Nico: Lost in the Land: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

But Nico was capable of effective, and affecting, lyrics, as another song on Desertshore demonstrates. On "Afraid," Nico is accompanied by only a piano and a viola, and the effect is very warm. Susanna Ofteringer, in Nico Icon, uses this song to suggest Nico’s reactions to her career as a model (Ofteringer represents this same idea visually by using clips from the movie Striptease, in which Nico starred in the early 60’s):

Cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own
Cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own
Have someone else's will as your own
Have someone else's will as your own You are beautiful and you are alone
You are beautiful and you are alone

These are highly suggestive lyrics, and we may, as Ofteringer does, associate them with Nico’s modeling career; or, they may suggest something different. But what I’m driving at is that Nico was capable of writing lyrics that function in the way that pop lyrics do--to allow us space to apply them to our own lives, or to construct a fantasy world where the lyrics are directly expressive of the singer’s personality.

Another characteristic song is "Valley of the Kings," from the remarkable album The End. Richard Witts has identified a striking feature of this album that leaves its mark, even if missed (as it was by me). Nico had hit upon the idea of singing the German national anthem on her album, as a kind of protest against her homeland (including the lyrics banned since 1945): "Nico decided then to use the anthem's melody for all of her songs on the album . . . Eventually five of her songs carried variants of Haydn's tune, each opening with the same three notes . . .". Even if not noticed, it is clear that The End is a remarkably cohesive album, perhaps the best of all of Nico's work.

In "Valley of the Kings," a few notes are piled on top of each other in the right hand; then the left hand introduces a solemn chord that swells before giving way to a very simple repetitive pattern (just two notes alternated) played in the right hand while the left holds a chord. At the very beginning, by the way, you can hear the pedals being worked on the harmonium: it sounds very much like a heartbeat. Nico begins to sing, all the while keeping the two notes alternating in the right hand while, in her left hand, she often follows her vocal melody in parallel motion, though not strictly parallel since she changes the interval from a perfect fourth to a fifth to a minor sixth. One remarkable feature of this song employs a variation on her habit of repeating lyrical and melodic material, which we’ve seen above in her song "Afraid." In this case, Nico starts a couple of lines and then pauses, while she holds a chord on the harmonium; she then starts the same lyrics and melody over and carries them forward. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten the lyrics and is pausing to let them come to her. It’s a striking effect:

His weapon be
His weapon be my innocence
The killer must not die

On "die," she stretches the syllable into a lengthy melisma of seven notes, while tracking this vocal movement with her left hand on the harmonium in near parallel motion.
 

As is suggested by what I have written, there is a close, even intimate relationship between Nico and her harmonium. When I had seen the occasional reference to her solo career years ago, this instrument was almost always mentioned as one of her most distinctive features. People have often commented that Nico would carry the harmonium around with her everywhere; James Young said that it was "her only real possession." But the intimacy between Nico and the harmonium is not just the one between owner and object, possessor and possessed. Nico found her artistic self through the harmonium. The playing style she was able to develop, consisting of simple repetitive patterns, of minimal chords (often just two in a song), of notes standing starkly alone or in groups of two or three, of parallel motion: these gave Nico a style through which she was able to shape a body of work which, while not large, is cohesive and powerful and unique.

And after The End, she would largely abandon this style. Nico began by singing other people’s songs and managed to imprint them with something of herself. With The Marble Index, Desertshore, and The End, she was fully able to express her vision. Cale’s help was important, but while his contributions are always intelligent and musical, his best production choices came about when he both let Nico stand alone with her harmonium and also was able to add spare musical elements that enhanced this basic sound. Nico, the artist, moved away from being a mannequin (Richard Witts charts this movement with sensitivity and precision) and became her own person: the "solitary dream" that Cale mentions in the epigraph that begins this article.

In that same epigraph, Cale also mentions "derelict emotions." Around 1971, Nico began a collaboration (and love affair) with the French director Philippe Garrel. Their first work together--and really, their only true collaboration, as far as I can tell--was released in 1972, La Cicatrice Interieur. In this film, Nico acts and contributes all of the music. This would seem to be an extension of her development as an artist. And yet, though she was to release two more studio albums, a body of recorded live work, and several film appearances in the subsequent years, in many ways her collaboration with Garrel is a regression, back to the time before she had established herself as an artist: back to window dressing. After this time, Nico’s work begins to look like a bare strategy for survival rather than the expression of an artistic vision.

Part II of "Lost in the Land" appears in the next issue of HoW, which will be available in June of 2002.

Works Consulted:
Nico Icon. Dir. by Susanna Ofteringer. 1995.
Witts, Richard. Nico: the Life and Lies of an Icon. Virgin, 1995.
Young, James. Nico: the End. Overlook, 1993.