Parachute Women: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones

Poet Winder (Marilyn in Manhattan) paints a fascinating portrait of Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg (1942–2017), four women who styled, wrote lyrics for, and in equal measure enraptured and enraged the Rolling Stones. Actors, models, and artists in their own right, the women helped catapult the British lads into the spotlight, styling them from their own wardrobes and introducing them to film directors, acclaimed writers, and high-society elites. But they also became targets for the band members’ frustrations and insecurities, including how Pallenberg’s relationship with Brian Jones—and its media attention—stirred up jealousy in Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, with whom she went on to have a 13-year relationship. Winder traces how the band shot to popularity even as the women’s public images nose-dived, as when a drug raid at Richards’s house found Faithfull, the only woman with the band at the time, naked under a bearskin rug: “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll became an icon, and Marianne became... a symbol for the general moral degeneracy.” Winder’s renderings of fiery, messy love affairs, bonds and betrayals, and vicious rivalry are backed up by keenly described historical background and an expert understanding of 1960s and ’70s rock culture. The result is a wild ride worthy of rock’s heyday. (July)