Chapter 18 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

Now with Ari in tow, Nico returned to New York. Almost imme­diately upon arrival, she found herself once again involved with a Warhol project. Andy had already begun shooting his new film the month before and would continue to complete one thirty-three-minute reel a week on average for almost four months. His primary set was dingy bohemian dive the Chelsea Hotel. At the end of the process, Warhol found himself with too much footage, some black and white, some colour, some with sound. In an ingenious stroke of creativity, the artist decided to show two films side by side on a split screen. Composed of twelve separate episodes featuring Warhol’s assembled cast of Factory intimates and Superstars, the finished product was, according to critics, ‘beautiful’, ‘impactful’ and ‘schizophrenic’, especially when the same person was shown on both reels, exhibiting different actions or parts of their person­alities. Created more as an experiment than a serious cinematic release, Chelsea Girls became a surprise hit. Made for less than $1,500, it grossed over $500,000, setting a precedent for under­ground films.

There were no scripts and barely any direction from Warhol, leaving the Factory regulars who featured to make up their own sketches and scenes on the spot. Warhol’s few instructions would be along the lines of ‘Tell the story of your life, and somewhere along the line take off your pants.’ Echoing her time in La Dolce Vita, where she felt she was ‘already playing the role of Nico’, the singer found herself a bit confused about how to once again inhabit an additional role on top of the persona she was already channelling. As Nico later recalled, this was reflected in the scenes in which she featured that eventually made it into the finished movie: ‘For my scenes, Paul and Andy could not think of a situation for me … I was already Nico. So, for one scene I was nothing but Nico and they put lights on my face. In the other, we were in this white kitchen. I think they wanted somewhere white, isn’t that it? A white girl with blonde hair in a white room. Ari was there, and I think they wanted to keep Ari in control … Then Andy said I must do something. But they wanted me in close-up for the whole reel. I could make a meal in the kitchen, but no, this was too busy … There were some scissors, and maybe Paul said, “Cut your hair.” I didn’t want to. But it was something I could do that was in shot of the camera. The bastards made me cut my hair.’

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Though he had been tasked with writing the theme song for Chelsea Girls, Lou Reed had not delivered, illustrating what biographer Victor Bockris told me was ‘a passive-aggressive signal of how he felt about any further collaborations with Warhol and Nico’. His behaviour towards her became even more nasty. He was openly critical of her in front of other people. The various issues with the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico, ranging from technical problems with Warhol’s peelable banana on the LP cover art to West Coast rivals the Mothers of Invention’s record coming out first, only added to near catastrophic tension.21

Chelsea Girls being a hit did not sit well with Reed, either. As the movie’s popularity grew, so did Nico’s profile and status, mak­ing her known beyond the underworld art-house crowd. Soon she was more famous than Cale – whom she now was sleeping with – or Reed, who was openly jealous of her rising fame. Seeing Nico’s ascent, Morrissey encouraged Warhol to continue his support of the chanteuse, as he thought she was a much more marketable star than Reed. To further her blossoming singing career, Morrissey booked Nico to play some dates in October 1966 at Stanley’s, ‘a hip place where Harlem met bohemia’. The arrangement seemed mutually beneficial for Nico and the proprietor, Stanley Tolkin, who also opened the Dom at St Marks Place. Nico had Ari to sup­port and was anxious to start performing properly as a solo act. Tolkin saw her as a way to rid the venue of the ‘almost 100 percent black clientele’ that he currently had coming in, because they didn’t drink much and lowered the bar take. Tolkin wanted to ‘get some white people in’ and thought that ‘black people [would] hate Nico’s music’.22 A suggestion that the Velvets perform as her backing band – what Nico thought she was signing up for in the first place when she agreed to work with the Velvets – was vehemently opposed by an irate Reed. He did not want any of his bandmates participating either, finally suggesting that they make a tape to accompany her. Warhol vividly remembered Nico ‘trying to work a little cassette recorder’ at the Stanley’s shows. However, he despaired at the overall effect, as ‘it was pathetic to see this big, beautiful woman singing to music coming out of this cheap little cassette, and in between acts the tears would roll down her face because she just couldn’t remem­ber how the buttons worked’.

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There has never been a definitive date or incident that points to Nico either officially quitting or being fired from the Velvets. In Nico: Icon, Sterling Morrison makes it seem like a mutual drifting apart, commenting that ‘she sort of spun off out of the band, just as she spun into it’. Warhol’s account of the final fallout between the duelling divas (Reed and Nico) suggested it was more heated, and he hints that the main issue that dogged the fivesome from the start revolved around who was the band leader – a factor that often goes unacknowledged. In POPism, he writes, ‘Nico and Lou had a fight. (“I’ve had it with the dramatic bullshit,” he said. “Yeah, she looks great in high-contrast black and white photographs, but I’ve had it.”) He said he wouldn’t let her sing with them anymore and, more­over, that he was never going to play for her again, either. (That was actually the big problem right there – was she singing with them, or were they playing for her?)’

Nico’s interview in Twen matches Warhol’s memories. As she recalled, ‘They threw me out because I wanted too much. I wanted to sing more songs and they could have given me more songs … The farewell was unpleasant; they did not even give me the opportunity to say goodbye.’ In subsequent interviews, she was less transparent, simply saying, ‘Too many scenes of jealousy,’ when remarking on the reason for the parting of ways. Illustrating Nico’s point, drum­mer Moe Tucker later said of the split, ‘I was glad to see Nico go. To me she was just a pain in the ass.’

Though being on the receiving end of such comments once she left the group, and having been bullied to the point of tears when she was working with the Velvets, Nico rarely ever uttered a dis­paraging remark about the band, even saying that they were ‘a very good group’. One exception is recorded in Twen, when she asserts, ‘They do not like women at all, except John Cale. They are misogyn­ists.’ Later interviews saw Nico trying to spin her depar­ture into a scenario where it was her choice, thus casting her as the decision-­maker, while also desperately trying to shift the con­versation from the Velvets back to her own work. Glimpses of her true feelings about her time in the Velvets are far and few between, though she did confide in another 1974 piece that she did not ‘regret a minute of it!’ especially because the band ‘were 20 years ahead’ of their time.

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By November, the Velvets had stopped practising at the Factory. Nico finished her residency at Stanley’s and was living with John Cale, having just ended a short liaison with her Chelsea Girls co-star and Factory regular Eric Emerson. Still deeply entrenched in the Warhol cohort, she appeared in a promotion with the artist at the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. The event was held to highlight a $2, one-wear, disposable dress, available in ‘whit­est white twill of Kaycel R’, that came with a do-it-yourself paint set, the idea being that each woman could customize her own apparel. Donning one of the white paper outfits, Nico lay prone in front of silver foiled screens, which were meant to resemble a portable Factory. One hundred spectators crowded into the shop and spilled out onto the streets, waiting to see the artist in action.

In pictures taken of the event, Ari can be seen seated at his moth­er’s feet. He added his own touch to the ensemble, spraying green paint over Nico’s stockinged legs. According to Ultra Violet, Nico then performed ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, which was ‘barely audible against the amplified guitars and male voices’. Just discernible above the din, Warhol proclaimed to the baffled spectators, ‘Nico is the first psychedelic singer with the Velvet Underground. They do two hours of songs with only buzzing from a burglar alarm in between.’

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Nico was featured in three more Warhol short movies before the year was out. The first, simply called Nico/Antoine, features Nico and French singer-songwriter Antoine Muraccioli. The singer and Muraccioli are sitting under a huge banana poster, much like the image that would become the cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico. In the colour film, the pair are eating the fruit and smirk­ing at the camera. Muraccioli also appears in several images with Nico that have been recovered during research for this book. This is not surprising, as according to a February 1967 datebook, he was invited to New York by Warhol and Nico in October 1966 for a brief twenty-four-hour visit. Nico met him at the airport (she is noted as his ‘escort’ in the datebook) with a large bunch of bananas.

The second Warhol short is called Ari and Mario. Three-year-old Ari is the star in this colour film. The premise has Nico hiring drag queen Mario Montez to watch the young child. Hilarity ensues, as Montez, adorned with heavy make-up, loads of costume jewellery and light-blue lounging pyjamas, tries to entertain a lively Ari. The third video, informally titled Mod Wedding, is a silent black-and-white piece with a two-minute running time that features Nico almost exclusively. It documents a wedding that took place on 20 November 1966, as the concluding event of a three-day festival in Detroit called the Carnaby Street Fun Festival, which was sponsored by a supermarket at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. The Velvet Underground performed, alongside appearances by other lumi­naries including the Yardbirds and Dick Clark. Tickets cost $2.10 – or $1.10 if purchased in advance. The happy couple, Gary Norris and Randi Rossi, an ‘artist’ and ‘unemployed go-go dancer’, accord­ing to Warhol in POPism, had volunteered to be married in order to score a prize package that included a three-day honeymoon in New York City and a screen test with Warhol. In front of an audience of approximately 4,500 people, the bride, wearing ‘a white minidress and high white satin boots’, was escorted down the aisle by the pop artist as her parents looked on. Nico, clad in a lavender pantsuit, warbled a rendition of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, while a local DJ stood in as best man.23 While the footage mainly showcases Nico, there are glimpses of the other Velvets performing on stage under a strobe light. The bride’s mother provides the understatement of the year to United Press International, commenting, ‘This is not exactly the wedding I had planned for my daughter.’

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By February 1967, Nico had started another residency at the Dom. This one lasted until April. She was still performing sporadically in the random shows the Velvets did and was no longer model­ling.24 Though her burgeoning solo career was her only means of support, Nico was not particularly keen on playing live, telling an interviewer, ‘I do not like to perform in nightclubs. I do not like bars at all, not even to listen to other singers there. I feel out of place even to listen to other singers there.’ Regardless, the Dom offered a regular income and the chance to develop her own career away from the Velvets.

David Croland remembers four-year-old Ari’s presence at the Dom. ‘He was one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen in my entire life,’ says Croland, ‘and I’ve seen many gorgeous people. This kid was so beautiful and so sweet; he was like a male version of Nico. He was very quiet; he was very shy. He only liked certain people – he had a radar even as a child – but what an incredible little boy he was. She would bring Ari to her gigs. He used to sit on my lap when Nico would be singing. Me or Susan [Bottomly] would take him, because Nico didn’t want to leave him in places with some stranger. We’re talking late at night! Sometimes he would crawl off of our laps and go under the table, you know how kids like to make houses under tables and stuff … He was very loved in our group. The way she used to dress him, he looked like a little rock star, little boots and black clothes … I never saw a child dressed in black in those days. I mean, “Where did you even find these things, Nico?” He was a little rock star even then.’

All through the Dom shows and the random EPI dates, Ari rarely left his mother’s side. The late nights and living according to the schedule of his artist mother were not healthy for the child. He remembers going around the Dom, drinking leftover alcohol from glasses, confessing that he ‘swallowed anything – that is, everything in my path. Remnants of vodka, whisky, orange-flavoured vitamin pills in my mother’s bag …’ It has been written, but not confirmed, that Nico allegedly smeared heroin on the young child’s gums to calm him down. ‘For a little boy of four and a half, it was too much,’ and Ari came down with what he calls a ‘major hepatic crisis’.

Unsure of what to do, Nico called Alain Delon’s mother, Edith Boulogne, for help. Boulogne agreed to once again take Ari back to France with her, but only if Nico promised that he would be able to stay, adopt a proper schedule and be put into school. Realizing it was the best thing for her son, due to her own uncertain career, the singer agreed.

David Croland remembers when the child left with his paternal grandmother. ‘That was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen, because Ari loved all of us. He loved Andy, he loved me – we were like his family,’ Croland says. ‘He adored Nico, and Nico adored him, but we were dropping him off so that he could spend the summer and get to know his grandparents in France. He was crying and crying. I’m sure he got over it, and the grandparents were really sweet … but that was sad.’

Even at his young age, Ari realized that this was going to be a more permanent separation from his mother than previously. ‘It was only on the plane that I felt that the separation, this time, was more serious,’ he writes. Upon arrival in France, Ari found himself surrounded and haunted by constant reminders and mementos of the man who publicly denied his paternity. ‘I slept in the bed where Alain Delon had been conceived and where he had slept before me. All my childhood, and well beyond, until the death of my grand­parents, and still beyond, Alain Delon – the eternal absent whose history and glory were shaking the spirits of this family.’ However, the physical absence of his father did not stop the young boy from being curious to know more about the missing figure. ‘The TV seemed to have been invented only to show the films of Alain Delon … I devoured my father’s eyes, immersing myself in each of his pockets, in each of his tics.’

In Nico: Icon, Boulogne reveals the struggles and challenges she faced in taking on the role of matron to her grandchild and talks about Nico’s absence and lack of attention to her son. ‘She came to see him once in three years,’ Boulogne recalled. ‘Packages I had sent came back. Moved, address unknown.’

Nico’s aunt Helma has a slightly different version of the events of 1967, which may further explain how little Nico saw Ari once he moved in with the Boulognes. ‘He was christened Ari, but later Delon’s mother had that changed. She said, “What is that name – Ari?” Then his name was Christian Aaron. She said to Christa, “I will adopt your son and you will not have access to your child,”’ Helma claims. She also says that Grete desperately wanted to take Ari on herself but was far too ill. Though only fifty-seven years old, Grete’s Parkinson’s disease had progressed to the point where she could barely even form a complete sentence, let alone look after a small child. ‘She couldn’t take care of herself anymore and had to return to Berlin,’ says Helma. All of the furniture from the Ibiza house was sold for pennies, while Ulrich, Nico’s cousin and Helma’s son, paid for his aunt Grete to be put into residential care. Nico was now truly alone, without the anchor of her mother or the compan­ionship of her son.

For the rest of Nico’s life, Delon continued to deny paternity of Ari, a situation which ‘she was angry about … most of the time, because he wasn’t recognising his responsibility’, according to Nico’s friend and former lover Robert King. King was the lead singer of Scars, a post-punk band from Edinburgh, Scotland. He had a romantic relationship with Nico in the 1980s, which led him to become close to other members of her extended family. During his relationship with Nico, King once found himself at the same event as Delon. ‘It was at a record company party, you just had to be polite.’ He recalls that Delon did not acknowledge Nico throughout the event, though King went on the verbal attack, ‘slagging off’ the actor. ‘I was calling him a cunt – “So you’re that cunt” – and he was looking at me as if he couldn’t understand me. It was pretty bizarre, because he then got two guys to come over and protect him … It was really funny. The Scottish use of that word is particularly potent.’