Chapter 27 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

While Nico was beginning the press cycle for The Marble Index, speculation about her former lover, Alain Delon, was unfolding. On 1 October 1968, the body of Stevan Marković was found in a public dump in the village of Élancourt, in Yvelines, west of Paris. His mouth was gagged, his body bound and wrapped in plastic. Marković was the ex-bodyguard and close friend of Delon. The death saw Delon come under investigation because of his pur­ported association with several notorious French gangsters. During his questioning by police, Delon confessed that there had been an attempt to murder his wife Nathalie as well. While driving in Paris, she had discovered that one of the wheels on her car had been loos­ened. Luckily, she noticed it before it came off completely. Several other threats to Delon and his family were recorded by the police after the death of Marković; there were also rumours that a col­league of Marković was intending to kill the actor. Delon asked for permission to carry his own firearm, which was denied. Instead, he was given a police guard.

The Delon element was catnip to the press, who started dog­ging the household in Boulogne. Nico was very concerned for Ari’s safety, though Ari recalled that his grandparents were the ones who took action after the murder. The incident provided them with the impetus to send the young boy away to a boarding school near Versailles, which he attended until he was a teenager.

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The Marble Index proved to be so different to any other popular release of the time that even critics seemed confused about how to classify or describe it. ‘I can’t make out a single real word,’ said the reviewer in the NME. Its uniqueness hindered sales, as neither jour­nalists, customers nor even Elektra Records knew the right way to market this strange creation. Danny Fields tried hard to help Nico in any way he could, though she did not have formal management or a booking agent to organize concerts. Her own admitted dis­like for performing live or engaging enthusiastically with any of the promotional opportunities that were presented to her doomed the album early on to be a sales flop. In Follow the Music, Elektra presi­dent Jac Holzman recalled, ‘She’d call up and, in her low moan, tell you, “I’ll be in on Tuesday, set up some interviews.” Tuesday would come, and no Nico. Eight months later, she’d call again. “I’m back in town.” You would say, “What about those other times?” “Oh, I couldn’t do those, I had to go to Rome.”’

An interesting artefact from Nico’s promotional activities is a script dated 17 December 1968. It starts off with an introduction, followed by a bunch of interview questions. The most likely answers that Nico will give are also included (‘“Why did you give up mod­eling?” A: She became bored with the work … she’ll explain’). The replies also illustrate how the image of the lone, rambling, vagabond figure is being perpetuated and encouraged (‘“What inspires you to compose music and words?” A: She’s a poet … She gets her ideas mostly just walking around the city … she lives alone … is imagina­tive … A dreamer …’).

Despite all of Fields’s efforts, The Marble Index did not sell well. ‘Restricted sales but a beautiful album,’ Record Retailer said in the spring of 1969. Years later, in Please Kill Me, a reflective Fields said, ‘When I think of what I did at Elektra – I fought with The Doors (Jim Morrison and I hated each other); I signed the MC5, who they fired; I signed the Stooges, who they dropped; I signed Nico, who never sold any records.’ Yet even if Nico had been enthused and dependable during the album’s promotional cycle, in all likelihood it would still have experienced low sales figures, as its icy, gloomy lyrics and musicality were just too weird for most consumers. ‘It’s an artifact, not a commercial commodity. You can’t sell suicide,’ explained John Cale in a 1977 interview with Sounds.