Taking inspiration from Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, Elizabeth Winder’s Parachute Women is a biography which reads like a novel, and a thrillingly intriguing one too. It concerns four women pivotal to the Rolling Stones’ progression to becoming the biggest, baddest band on earth, and proves that Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt and Bianca Jagger were far more than the proverbial long-suffering wives and girlfriends, or “groupies”.

Pallenberg, a smart, confident and rebellious actress and model, spoke multiple languages and had an influence on the band’s defiant attitude as well as their musical and sartorial style, notably the skull ring worn by Keith Richards. (Winder quotes a rock journalist from the era as saying: “Look at pictures of Keith before and after Anita. It’s like the difference between Buddy Holly and Jack The Ripper.”) Singer and actress Faithfull contributed musically and introduced Mick Jagger to a whole new world of art and literature, giving the frontman her copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita to read and in turn inspiring the lyrics to Stones hit Sympathy For The Devil.

Although Hair actress, singer, model and future novelist Hunt – along with friend of Warhol, Studio 54 frequenter and future humanitarian worker Jagger – enter the frame later on in Parachute Women, their relevance is not to be played down, and tops off an unputdownable rollercoaster of a read that gives long overdue credit to four incredible women.