Brief encounter

A still of Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg from Performance, printed in the newspaper recently, revived an ancient memory…

It was 1965 in Rome; the band had had two one-month contracts to play every night at the Piper Club on Via Tagliamento. We were now looking for more work, and someone had arranged a photo-shoot in a park for publicity. We spoke very little Italian, so it was frequently impossible to know what was really going on. Anyway, this young beauty appeared; very attractive, blond hair, seriously short skirt, and was instructed to drape herself around us for the pictures. The bass player Roy looked at me, and I at him, as if to say, ‘I’ll fight you for her…’ It was decided that we would all go to the beach. This was starting to get very interesting…
 
We piled into two cars and were on our way with high expectations. But, the world turned… As the car I was in rounded a corner, we saw that car No 1, the inevitable Fiat Cinquecento, had impacted something or another, and half the rear end was hanging off exposing the engine. That was the end of our trip to the beach, and we never saw the girl again. Until a few years later that is, when I noticed some publicity shots for Performance. I knew it was her in a clinch with Mick Jagger, because she had such a memorable name - Anita Pallenberg. Very much later, I saw her in an episode of Ab Fab.
 
I tried to explain to someone recently regarding my total lack of fame in the music business, that the best we could say was that we rubbed shoulders with those who rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous; occasionally, we did. I have trouble believing that it happened 51 years ago…