Chapter 35 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

The two of them now reunited, Ari would often accompany his mother on the road, their mutual addiction creating a bond while temporarily preventing any actual feelings, regrets or emotions from being expressed. Shows were Nico’s main source of income, which meant her relentless touring schedule did not let up as 1980 arrived. Money was desperately needed just to keep the horrific withdrawals from smack at bay. ‘The heroin was the reveller who dispensed with all justification, or the obligation to go back … it was indeed the mediator of our merger … A cloud of love and opium …’ said Ari. Echoing Lutz Graf-Ulbrich’s memories of living and being on tour with Nico, he continued, ‘We were a magical and thrilling couple. [The intensity of our life] suddenly covered all the gaps in our history. I was with her now and no one could separate us any more. Living with her became an absolute adventure, terrible and enchanting at the same time.’

*

‘I’m only going by what Nico said to me. I do not doubt her for a minute, because she wasn’t really a person who made up stories and stuff like that,’ Nico’s former beau Robert King tells me. ‘All this crap that people write about her is stupid. It’s their personal angst that they’re taking out on her. Because she probably sacked them and got a different guitarist, drummer or whatever … I’m only going to say what is the truth, because she deserves the truth.’ The Nico he describes is a harsh contradiction to the reserved, with­drawn persona that is depicted so often. ‘She was a very … playful person … inquisitive. I was lucky enough to know her son, and also I was really close to her family, in a bigger sense, so for me I can see it from a different perspective than all these other assholes. I don’t know why they do that. Does it make them [feel] great to insult somebody in such a way? I don’t think so.’

When asked how he first met Nico, King laughs, saying, ‘Well, that’s an interesting story.’ Newly arrived in London, he found him­self moving into a flat in Ladbroke Grove. At the time, when not on tour, Nico was living in the same neighbourhood with the two Corsicans she had met at her Paris gig in 1978, Philippe Quilichini and Antoine Giacomoni, and Quilichini’s girlfriend, Nadette Duget. It was here at the flat, located on the corner of Cambridge Gardens and Ladbroke Grove, that King first encountered the icon.

‘I was sitting in the kitchen, and my flatmate said, “You’ve got to meet somebody I think that you would like.” And that was Nico. It was funny as fuck.’ For King, the attraction was immediate. ‘I just hooked my claws into her,’ he laughs. ‘She was older, but as good-looking as she was when she was young. A commanding pres­ence; she had charisma and a very soft … innocence. I used to think that before I knew who she was, because I knew her albums. The press never gave that image.’ When asked who made the first romantic advance, King immediately confides, ‘Oh, it was her.’

He does not agree that Nico stopped caring about her appear­ance. ‘When I knew her, she was getting older and starting to, shall we say it politely, “spread”. It used to panic her greatly. She was aware of what people said about her, what people wrote about her. If you think of what you know about Nico and her image, and then marry that to reading depraved libel and newspapers about her, that’s essentially what it is – depraved libel.’

When asked to explain who the woman behind the mantle was, King responds, ‘The real Nico?’ He contemplates this, before saying, ‘Okay. The day that Charles and Diana got married, me and Nico decided to make spaghetti Siciliana, which is essentially a can of anchovies pounded down into paste, fried with garlic and tomato, then served with pasta. Unfortunately, we were taking heroin. We also decided to take these purple haze acid tablets, two each. So we ended up watching Princess Diana get married to Charles while we were wallpapering the apartment with spaghetti Siciliana. For about a month, the flat stank of rotten fish! It took weeks of washing the walls for the stink to go. So that tells you how much of an “Ice Queen” she was.’

While some biographies have alluded to Nico asking others to refer to her as Christa, King, like everyone I asked this question of, has no memory of her ever going by any name other than Nico, in private or public. ‘She didn’t ever use her own name, ever,’ he tells me. ‘She always referred to herself as Nico because she was being “Nico”. She got sadly caught up in the trap of being the persona, the pop star. And that’s really what kept her in the hell of heroin addiction. People expected her to be on the drugs, and they allowed her to continue that persona. Part of it was that she recognized being the supreme heroin queen was kind of a unique status, if you understand. When she was in the Factory, she was competing with Edie Sedgwick and the other Superstars for an identity. The Velvet Underground and heroin had a huge impact on people.’

King regales me with a story of Nico having eyes for an Afro-Caribbean man who lived near her. ‘Every day in Ladbroke Grove, we used to go to this pub on the corner. There used to be a van parked up there. This band called Rip Rig + Panic27 used to live in it. At lunchtime every day, me and Nico would go to the pub – obviously out of our heads on heroin – for a Guinness. We’d buy Rip Rig + Panic a drink, and Nico would always want to play pool with Sean [Oliver, the band’s bass player], because she had crush on him. Sean was a wee black guy with an Afro.’

Nico’s mastery of so many languages surpassed King’s expectations, her abilities illustrated by one of her daily rituals. ‘Her English was good; she used to do the Times crossword. I was taught by Jesuits when I was a kid, so I was educated properly. I used to read The Times, and every cunt used to think, “Why are you reading that, when you should be reading other, less high-brow shit?” But Nico loved it. The first time she saw me doing it, she just said, “Oh, I’m so glad you read The Times.” I said, “Why?” And she responded, “Because I love the crossword.” I thought, “WHAT THE FUCK!” So I gave it to her, and she did the whole thing in two hours! After that, I used to get The Times for her every morning so that she could do the crossword.’

King also met Nico’s former bandmate and paramour Lou Reed, with whom the Scottish singer was not impressed. ‘One time, Lou Reed came to stay. The guy’s a cunt. He walked into the house and said to me, “Boy, make me tea!” It’s the wrong thing to say to me … because I’m crazy, I’m seriously crazy like … [laughs]. I just put him in his place. He apologized afterwards.’ King may have been one of the few men ever to stand up for Nico; his face-off with Reed is even more incredible as it marks someone siding with the songstress over the already glorified lead man. Reed’s rise and deification only increased as the years passed, while Nico seemed determined to see how low she could go.

The relationship with King eventually ended. Without King, Nico would again lack any semblance of security, instead having to depend on her teenage son for this. Ari was unclear if the break-up saddened his mother, as she ‘rarely showed her emotions’.

*

Though her addiction held her captive throughout the late 1970s, Nico was still writing music sporadically and already had a title picked out for her new record. ‘Of course I have new songs,’ Nico declared to Sounds in April. ‘I’ve been waiting to put new songs on an album for the past two years, and I didn’t want to sign with just anybody. I don’t think it’s wrong to disappear for a while. It’s better, I think. Because somehow you accumulate – throughout the events that are happening to you, the events that you’re facing constantly, and you just see things much clearer. While you’re working at a particular subject it’s important to disappear for a while. My music is not accidental. If you want it to be an accident, it is an accident, but it can also be something else. It can be very well thought out.’ ‘I have just enough for an album, which is going to be called Drama of Exile,’ she told ZigZag magazine in June.

However, finding a home for the record was proving to be a challenge, with Nico commenting in the book Beyond the Velvet Underground, ‘I’ve been sort of disappearing and reappearing … I went to Los Angeles thinking I could sign a record contract. It may have been easier if I’d have been more patient about it. I left after two months.’ She hung on, though, telling journalists that ‘I’ve signed it in my head. I think I definitely would like to sign with Arista, because it’s like being in the same boat with a few friends (Is Lou Reed still there?) … that are important on the music scene right now. So why should I be with a different company? So maybe we can make the whole … exposure or whatever you like to call it … make it a parliament!’

By the start of 1981, Nico and her flatmates had decided to work together to produce the singer’s fifth studio album. Duget would be the executive producer, with Quilichini taking on Cale’s role as arranger and producer. The album would mark a departure not only in terms of the studio team, but in its sound, Nico trading in her trademark bleak, stripped-back vibe for a variety of faster-paced songs. ‘It was really boring, all that quiet stuff,’ she noted. ‘And hav­ing been a member of the Velvet Underground, rock’n’roll is some­thing I have to do at one point, even if only for one album. I want to combine it with Arabic music. I am part Turkish. Well, my father was part Turkish. I’ve been disappearing. I’ve been disappearing from myself. I’ve become a total stranger to myself, and that’s why I title the record Drama of Exile … Because it’s a drama being a stranger to yourself.’ Drama was also to include two covers: David Bowie’s ‘“Heroes”’ and a Velvets track. ‘I always wanted to sing “Waiting for the Man” but Lou wouldn’t let me,’ Nico said. ‘Lou was the boss and was very bossy. Anyway, I know a little bit more about the subject now than I did then. I find it something to occupy yourself with, running up and down the city.’ Nico claimed that the choice of these two particular songs was carefully thought through. She chose ‘Waiting for the Man’ ‘as a tribute to Lou and because I wanted to sing rock’n’roll. I’d never done it before and it’s such a great rock’n’roll song. I’m looking at it as a new song. Apart from having so much choice I thought I could do one or two songs from Lou Reed’s Berlin album, but they’re all so suicidal.’ The Bowie track was picked because it was ‘not quite so destructive’. In addition to new producers and a different sound, Nico was also considering changing the packaging that the record came in, ­noting that she wanted to include a lyric sheet. She had not inserted one before as ‘Cale and a few other people always thought that this would take away from the myth that was built around me if I put the lyrics on the sleeve.’

Besides being an aspiring record producer, Duget was a well-known heroin dealer and kept control of both her boyfriend and Nico through the drug. Nico could not function without daily doses of her ‘medicine’ and became completely reliant on her female flatmate to supply her with the necessary fixes. ‘My mother showed some distrust of the “Corsican bandits”,’ Ari writes. ‘She reproached them for leaving her in need for hours in the house, in the company of only the cat. In fact, they still had more drugs while she carried her diva junkie cross … without her ration she could do nothing.’

Amidst this bog of addiction, recording for Drama of Exile began in April/May 1981 at Gooseberry Studios in the Tulse Hill neigh­bourhood of London. Independent label Aura Records, owned by Aaron Sixx, advanced the cost of production. While her pre­vious albums – with the exception of The End – had been almost entirely Nico and Cale, Drama featured an entire band, including some notable names: oriental string instrument expert Muhammad Hadi; drummer Steve Cordonna; Ian Dury’s sax player Davey Payne; percussionist J. J. Johnson of Wayne County’s Electric Chairs; and Andy Clarke, who had previously played keyboards on David Bowie’s album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Later, Thierry Matioszek was brought in to do electric violin and back­ing vocals, with Gary Barnacle providing additional sax and drums later. Quilichini played guitar as well as produced.

There are two conflicting accounts of the recording and release of Drama. One is from the perspective of Duget and Quilichini and is told by journalist and mutual friend Bruno Blum, while the other is from Aaron Sixx, who signed Nico to make Drama. I spoke to both of them to get the two opposing views directly from people who were actually there. The definitive truth may yet be revealed, but both parties vehemently believe their version is what actually occurred.

I spoke first to Blum. His points come across with a surprising urgency. ‘For the past thirty years, a lot of lies have been spread about this, and no one is here to tell the true story of what happened,’ he argues passionately over the phone. As a journalist, he often found himself in London, as it ‘was the capital of music at the time’. Blum confirmed that both Duget and her boyfriend Quilichini were her­oin addicts. The two had produced an album in Jamaica for a reggae group called the Congos, before returning to London.

At the time, Nico was living with Duget and Quilichini in an apartment with a large living room, where the three would often gather to watch television together. However, it was the drugs that were the main draw for all of the occupants. ‘There was quite a lot of heroin around at the time … very good heroin from Thailand, the best heroin you could get. It’s the holy grail for junkies. I think a lot of the reason that Nico was staying there was because there was such good heroin around,’ Blum hypothesizes.

His recollections of the singer come via the lens of his back­ground as a writer, as at the time he was thinking of writing a book about the Velvets. An outing to the pub, under the premise of inter­viewing Nico for the possible tome, did not go as well as Blum had hoped. ‘Nico, who was in her forties at the time, looked like the ghost of herself. She had put on some weight; she was not look­ing as striking as she used to. I bought her a drink and asked her questions. Quickly I understood that I knew more about her life than she cared to remember. She just stood there listening to my questions, had absolutely nothing to say and stared at me. Maybe she just wasn’t interested or didn’t remember. She just didn’t seem to remember anything, even the Velvet Underground times. Her mind was blank, and she would just say “Yes” or “No”. I could feel that it would be very difficult to work with her.’

At this point, according to Blum, Nico’s whole existence had come to revolve around the opiate. ‘I remember Nico being very friendly, although a little cold and shy at times. She was just des­perately strung out to get more smack. Whenever she talked to me, it was often related to trying to get me to get heroin for her. It was really pathetic. One day she heard I was there. She came out as I was on the staircase and said, “Bruno, can you please ask Nadette to give me some heroin, please? I am sick, you must help me.” Nadette was very harsh; she said, “Tell that bitch she’s had enough today!” It was that kind of vibe. There was this guy from a band called Scars [Robert King] who was around a lot; he was good friends with them.’

Living with Nico, Blum argues, was not a pleasant experience, as she ‘was such a mess. Nobody would deal with her. I’m not trying to say anything bad about her. I’m just trying to say that she would act erratically. Here was Nico, a “finished” legend. Her connections had run out, and Nadette Duget came and got it together,’ he concludes.

Trying to build on her and Quilichini’s success with the Congos, Duget connected with Aaron Sixx. Blum tells me that Sixx agreed to pay for studio time to make a new Nico album, while Duget consented to ‘deal’ with Nico, which basically meant providing the singer with a place to stay and drugs, and keeping track of her over­all – a huge undertaking at times, as ‘You never knew what Nico was going to do. She could be a lunatic sometimes or disappear.’

Blum was among the few invited to the studio for the recording of Drama of Exile, describing the scene as ‘secretive. No journalist was around in the studio that I know of, because Nico didn’t like people to be around when she was recording … but I was there.’

It was about halfway through the recording process that Blum recalls problems starting to pop up. ‘JJ, the drummer (whom I lived with at the time), came up one day and said, “Guess what, we’ve fallen out with Aaron Sixx.” Sixx had decided that he did not want to spend more money on studio time. According to Nadette, he took the tapes and disappeared … They had gotten all of these great musicians to record, and it was all gone! They were really pissed off with him. I don’t know what happened … probably some junkie business. The album was nearly completed and only two songs were left to do. They had done at the time what is called “a rough mix”. It was not finished; it had no sound effects, the vocals were not done. He took the tapes thinking that the album was done! He had even taken some of Antoine Giacomoni’s pictures! Nadette and Philippe started some kind of lawsuit.’

The flatmates went back to take another crack at the record, this time using Duget’s money to finance the undertaking. As all of the musicians had already rehearsed the songs, it took only a week to re-record the album in its (new) entirety. ‘Nico did her vocals. Antoine did the pictures with Nico’s son Ari; they were all taken in London and on the Tube. I’m not sure how Nadette got the money together,’ Blum confides.

However, just as they finished the second version of the record, they were distraught to discover that Sixx had pressed up an album featuring the rough mixes from the studio. Blum’s horror at this is still palpable all these years later. ‘Sixx had released an album that was unfinished that he’d paid for! He did not even credit the musi­cians correctly. They were so mad because he had not only taken the tapes and not allowed them to finish the record, but he had now released it.’

Blum asserts that Nico had been paid by Sixx for the undertak­ing. He claims that though she may not have liked the fact that the project with Sixx was incomplete, Nico would ‘sign anything’ for money. However, at the end of the day, Blum asserts, ‘It was all junkie business.’

The appearance of Sixx’s version snuffed out all plans for Giacomoni, Duget and Quilichini to release their re-recorded Drama. According to Blum, the original rough mix pressing had a devasting impact on the flatmates. ‘Nico didn’t like it, Antoine and Nadette were mad, and Philippe wasn’t coming out of his room much and taking smack a lot … he was pretty fucked up. It killed their spirits completely,’ Blum confides. All their conversations began to revolve around the record and Aaron Sixx. About a year later, a deal was struck with a French label to release the second effort with extra tracks. There was little coverage of it, though, as ‘it had already been out’, Blum says. ‘It was all a mess … That record, in my opinion, is Nico’s best work. Maybe Aaron Sixx had some problems with them, and maybe he had some excuse for doing this, but certainly it wasn’t cool. No matter what he says – and he prob­ably did try to get Nico’s approval – the record he issued on Aura was not on.’

Quilichini and Duget ended up going back to Corsica. They ran out of money and their ‘career was broken’, according to Blum, because of ‘this whole problem with Aaron’. Blum tells me that ‘Nadette died of anorexia a few years later’, but he thinks her death was actually caused by having a ‘broken heart’. He is not sure how Philippe passed away, or if it was related to heroin. Either way, ‘It was all pretty heavy.’

Blum saw Nico one last time, when the singer played at Heaven in London. ‘I went backstage with Antoine, Philippe and Nadette. Nico was there, hazy as ever. She was very friendly with Nadette and Philippe … there was no way anyone could say that she had fallen out with them. She played this really spacey set with the harmo­nium. It was very cold and very strange.’

From his home in Los Angeles, Aaron Sixx tells me what he recalls of the experience. ‘‘If you harken back to that time, there weren’t many women musicians around,’ he says. ‘The few who were in the scene all knew each other to some degree.’ This may be why Nico attended an Annette Peacock show at the Bataclan in Paris. Sixx was working with Peacock at the time and recounts being approached by Nico after the gig. ‘There was a tall woman with a long black overcoat and a scarf or two around her neck. She came up to me and she said, “Can I meet Annette?” And I said, “Why do you want to meet Annette?” And she said, “Oh, I know her from New York.” Annette was in the dressing room with the band, so I said, “What’s your name? I’ll mention it to her.” And she said [imitates languid German accent], “My name is Nico.” Obviously, I knew who Nico was. I said that the French record company were throwing a dinner for all of us, why didn’t she come with us? So Nico came along. We were talking a bit; she was talking to other people. I remember she was very aloof and stand-offish … not very friendly. Nico was never engaging with anybody in the time I knew her … and she never smiled or laughed or anything. It was always dead serious.’

When she did speak, anecdotes about Reed were often a feature. ‘She was forever telling stories about Lou – Lou this and Lou that. We signed Lou at Arista [where Sixx also worked], and he was a total fucking handful as well! He was very creative, but … Nico and John Cale and Lou … there were stories and truths and mistruths.’ Despite the rumours he had heard, Sixx told Nico to contact him if she ever found herself in London, where the music executive was living at the time. ‘That was it,’ he tells me. ‘I didn’t even think about it again.’

However, Nico did not forget Sixx’s offer. Several months later, she got in contact with him, saying she was looking to make an album. ‘She came with a French/Vietnamese woman whose name was Nadette Duget … who turned out to be her drug dealer. She knew absolutely nothing about management or music or anything. She was a drug dealer – end of story. The producer was her boy­friend, Philippe Quilichini, who was a French Corsican guy. The only experience they had was in Jamaica, which was not a good sign for anybody in the music business.’ Yet these red flags did not put off Sixx, who thought he ‘could do something with Nico’. After she played some demo tracks for him, Sixx agreed to draw up a contract and work with the singer. However, the process quickly began to go downhill. ‘I said that I would pay for the studio and the musicians and so on. There was an advance, but I’m pretty sure the advance was going to be paid when the record was fin­ished, because I did not trust Duget and Quilichini. They did not look like drug addicts, and I actually never thought that they were. Nico, I could tell by her attitude and by her teeth – they were in pretty bad shape by then, which obviously is a sign of somebody who’s done a lot of heroin.’

A visit to the rented Notting Hill flat confirmed Sixx’s suspi­cions. ‘Nico was very overweight and wearing three layers of clothes. I never saw her without a long dress/skirt and an overcoat. She covered herself up almost totally. She had dark hair at that time. I figured out that Duget was supplying the drugs. But at the point when we started working together, I didn’t know how bad Duget was.’

Not far into the project, more red flags started popping up for Sixx. The first was Duget’s refusal to sign a contract with him. ‘She kept giving excuses,’ he recalls. Despite any misgivings, Sixx still booked a studio in south London so recording could start. ‘Quilichini started putting together the musicians he wanted,’ Sixx tells me. ‘I said that I would pay for everything. When they were recording, they’d go back to Paris every once in a while and then come back again. Recording was going well, and I was keeping on top of it. It was sounding really, really good. The songs Nico wrote were great and they were originals.’ However, though the basic com­ponents of the LP had been recorded, Sixx still had not received a signed contract from Duget.

‘I made it totally clear that as long as I’m paying, this is my album,’ Sixx recalls. ‘She [Duget] kept going off to Paris … obvi­ously my ears were up. I knew to be on the lookout; it’s not the first time I’d been confronted with something like this. It’s something you encounter in the music business over the years.’ One day, his worst fears were confirmed. ‘On a Saturday morning, the studio calls me and says, “Hi, Aaron, we just want to give you a heads-up that Nadette called us yesterday to say she’s coming over to London to pick up the tapes.” I said, “What? All right, fine, you don’t give anybody any tapes. I’m coming right down to pick them up.” So I went down to the studio and I picked up all the reel-to-reel tapes. Obviously you can figure out what they were trying to do … [infer­ring taking the tapes without signing the contract].

‘At some point Nadette and I talked. “What are you doing?” I said. She said, “They’re our tapes and we can do with them what we want, and we didn’t sign the contract.” I said, “Look, excuse me, but I paid for the studio and the musicians! They’re my tapes, not yours.” So she says, “Oh well, we’re going to sue you!” I took the tapes and mixed that album.’

Some accounts have said that Sixx paid off a studio engineer for the reels, then paid Nico to keep quiet – or a variation of these themes. He denies these claims. ‘The £2,000 sounds right to Nico, but not to the studio,’ he said of any advance paid. ‘The studio doesn’t just let you go in for days and days [without paying]. I was paying them directly. If there was money exchanged, it may have been the last part of what was owed for the studio. For all the recordings, it was not £2,000.’

The sleeve of Sixx’s version of Drama of Exile is very dramatic. Pictured emerging from a London Tube station, dirty, graffitied walls behind her, Nico looks drained and haunted, draped in thick layers of black, indiscernible clothing. ‘I picked the album cover shot,’ says Sixx. ‘Giacomoni showed me a bunch of pictures of Nico. They were mostly the standard head shots, and I immediately said, “That’s the one we want.” So that’s where it ended.’ Lawyers eventually got involved on both sides, with no clear resolution. ‘The end result is that it went back and forth.’

Nico would still periodically contact Sixx, always looking for money. ‘“Aaron, I need some money” [laughing]. That was her open­ing line, not “Hi, Aaron, how are you?” And I would say, “Nico, stop this bullshit. You need to get away from Nadette.”’ Sixx claims that the advance Nico was asking after had already been included in the fee paid to Duget for production costs and studio time. Yet it seemed Nico either didn’t understand this or hadn’t been informed by her ‘manager’ of the arrangement. ‘From Nico’s standpoint, that was an advance to her that she kept wanting to get,’ Sixx tells me. ‘At the end of the day, when I knew Nico her main interest in life was drugs. It wasn’t music any more or anything else. And that’s why she was with Duget,’ he concludes.

Sixx deduced that the Duget/Quilichini version of Drama came from a few cassette copies of the sessions. Once back in Paris, Quilichini took the demos he had, re-recorded parts and combined them with a scattering of new material. This is why there are ‘two’ Drama albums. ‘They stitched together the Drama of Exile album as their Drama of Exile album with a different cover. The cover of it has a black-and-white image of Nico in a cemetery with a big long over­coat,’ Sixx informs me. He was not happy about the advent of this alternative version. ‘I put a stop to that immediately. Technically, that was never, ever allowed to be released, but it’s impossible to stop everything.’

*

Sixx’s account of the passing of Duget and Quilichini conflicts with Blum’s story, but is equally tragic. ‘Duget and Quilichini were driv­ing back to Paris on the motorway and had a head-on crash. Duget was killed outright immediately, and Quilichini died a day or so later. That put an end to Duget and Quilichini. They left the music business and the earth!’