Chapter 38 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

Once he had her settled in Manchester, Alan Wise quickly began straightening out Nico’s business affairs, which were a tangled mess after more than a decade of disregard. One of his first tasks was to go through her various contracts and record deals, chasing money and royalties on behalf of the singer. Aaron Sixx remem­bers when the new manager started taking control of Nico’s affairs. ‘Alan gave me a call to say that he was looking after Nico. I obvi­ously told him what the story was with Duget holding things up, and I said that I need Nico to sign off on the contract. Without that, I’m wasn’t going to do anything! So he said, “Leave it with me and I’ll do it.” She signed off the original contract, and she signed over the publishing to the songs on the album to me.’ Now under Wise’s care, Nico’s sporadic calls to Sixx asking for money dwindled. When business needed to be discussed, it was Wise, not Nico, picking up the phone. ‘I would speak to Alan, not Nico,’ says Sixx. Wise also began to book shows and look for a band for Nico, using his relationships within the local artistic community to move things along quickly. ‘We hooked her up with musicians, and Manchester was her home for years,’ remembers Phil Jones. Indeed, Nico did live in the city for over seven years, on and off, one of the longest (almost) continuous stays she ever had in a single place.

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Nico’s usual routine was not what one would expect of an inter­nationally known former model and icon. Her days were often spent in bed, shooting up, or trying to score drugs. Her haunts included local pool halls and pubs, and she could be seen riding her bike around the neighbourhood. James Young has argued in interviews that this ‘period of perceived disintegration was not necessarily all sordid demise and the destruction of a talent but instead an extension of Nico’s redefined personality. She took pride in her greying hair, sagging skin and needle-marked arms because they were the antithesis to everything she had once been told she was wonderful for.’ ‘She was a very modest person as well,’ recalls Barbara Wilkin. Wilkin got to know Nico well during the singer’s time in Manchester. She eventually had a major role in the singer’s life, acting as a friend, de facto tour manager and confidante. Now a yoga teacher, Wilkin emanated a calm, soothing beauty as she welcomed me into her home to talk about Nico. Her first meeting with the singer occurred by happenstance. ‘I lived in Holland at the time. A friend who was a journalist came round one day. He said, “I’m going to a concert. I’m going to see Christa Päffgen. Do you want to come with?” I thought, “Who is this woman?” I went with him. He and a friend wanted to interview Nico after the concert. Blue Orchid was the support act. I was interested in drumming, so I was watching the drummer all the way through the first act, and then when they came out again with Nico.

‘After the concert, my friends disappeared to do the interview. Suddenly, the drummer [from Blue Orchids] was next to me. He said, “Why [must you only] look at me like this? I dropped my sticks! You made me all nervous!” That was how I met Toby Toman.3 I was with him for four and a half years, eventually moving to England to be with him. Anyway, back to Nico: my friends couldn’t find her. They were going around the hotel, but Nico was in the dressing room. I was the only one left there. Everybody had gone, so Toby said, “Come into the dressing room.” That’s when I first met Nico.

‘I found her very scary. She was just sitting at the end of a table. Toby said that I was German, and she just looked me. She didn’t look at anybody else. I went, “Mmm,” and looked away. Then she says in German, in a deep voice, “Du brauchst doch keine Angst vor mir zu haben. Ich bin eine alte Frau.” That means, “You don’t have to be scared of me. I am an old woman.” I didn’t know what to say. She took an interest in me because of the German aspect. She wanted to speak German so we could secretly talk about everybody around us. She didn’t like very bubbly, pretty girls going around [makes bubbly, pretty-girl sounds]. I think she liked me because I was quiet. I didn’t talk a lot and I can listen. I always was just around as Toby’s girlfriend to start off with.

‘She didn’t expect much luxury. She wasn’t a diva … she was one of us. She did her concerts. Sometimes she wasn’t very well, and she had to do them anyway. But the show must go on, and she was very professional.’

Manchester-raised artist Stella Grundy was just sixteen when she saw Nico perform at the Manchester Library, a set that was ‘beautiful, powerful and dark’, in a room ‘thick with cigarette and marijuana smoke’. She tells me over a drink at the Dry Bar in Manchester about how it was a transformative experience for her as a teenager. ‘I was enraptured. From that night on I decided I wanted to be an artist, writer, singer – anything to be part of this world.’ Grundy also recalls Nico’s regular appearances at nearby watering holes. ‘She didn’t like fans of the Velvet Underground mithering her about those times, although she was happy to write messages and autographs for people when asked. I’ve been shown a few of these items. Some  people were unkind to her and took advantage, though.’ Grundy saw this up close as her boyfriend at the time even went backstage and stole Nico’s heroin needles, as some sort of cul­tural memento from the ‘queen of the junkies’. She even recalls being told that ‘someone had stolen her diary’.

A young Steven Morrissey was also greatly impacted by the presence nearby of the legendary singer. ‘I was enormously com­forted by her isolation and depression,’ recounted the Smiths’ lead singer. ‘She lived nearby and [could] often be seen whirling about glamorous Manchester in a long black cape humming [Desertshore’s] “Le Petit Chevalier”.’ His close friend, artist Linder Sterling, lived in the flat above Nico at one point during the singer’s time in Manchester and has clear memories of Nico starting her ‘morning’ in early afternoon with ‘a tumbler half-filled with brandy’. Before moving out, Nico gave Sterling a key piece of performance advice: ‘When you sing a high note, you should imagine it falling to the floor and all low notes rising up.’

New bands especially were reverential towards the singer. ‘We realized what an icon she was later when we put her on in London and Siouxsie [Sioux], Duran Duran and all these film stars turned up,’ recalls Phil Jones. Una Baines remembers Nico’s appearance in Manchester as being exciting for the young artistic scene that was emerging. ‘I think a lot of the people who actually worked with her were fans. They were Velvet Underground fans, at least. Nico was an important figure in music history. I think there was a lot of respect for her.’ These new converts were especially significant, as Nico felt abandoned by her old friends and paramours. ‘She used to say all the time, “They’ve all left me, they won’t ring me back.” But why would you?’ Jones wonders. ‘She was a bit of a leech and didn’t have any regard for herself. The only one who did was John Cale. Lou Reed (to my knowledge) never got back to her. Maybe once … [Paul] Morrissey did occasionally. She knew how good it was to name-drop, but she wanted to name-drop more Buzzcocks and New Order in those days. She’d cottoned on that those were the new kids. She liked the fact that all this was going on in Manchester and she could be a bit of a godmother. She liked the fact that she was a bit of celeb and people were a bit in awe of her – Tony Wilson called her “ma’am” – but she also really liked normality,’ Jones continues. ‘On Sunday nights, we would go to the Kwok Man in Chinatown for a Chinese meal. Alan took her to meet his family at Christmas. She liked the pubs in Prestwich, where she could play pool and be anonymous.’

Barbara Wilkin agrees. ‘She met a few people because of Alan, who would introduce them, but it wasn’t like the New York scene for her when she was younger. She was in her forties when she was here. She did a few gigs, small gigs. People came to see her and talk to her. Obviously, she would take note of “This is so-and-so.” She didn’t really socialize in the scene, the music scene.’ It seemed incredible to music fans that the former chanteuse of a legendary New York band was living in their city. ‘I saw her being searched by police in the Spinners Arms – a then-notorious pub in Hulme,’ said fan Richard Hector-Jones. ‘My friend whispered: “That’s Nico,” and I was thinking: “What the fuck is a star from the Velvet Underground doing in this shit-hole?”’

The combination of respect and an ability to blend in with the crowd was also alluring to Nico. ‘People just accept you for who you are rather than what you are,’ says Young about the city’s scene. ‘I think she felt more relaxed there because of that. She could go to the pub and shoot a bit of pool. She liked to do that, and it’d just be her, not like, “I’ve been playing pool with Nico!” It wasn’t that. There’s much more of a Nico thing now than there was then. Thirty years ago, it was quieter, she was a minor artist. She was no big deal.’ However, the almost inevitable talk about 1960s New York had become annoying. Young recalls most people wanting to hear her stories from the Velvet days, with no interest in what the singer had done as a solo artist. ‘If they [people approaching her or at interviews] just wanted to talk about Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground … I think she sort of accepted it. That was okay at first. But if people didn’t want to talk about The Marble Index or Desertshore or what she’s doing now or a concert that evening, then that would really piss her off, understandably. That [the 1960s scene in NYC] was twenty years back for her! It’s like they expected her to be frozen in time. People would bring up the past constantly.’

‘Spider’ Mike King had just moved back to Manchester after a stint in London when he got the call from Alan Wise. ‘I’d always been a fan of the Velvet Underground,’ the guitar player tells me one autumn afternoon over some pints in a Manchester pub. ‘When I was nineteen, I had my first acid trip. We just listened to the Velvet Underground & Nico album all the way through for hours – put it on again, put it on again, put it on again … So I was really nervous when Al asked me to do a few gigs in England with her.

‘I was very nervous when I met her. She was not too aloof but was interested to know if I could hack it; this was kind of like an audi­tion as much as anything. I played a few tunes – “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and a couple of others – and got this sign, a nod of approval: “Yeah, yeah, he’ll do.” I was in for the English gigs. She was very charismatic, though not chatty. She was a doyenne of rock nobility to me. I had a great deal of respect for her. I was a bit in awe.’

Openly and repeatedly doling out admiration for his friend, King’s experience of working with Nico contradicts other accus­ations of her being an unskilled artist. ‘When I was doing the solo gig with her, it struck me how fantastically unique her timing was on her vocals. She had her own unique voice and her own way of how to deliver and project. She would draw in the audience with the way she delivered her song. Her timing was very interesting because if I was playing the guitar with her, I would have to follow her voice – it’s not like you could just play the song in a regular way, bar to bar, strict timing. Every time I played it, I had to vary it, to follow her voice, because her voice changed the timing according to the mood that she was in, however she felt she wanted to project her voice on that particular night.

‘She had this mystique about her which people found very allur­ing and very attractive. You read that she was a bit of a “naive” artist. Absolute bollocks. She knew exactly what she was doing. I never heard her hit a wrong note, though she could be a bit dodgy when she’d had a drink; it wasn’t good when she’d had a drink. Her poison of choice was wine.

‘She was great. I loved her loads. And she had a great pair of pins.’

Graham Dowdall was new to the Manchester scene when he started playing drums with Nico, a transplant from the capital. He was happy to have escaped London for the more collabora­tive northern scene. An abundance of disused industrial buildings meant cheap rehearsal spaces, making it an ideal place for aspiring musicians to incubate.

Dowdall relates to me over the phone his initial encounter with Nico. ‘I went up to a rehearsal at one of the most grottiest places you can ever imagine, on a very new road in north Manchester. Nico was there, looking pretty scary. The microphone didn’t work, so Nico, being the trooper that she was, sang in the first rehearsal with no mic. As soon as she opened her mouth, every hair on my body stood on end and I thought, “Yes, I’m having this!” Her sing­ing voice was just so powerful. That was me joining.’

Led by Wise, the Manchester community provided Nico with a security and stability that she had not experienced in a long time, if ever. The artistic scene and the history of the city were a perfect fit for the last bohemian. ‘I think she was aware that there was a scene – Joy Division, dark music – or maybe she just liked the cheap her­oin,’ said Martin Bramah, the guitarist for Blue Orchids. ‘But she didn’t see the grubby, industrial city I grew up in. She’d gaze at the Victorian architecture and say: “This is so romantic.”’