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I n a 2008 interview, Anita Pallenberg swore she would never write her autobiography. The artist, model and actor was weary of publishers who only wanted to read about her intimate dealings with the Rolling Stones – she dated both Brian Jones and Keith Richards, and had an affair with Mick Jagger. “They all wanted salacious,” she said then.

“And everybody is writing autobiographies and that’s one reason why I’m not going to do it.” Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg review – rockn’roll ‘muse’ in the spotlight Read more Yet when Pallenberg died in 2017, she left behind pages of a neatly typed manuscript, titled Black Magic, that contained her life story. True to form, she characterised these memoirs as “memory images, a traveller’s tale through a landscape of dreams and shadows” rather than an autobiography.



But she held little back while chronicling her spirited and frequently tumultuous life, quipping: “I don’t think the lawyers will like it very much.” Read in a narration by Scarlett Johansson, her unpublished words are the backbone of a compelling new documentary, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg. Kate Moss celebrates her as “the original bohemian rock chick that people still aspire to today” but more valuable is Pallenberg reframing her legacy on her own terms from beyond the grave.

“I’ve been called a witch, a slut, a murderer. I’ve been hounded by the police and slandered in the press,” she wrote, befor.

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