together in this magnificent palace, the Villa Medici, with its formal gardens, one of the most elegant buildings in the world, that Stash had managed to pull off. His father, Balthus, had an apartment there, some diplomatic role via the French Academy, which owned the building. Balthus was away, so we had his place to ourselves. Down the Spanish Steps for lunch. Nightclubs, hanging out at the Villa Medici, going to the gardens of the Villa Borghese. It was my version of the Grand Tour….
Marianne and Mick stayed with us for a while. Hear Marianne on the subject.
Now that’s a trip I’ll never forget. Me and Mick and Keith and Anita and Stash. On acid, at night in the full moon at the Villa Medici. It was just utterly beautiful. And Anita’s smile I remember. I mean, her wonderful smile in those days, which promised everything. When she was having a good time, she was so full of promise. She gave this incredible smile, which was quite frightening too, all those teeth. Like a wolf, like a cat that got the cream. If you were a man, it must have been very powerful. She was gorgeous because she was so beautifully dressed, always in the perfect costume.
Anita had a huge influence on the style of the times. She could put anything together and look good. I was beginning to wear her clothes most of the time. I would wake up and put on what was lying around. Sometimes it was mine, and sometimes it was the old lady’s, but we were the same size so it didn’t matter. If I sleep with someone, I at least have the right to wear her clothes. But it really pissed off Charlie Watts, with his walk-in cupboards of impeccable Savile Row suits, that I started to become a fashion icon for wearing my old lady’s clothes. Otherwise it was plunder, loot that I wore — whatever was thrown at me on stage or what I picked up offstage and happened to fit. I would say to somebody, I like that shirt, and for some reason they felt obliged to give it to me. I used to dress myself by taking clothes off other people.
I was never really interested very much in my look, so to speak, although I might be a liar there. I used to spend hours stitching old pants together to give them a different look. I’d get four pairs of sailor pants, I’d cut them off at the knee, get a band of leather and then put another color from the other pair of pants and stitch them in. — Keith Richards, from his autobiography Life (read for free)
