Nico: Lost in the Land - Part 1: Solitary Dream

Jeff Purdue

Nico:
Chelsea Girl. Verve, 1967.
The Marble Index. Elektra, 1969.
Desertshore. Reprise, 1970.
The End. Island, 1974.

“And she totally changed her image from being a blonde and wearing white to hennaing her hair and wearing black, and lived the dream. Everything that she did was part of a statement that now she was a different person. It was a solitary dream, where occasional friendships were struck, and abandoned . . . and the transitory nature of all of this was really kind of the flotsam, the furniture of her life for these somewhat derelict emotions . . . and it was so highly personal that it was very powerful.”
--John Cale in Nico Icon

The story goes like this: the Velvet Underground, one of the most important groups in rock history, were forced by Andy Warhol to include in their early shows and on their first album Nico, a former fashion model and a regular at the Factory. Her function was essentially as window dressing; she was a tall, blond, beautiful woman who stood to the side and played tambourine. They let her sing on three songs in her toneless, breathy, deep voice. As soon as possible, they were rid of her and got on with the business of becoming legends, while Nico went on to obscurity, recording a few albums and becoming a junkie. She died while riding a bicycle in 1988.

That’s all I knew of Nico until recently, and I suspect that this is the case with many people. Some who read this will have heard her solo work, or might know a bit more about the events mentioned above, and will therefore know that the story as presented here is false in almost every particular. But in the fanboy world of rock and roll, such casual misogyny is not only common, it’s the price of admission.

Luckily for me, however, I saw not long ago Susanne Ofteringer’s superb documentary Nico Icon. I was introduced to a complicated person whose story is more than worth retelling. More importantly, I got to hear a sampling of Nico’s solo music. I was simply unprepared for its power, its beauty, its darkness, and its tantalizing glimpses into the mind of a person whose life only ever raises more questions, no matter how many of its details one learns.

My purpose here, however, is not to delve into the details of Nico’s life. For that, turn to Ofteringer’s documentary, or even better, Richard Witts’ Nico: the Life and Lies of an Icon. Instead, I would like to focus on Nico’s music. Too much attention on the often sensational aspects of her life can lead one into a trap, a trap that Nico herself had great difficulty in escaping, the trap of being seen as an object. She is mostly famous, after all, for being a fashion model, an oddity, and as an actress in other people’s films. The last 20 or so years of Nico’s life were largely spent in trying not only to be an artist (she succeeded at that), but also in being seen as one. Indeed, she was an artist with a remarkably consistent vision, discernible right from the beginning.

But even though my intention is to focus on her music, work and life never completely separate themselves, much to the consternation of whatever New Critics might still be around. Pop music, in particular, depends upon an imagined relation between the musician, the music, and the listener. And so, I find the following comments from Nico Icon highly interesting: Carlos de Maldonaldo-Bostock (charmingly described simply as a "bohemian"): "No one loved Nico and Nico loved no one . . . she was just alone . . . she couldn’t bear for anyone to touch her . . . Nico had sex with no one"; Viva: "Nico had no inner life, or what inner life she did have was kept strictly inner . . . there was nothing to talk to Nico about because she had no interests"; Lutz Ulbrich: "Heroin does make you a colder and a meaner person . . . not so much Nico because she had always been different."

First of all, we need to take everything said above with a grain of salt. Each person has his or her own agenda, his or her own need to remember and interpret events as they do. Nevertheless, an odd portrait emerges. De Maldonado-Bostock (an occasionally insightful if somewhat suspect narrator) also says that "Nico spoke no language--not articulately, at least." And this does seem to be true. She seems to have been someone who had trouble connecting with people in any very direct way. This difficulty at times bordered on the sociopathic (particularly, of course, during the period of her heroin addiction). And yet many people, and many of these same people already quoted, found her charming and fun to be around. If she was someone who had difficulty expressing an inner life, if she was profoundly inarticulate, then it is odd that she also produced such powerful music. In fact, it may be partially because of these limitations that her art became so singular.

Next page: The voice . . .