Patti Hansen was born in Staten Island New York on March 17, 1956 , and was a model for Calvin Klein and Revlon. Patti Hansen’s world on Staten Island, New York, was hardly a hotbed of rock’n’roll. Patti came from a background of early nights and clean habits, and parents who expected her in church on Sunday. Patti was at her summer job, selling hot dogs on the beach, when she was discovered by a vacationing manger from the Wilhelmina agency. Three months later, she was on the cover of ‘Seventeen’. “Patti was completely uninhibited,” sayd the photographer Frances Scavullo. “She was always running around naked on location shoots. Nothing fazed her.” Even as a supermodel Hansen went for the laugh, didn’t seem to take herself too seriously. Along with her apple-pie looks, her bubbling humor and unspoilt sense of decency made her “the real thing”. Patti enjoyed a beer and a pizza, and came across as a cheerful, well-adjusted adult. She met Keith through Jerry Hall. Patti was soon accompanying Keith on the rounds of New York clubs, bars and record shops for days on end. She came back from her family's place on New Year's Eve to find him sitting on the stairs outside her apartment, waiting for her. Keith liked being out of the orbit of drug dealers and hangers-on. Patti would influence him to rid himself of the final vestages of his habit, which had trailed off into the odd dabble. Keith starting filling the hole in his heart, instead of a hole in his arm. Love is better than rehab, any day. In an interview Keith is asked why he never married Anita, and he says: "Because its me now, and it's Patti, and it's a different point of view. Anita and I, in the sixties, were never interested in marriage. It seemed an archaic and dumb thing to do just to have a child.... And Patti and I have a different relationship. And besides, shit, I'm gonna try anything. And if I'm gonna try anything like marriage, I'm only gonna try it once. And if I'm gonna try it once, it's gonna be with this chick..." Keith married Patti on his 40th birthday in Mexico. Mick, the only other member of the band present at the secret ceremony, was best man.
(photos by Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, and corbis)
