Maybe it was through Anita just being out of the media spotlight, but I always saw her as this chic, jet set chick who stood above the Stones lifestyle and legal problems all those years...Seems more like she was one of the biggest victims of their wicked ways. For all of their brilliant music, they were stupendously irresponsible during the 70s and 80s- ruining peoples lives without any regard for the consequences of their actions... I actually feel sorry for her now...
They were not very irresponsible about other people's lives but also about their own lives. At least some members of the band. Espacially in the 70s.
Hmm......*puts her thinking cap on*
An interesting thing you're saying and it certainly is true in some ways. I'll tell ya what I think. I think Anita to some extent was among those most reponsible for "building" the Stones' image. In a documentary on the Stones - "Just for the record" - there's a guy, and I forgot who said it, but anyway, he said the Anita had something of an architect upon her.
She was an incredible influence in many ways. She may not have influenced the Stones's - espacially Brian's and Keith's - decisions about what to do and not to do and how or how not to do it or whatever, but I'm convinced that she influenced their thinking a bit. I mean, Anita was actually the first woman who could speak her mind and maybe everyone thought she was insane and crazy - Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and the whole lot - but at the same time she had an incredible fascination going out from her. An irresistible fascination. See that quote from Ian Stewart who remembered Anita listening to an early version of 'Stray Cat Blues', the turning to Mick and telling him the drums were too loud or whatever and he rolled his eyes or something like that but eventually he got back to the studio and changed it, recut it. No other woman would have had this influence to tell one of the Stones what needed to be changed - "cause noone tells the bloody Stones how to bloody play!" And most didn't even have the, say, "courage", to face them and say "Listen, this soudns like a load of crap. You need to change this and that." except for their Manager and Ian Stewart.
So, to that point they weren't used to someone telling them they could do better and how to do it better. And Anita did exacly that more than once.
So, I think that was one of those "irresistible" things upon her; she was mysterious in a way and, of course, she looked just fabulous , so many were drawn automatically drawn to her.
I don't know If you've already come that far in the book, Boomer, but there's one passage in which some paragpraphs of Tony Sanchez' book are quoted. Tony claims that Anita once in the 70s found herself alone at Keith's Jamaica estate, was busted because she possessed various drugs and thrown into some Jamaican jail where she was raped. Keith send a guy down there, together with a lot of money, to get her put of the jail and bring her back to London. When she spotted Keith at the airport who was there to pick her up and take her home she "ran into his arms and loocked so wrecked an was just crying and weeping" etc and whatever he writes. Something along those lines.
Well, whether this story of Tony Sanchez is indeed true . you can never know with him - or not, this shows that without the Stones's safety net Anita was more or less helpless. So, saying she as a victim of the Stones' wicked days is certainly true to some extent, but I don't think that's all there is to it.
Anita is just as well as victim of her own life style, not the Stones' alone.
In my opinion, back then, everyone of the "Stones' 70s' 'cast'" got each other on to taking several stupid things and doing several stupid things. It's not the Stones's fault alone. Of course they messed with people's lives as well as they did with their owns, and you can make of it what you want, but there's more to it.
I don't really feel "sorry" for Anita in the common sense. If I said that I would also have to say that I feel sorry for all the Stones' employees (which I probably should - poor guys *lol* ) and the Stones themselves. In a way I do, but I certainly don't have "mercy" or so with any or them. What they did and how they did it and how they lead their lives back in the wicked days is basically their own fault. I know that Mick Jagger, for example, tried to help Keith with his problems, but it wouldn't really work.
Anita was okay, and when keith was home again she would do these things again (y'know what I mean, but I don't think we should express it to openly here, cause I don't want all that I have written here get deleted *lol* ) and it was the same the other way round. Everyone got Each other on things. It was a never ending circle most of the time, so to speak.
Anita carries just as much responsiblity to this mess and Keith and Brian and everyone else did and does.
I hope this makes sense. *lol*
)
I think it's great she still goes to see the Master Musicians of JouJouka with whom Brian had worked. (They also played on the Stones Steel Wheels album on a track called Continental Drift. 
