Notes - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

I: ENTER

1. Thank you, Philip Stegers, for all of the help in tracking down the infor­mation about the orphanage, the factory and the Meldekarte.

2. During the war, the factory operated under the name of Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG (KHD).

3. In her diary, Nico refers to her grandfather, Albert Schulz, as ‘Opa’. In his interview with biographer Richard Witts, Ulli refers to Schulz as ‘Opi.’

4. During World War II, the Silesia region was the site for both the Auschwitz and the Gross-Rosen concentration camps.

5. One account, written by an anonymous female journalist between 20 April and 16 June 1945, notes how people were gradually returning to the habits of cavemen, a lack of modern necessities – electricity, running water, transport, shops – bringing out the most primal of behaviours. For example, she recalls seeing a horse die in the street; instantly ‘pen-knives are straight out, hacking it to bits for meat; people fight over their portions’.

6. In 1966, she shot a series of Warhol ‘Screen Tests’, holding the very same kind of chocolate.

7. Tatjana Gsovsky was an internationally renowned ballerina, choreog­rapher and ballet mistress at a variety of well-respected institutions, including the Berlin State Opera House and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

8. Famous shopping and leisure destination in Berlin.

9. In one 1956 shot, Nico poses outdoors, against a stone wall, a foun­tain and ivy directly behind her. Wearing a floral cocktail dress, pearls looped around both her neck and her wrists, hair pulled neatly back, she appears incredibly young and vulnerable, as if she is playing dress-up in an adult’s wardrobe. In another set of images, taken by Tobias for Vogue, the teen morphs repeatedly: in one frame, she is hidden partially by a black veil, a cigarette holder seductively placed between parted lips, the portrait of elegant sophistication; in the other, an off-the-shoulder white lace dress is accessorized with black gloves and a flowered fan, Nico star­ing directly down the lens. In a fourth Tobias image shot from the same year, a fresh-faced, tanned, pixie-haired Nico dons a striped shirt and straw hat, the photo one of the few in which the model is smiling.

10. The photographer was a survivor. Like Nico’s father, the aspiring artist had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht – the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany – and was sent to the Russian Front. There he began docu­menting the war through the camera lens, a skill he had taught him­self from the age of ten. Shortly before the war ended, he deserted, only to be captured by US troops and thrown into an American prisoner-­of-war camp, where he stayed until being released in 1945. After the war, ­Tobias began a relationship with another man, an American civilian named Dick, who worked for the occupation government. Such liaisons were illegal in Germany under Paragraph 175, a part of the German criminal code of the time that made homosexual acts between men a crime. Both Tobias and his lover were forced to flee in order to avoid arrest, ending up in Paris. It was here, using a camera that had been a gift to him from Dick, that Tobias began pursuing photography as a possible profession. His pictures first appeared in a 1953 issue of Vogue; however, this triumph was quickly followed by Tobias being thrown out of his adopted country for resisting arrest during a police raid on a gay club. He found himself deported back to his native Germany, moving first to Frankfurt in search of yet another new beginning. Having been labelled a sex offender after his previous breach of Paragraph 175, the photographer needed a cash injection to sustain himself. He entered and won a competition worth 3,000 Deutsche Marks. The prize also included his photo being featured as the November 1953 cover shot for Frankfurter Illustrierte, positioning Tobias as one of the most sought-­after fashion photographers of the post-war generation. Though he found success in Frankfurt, Tobias was intrigued by Berlin, where he hoped to find the embers of the swinging 1920s scene. It was there that he first locked eyes on a young Christa Päffgen.

11. A set of images, taken in Paris at the studio of French photographer Jeanloup Sieff, illustrates the emerging identity of the model. With Nico blonde and short-haired throughout, each image showcased a different possibility for the Nico identity. In one, the model is bathed in shadow, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and pants. Glancing to the side, the light falls perfectly on her defined cheekbones and the spiralling smoke emanating from the cigarette held between her fingers. In another shot, Nico is naked from the waist up, wearing only what appears to be a pair of black-footed tights. Her body is twisted around so that her back is to the lens, her emaciated figure highlighting every rib wrapping around her back to her chest. Eyes directly to camera, she looks defiant, scowling, mad, while still holding the cigarette. In a final picture, Nico appears nude, her body carefully positioned to preserve her modesty.

12. There has also long been a rumour that Nico makes a guest appearance in a Hemingway classic. A scene in the opening chapter of 1964’s A Moveable Feast arguably could be based on the singer but is not specific enough to verify conclusively.

13. It makes sense that Nico would want to align herself with Chanel in any way possible. The two shared a similarly dysfunctional upbring­ing. Chanel was raised by nuns in an Aubazine orphanage, becoming a ward of the state after the death of her mother and abandonment of her father. The sisters helped secure the girl a job as a seamstress, which she left at the age of seventeen to pursue a career as a cabaret singer, which proved unsuccessful. Having to find a way to stay financially afloat, Chanel become a mistress to wealthy socialite Etienne Balsan. Balsan helped the ambitious young woman relocate to Paris and open her first boutique. He also introduced her to his upper-class circle of friends, providing her entrée to the elite of France.     Chanel, like Nico forty years later, dared to transcend the expected parameters for behavior and style. As her legend grew in the 1920s, the designer began experimenting with materials, styles and accessories that had solely been the reserves of men. Her success, as well as her work methods, were unheard of, especially for a woman. At other fashion houses, garments were sketched out then cut from the patterns, before being stitched together. ‘A sketch, that’s not a body,’ she said. ‘Here, we don’t sell slips of paper. For a dress to be pretty, the woman who’s wearing it must look as if she were nude underneath.’ Chanel’s approach of needing ‘to touch and feel a woman’s body,’ her habit of tactically handling ‘her models in ways that she would never touch a man’ were unconventional; but they allowed her to stitch together designs on a live person, creating her distinctive style. As it was mainly women that Chanel worked with, it was mainly women who observed the designer’s creative processes. This led to Chanel feeling repeatedly let down by colleagues and collaborators alike, as a sense of female solidarity seemed impossible.

14. By the time of Nico’s arrival in Paris in 1956, attitudes had shifted, with the city being internationally known as a sanctuary for the LGBT community, and often referred to by some as ‘Paris-Lesbos’ thanks to its reputation as the world capital of lesbianism. Yet even those with ­money, power and status had to be discreet. Regardless of the city’s tolerant attitudes, ‘normalcy’ – i.e. straight, heterosexual relationships – had to be maintained at all costs. If Chanel was bisexual or gay, it is unlikely she would have publicly confirmed and announced it.

15. Crocker’s description of Ibiza in the 1950s sounds incredibly appeal­ing. ‘I came here and I went to live on the beach,’ he recalls. ‘It’s now a crowded tourist beach, but it was nothing. There were three little ­houses, and I rented one of them. It was all sand and sunshine. I decided to go into town from Port d’es Torrent, which is on the Sant Antoni side. It was deserted and wonderful. There weren’t any roads. Tarmac roads to the airport didn’t come until way in the 1960s. People were very easy. I didn’t lock my car, for instance. I didn’t lock the house. There wasn’t any stealing.’

16. Another liaison with a famous icon is said to have taken place during the run-up to the making of the 1967 Warhol film I, a Man, starring Nico. According to biographer Richard Witts, Nico divulged to actress Tina Aumont ‘at the time’, but ‘never mentioned again’, that she had had sex with none other than fellow Factory Superstar Edie Sedgwick. When asked about this supposed romance, music manager Danny Fields told me, ‘I can’t even imagine such a thing without chortling.’ He dismisses this story, because if it had actually happened, ‘it would have been known to us … They may have cuddled one night at the ­Castle [in LA]; it was scary for the two of them being alone there,’ Fields postulated. He continued, ‘Nico asked me to come up and stay because, you know, I’m so strong and always armed to the teeth. But Edie had a boyfriend who was leaving when I got there, and neither of them ever liked any girls very much. I don’t think [Nico] had many girlfriends. She was like so many of them are: a man’s woman … The girls around then were so nuts, anyhow … the two of them [Nico and Edie] chasing after whatever drugs were around. I can’t imagine they sat and had a girlie talk, though. Well, maybe they did. You know, it’s one of those things. Like Jane Austen can’t picture a conversation between men, so she never has two men alone talking to each other; you will never find that in her books. I can’t picture a conversation between women like Nico and Edie Sedgwick. And I won’t even try.’

17. Like Nico, as a teenager Mangano had supported herself by modelling, going on to win the Miss Rome beauty pageant in 1946, before becom­ing a contestant in the Miss Italia contest a year later. She parlayed this success into a film contract, simultaneously marrying film producer Dino De Laurentiis.

18. Cover features included the Italian publication Tempo, where she is named as ‘Nico Otzak’, with the foreboding tagline under her image proclaiming, ‘Una debutante senza batticuore’ – a debutante without heartbeat. Another Italian periodical from the same year features a fresh-faced Nico on the front, this time billing her as ‘Nico Otzaak, the very blond Berliner model, very well known in Italian high fashion ateliers. Also Nico Otzaak, very new demonstration of intercommunicability between the two environments, fashion and cinema, had some time ago a part in the film La Tempesta, directed by Alberto Lattuada.’ The May 1959 edition of Elle has a multiple-page spread of Nico, this time looking extremely slim, at the beach in a variety of modest swimwear, including one photo where she is in a checked bathing costume, and another where she is posed by a large beach ball. A series of covers followed in 1959, ranging from German magazine Der Stern – in which Nico, credited as ‘Krista Päffgen’, has a wide-eyed, schoolgirl head shot, complete with a bow holding back her blonde tresses – to a set of shots by Frank Horvat for Jours de France. Photographed for the latter in the Bois de Boulogne, a large public park in Paris, wearing a full-length ice-blue Nina Ricci gown, Nico – here named as ‘Nico Otzack’ – looks other-worldly, as if she has just emerged from a fairy tale. The images are beautiful, haunting and dark, as Nico peeks out from a sea of deso­late trees.

19. Started in 1946 by married couple Eileen and Jerry Ford, Ford Models was New York’s aspirational, elite agency, and the first to establish an international presence, representing women from around the globe. Some Ford models from the 1960s became household names, including Jean Shrimpton, Ali MacGraw and Candice Bergen. In 1968, Ford put out a book, Eileen Ford’s Book of Model Beauty, which was filled with make-up and health advice. The book also included images of Ford’s most success­ful protégées from the 1950s and ’60s. Nico is not among them.

20. The Actors Studio is best known for working to refine dramatic arts skills in its student body of playwrights, thespians and other artistic pro­fessionals, and for teaching the ‘method acting’ mode of performance, an approach which requires an actor to have complete emotional identi­fication with a role.

21. The largest film studio in Europe, located in Rome. Considered the centre of Italian cinema.

22. This cinematic tour de force spawned terminology that is still used dec­ades after its release. ‘Paparazzi’ comes from Marcello Rubini’s wingman, the photographer Paparazzo, who attempts to snap the notable and the sensational, while the polo-neck sweater donned by Nico became known in Italy as a ‘Dolce Vita’. Even the title itself has passed into popular ver­nacular around the globe, connoting ‘mindless hedonism’ in the US and Britain, and a contrasting ‘sense of physical well-being’ in Italy.

23. To this day, only twenty-six foreign-language films have ever grossed more than $10 million in the US.

24. Having already won an Oscar for best foreign film with 1952’s ­Forbidden Games, a movie about two children who create a graveyard for deceased animals, Clément was well known for his attention to detail and for revelling in the difficulties of non-traditional shoots.

25. The 24 January 1961 issue of the Italian magazine Mascotte Spettacolo features a stunning portrait of the model, taken by Enrico Sarsini. Nico looks sweetly into the camera in a modest long red shirt dress. Here she is billed as ‘Nico Otzack’. The bold print on the front includes the cryp­tic caption ‘On the Cover: the beautiful model-actress [sic] Nico Otzack collects all … the difficult people who live between Via Veneto and Via Margutta among the second-rate characters who are stirring in the cin­ema waiting for the right opportunity. Suspended between film-makers and painters, the beautiful, very elegant Nico shows no excessive haste. She feels, with her innate optimism, that sooner or later they will notice her: once upon a time Fellini was attracted by her “type” and included her in the interminable cast of “La Dolce Vita”. There is no reason why others do not follow the example of the popular director: our cover has, this time, the function of a reminder for film-makers who are distracted by other matters.’     Just four months later, the image taken by photographer Jeanloup Sieff for the cover of Swiss magazine Camera No. 5 once again illustrates Nico’s chameleon-like ability to radically change appearance. Still noted as ‘Nico Otzack’, she is platinum blonde, appears barely made up and wears a sea-foam-green cardigan, buttoned conservatively all the way to her chin. She looks similarly demure on the front of the September issue of US magazine Esquire, in a picture taken by Robert Denton and Dan Wynn. She still has a surname in the credits, but has dropped the ‘c’, here being referred to as ‘Our Cover girl, Nico Otzak’.

26. Nico appeared in an array of wacky ads, including a Harper’s Bazaar spread for Neocol cold cream and another within the pages of Elle magazine, in which she poses in a dowdy pink-tinged dress next to a dishwasher, the bold print proclaiming, ‘Everything clean … The washing-­up of five people clean in six minutes!’

27. The film is famous for having a fluid narrative structure, the characters referred to throughout as simply ‘the man’ and ‘the woman’.

28. The male Nico was working on the groundbreaking movie on race and class, Shadows, directed by John Cassavetes. Cassavetes was an early pioneer and advocate of independent films in America.

29. One advertising campaign for Lanvin perfume, shot by Willy Maywald, has the dark, mysterious bottle in the foreground, with Nico’s head, resting on a pillow, hovering and slightly blurred behind it.

30. It would be more than twenty years before Brox next heard from his for­mer lover and protégée. ‘I had not spoken to her in a very long time … it was totally out of the blue,’ he told me, referring to a 1985 phone call he received from the singer. ‘“Victor? It’s Nico. Do you have any heroin?”’

31. The image became the cover for the January 1963 edition of Elle maga­zine, with the uplifting cover caption: ‘Hello 1963! Happy New Year 1963! But first, happy first week! This brand-new issue brings you our warm wishes by the radiant grace of this brand-new mother.’

32. As an adult writing his autobiography, Ari uses the word ‘abandoned’ to describe him leaving Grete on her own, though he was just two when he left Ibiza with Boulogne.

33. Dylan decided to go to Paris for a few days to meet the man who had been translating his songs into French, Hugues Aufray. Aufray made the 1965 LP Aufray Chante Dylan, one of the first albums made up entirely of Dylan covers, and very likely the first such record to be performed by a non-English speaker.

34. The friend was Ben Carruthers. Carruthers was already well known in his own right, having had a role in John Cassavetes’s pioneering movie Shadows. Nico may have met him through Nikos Papatakis, the produ­cer of Shadows.

35. Judy Collins released a version of the song in 1965, saying that Dylan wrote it for her, but also noting that he said the same thing to Joan Baez. The liner notes for Dylan’s 1985 Biograph box set confirm that a version of the song was taped for Collins on 14 January 1965, but do not specify who the song was about or for.

36. Upon returning to New York, Nico encouraged photographer Jerry Schatzberg to get hold of Dylan’s records. During one of our interviews for this book, he told me, ‘She was one of the few people that kept talking to me about Bob Dylan.’ Schatzberg was not sure about the affair between the two, but says of the time, ‘The thing is, everybody dated Bob Dylan! Everybody would say, “Oh yeah, I dated him.” He probably went out with a lot of people. He was always in the company of a lot of people.’ However, it was Dylan’s music that Nico was most keen for Schatzberg to check out. ‘She’d be like, “Jerrrry, have you listened to Bob Dylan?” in that voice of hers!’ Schatzberg laughs. ‘I’d say, “No, not yet, Nico. I will, I will, don’t worry.” If she’d hear that I was in Paris, she’d come to my hotel and call me up from downstairs and say the same thing. Nico was just sort of funny. I love the idea that she would just find out where I was and call me up just to ask me if I’d heard Bob Dylan yet.’

37. It may have been on this visit that Nico shot a series of Spanish televi­sion commercials and print ads for Fernando de Terry brandy. She is in full Swinging Sixties mode throughout the campaign, with thick, thick eyelashes, tanned skin and heavy eye make-up. The ads are great examples of Mad Men-era cheese, from clichéd scenarios – Nico sitting by a crackling fire with a handsome gent; Nico leaning against a potted plant, glancing at the guy in the foreground, who is holding a snifter of booze – to the simply ‘Huh’? – Nico in a polo-neck sweater, holding a volleyball in one hand and a bottle of Terry in the other, surrounded by men holding up newspapers; this is after the opening scene of a white stallion dashing through breaking waves on a beach. In yet another ad, she is shown in a tuxedo, posing and pouting with a bottle of the grog, the other hand leading the same large horse by a rein. Though originally filmed in 1964, the campaign ran for at least three years. In his 1999 autobiography What’s Welsh for Zen, John Cale remarks on seeing one such ad while on vacation in the Canary Islands in 1967, with his then fiancée Betsey Johnson. In it, Nico is donning the same white pantsuit that became her trademark during her Velvet Underground tenure.

38. Stage name of actress, model and sometime singer Danièle Ciarlet. Like Nico, Ciarlet had many famous beaus during the 1960s and ’70s, including Brian Jones and actor Jack Nicholson. She and Nico also shared the commonality of heroin addiction while they made Le Bleu des origines.

39. Two years after his affair with Nico, Jones found himself on trial for drug possession. A psychiatric report on the guitarist came back with findings that may have explained his sexual appetite, saying, ‘Mr. Jones’ sexual problems are closely interrelated to his difficulties of aggression … He is still very involved with Oedipal fixations. He is very confused about the maternal and paternal role in these. Part of his confusion would seem to be the very strong resentment he experiences toward his dominant and controlling mother, who rejected him and blatantly favoured his sister.’

40. It was Warhol’s second visit to the French capital in just over a year. He’d made his debut there in 1964, when he introduced himself to Europe via his pop art screen-print renderings of electric chairs. The new show was filled with large, bright, neon flowers, representing the burgeoning hippie movement in the US and the return of spring to the city.

41. In her autobiography, another member of Warhol’s clique, Ultra Violet, describes the Factory, saying, ‘The one thing that unites us all at the Factory is our urgent, overwhelming need to be noticed. Fame is the goal, rebellion the style, narcissism the aura for the superstars, demi-stars, half-stars, bad-stars, no-stars, men, women, cross-overs, over-sexed, de-sexed, switch-sexed, decadent, satanic denizens of Warhol’s new utopia.’

42. A letter from Nico to Dylan was auctioned off at Christie’s on 30 April 2002. Sent to Dylan, care of the Savoy Hotel, in late May 1965, it shows Nico’s acute understanding of how important her connection to the emerging icon could be for her career, as she writes, ‘Please, please, you promised to write me songs & I want to sing your songs … They are the only ones that make sense for me & my life depends on them.’

43. Page went on to be the guitarist and founder of Led Zeppelin.

44. Oldham now pins what he considers the failure of ‘I’m Not Sayin’’ on the fact that he was trying to copy a hit Bob Lind record of the time, ‘Elusive Butterfly’. Still determined to make something happen, Oldham soldiered on, though he later said of the experience, ‘It’s not working, she can’t sing it.’ However, ‘A lot of people like the record [“I’m Not Sayin’”]. I don’t because I know what’s wrong with it, and it wasn’t a hit,’ he concludes.

45. The filming was most likely done on 8 May 1965, when Nico visited Dylan at the Savoy Hotel in London.

46. Nico featured in a random assortment of advertisements, including one for sweater company Bernhard Altmann, in which she waxed lyrical about the product’s ‘cable stitches of baby-sized braids on rich-as-whipped-cream cashmere’.

47. Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet described Morrissey’s role at the Factory as being ‘father to the rest of the group. He is pleasant, sensible, the most normal of the crew and takes care of business. He sees that bills are paid, papers signed, supplies delivered. He has the soul of a social worker – which he was, with a degree from Fordham College, until he became keeper of the menagerie. His uncombed frizzy hair covers his forehead. He has light eyes that constantly dart about. He is thin, tall, dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck.’

48. Between 1964 and 1966, Warhol made more than five hundred of these short treatments, though few were ever publicly screened.

49. ‘If there exists beauty so universal as to be unquestionable,’ Malanga once wrote, ‘Nico possesses it.’

50. Panna Grady was an American heiress who, in the 1960s, was known for hosting parties that brought together artists and the literary elite, as well as for being a generous patron to writers, primarily poets.

51. The two share a sandwich and a cigarette, as the camera zooms in and out, panning up and down. Discussion moves from Nico trying to dis­cern if there is any sexual spark between the two to her being motherly and urging Borscheidt to relax. The overriding narrative, if there is one, relates to the comfort and established parameters that the closet pro­vides, with freedom and the unknown lurking beyond its walls.

52. Though a reel from it was included as an opener at some of the first premieres of Chelsea Girls.

II: EXALTED

1. $80,000 in 1964 is the equivalent of around $620,000 today.

2. In the same passage from Please Kill Me, Aronowitz goes on to complain that Nico refused to sleep with him, which brings doubt to the valid­ity of his tale, casting it instead as possibly just a case of bitterness and disappointment in failing to bed the German beauty.

3. There also exists a set of films taken by a young cinematographer, Danny Williams, and Warhol insider Barbara Rubin. Shot on 27 and 28 Janu­ary 1966, the tapes include an appearance by the Velvet Underground on New York talk-show host David Susskind’s television programme. The reels also show the group travelling on a bus and cameos by other Factory associates and New York artists, including Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders of the Fugs, Angus MacLise, Gerard Malanga and Paul Morrissey. They do not have any sound, are often out of focus and Nico is absent throughout. Williams went on to become an important part of the Warhol/Factory circle, both personally and professionally. Soon after meeting Warhol, he moved into the artist’s Manhattan town house. Williams was charged with creating the wiring for much of the Velvets’ light show and shooting other ‘experimental’ footage, using Warhol’s own Bolex 16 mm camera. He mysteriously disappeared, aged twenty-­seven, after visiting his family in Massachusetts. The car he borrowed was found next to the ocean, but his body was never recovered.

4. Using the word ‘big’ instead of ‘tall’ in this context seems a bit of a knock, as ‘big’ comes across as meaning oversized and unappealing, in contrast to ‘tall’, which is more aspirational. Even these basic adjectives create a context of belittling Nico and chipping away at what little she had created in her seemingly glamorous modelling career.

5. Before subletting the Jane Street apartment, Nico lived at the Chelsea Hotel.

6. Two of Reed’s other former girlfriends claim the track was inspired by them. Shelley Albin asserted that the song came from a conversation that she and Reed had during their college years, while Barbara Hodes argued that the tune’s origin came from being ‘about the sign Pisces, and about its liquidity and duality’.

7. This was the first Warhol film to feature sound. Shot in 1964, Gerard Malanga is shown wearing a tuxedo, while off-screen discussion can be heard between several others, including Billy Name.

8. Filmed in 1964, the silent black-and-white Warhol film Henry  Geldzahler features the art curator, Henry Geldzahler himself, smoking a cigar and becoming increasingly uncomfortable over ninety-seven minutes.

9. Part of the footage from that night was later used in Mekas’s avant-garde movie Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol.

10. The plot centres around the last night of Mexican Hollywood star Lupe Velez. She has planned the perfect suicide, setting the stage with lit candles and donning decadent attire, before ingesting a large dose of barbiturates. Instead of making a glamorous exit, Velez is depicted drag­ging herself to the bathroom, nauseous from the drugs. The final scene shows the starlet drowning in the toilet bowl’s water – a chilling parallel to Edie’s own trajectory.

11. Sedgwick saw Dylan as her opportunity to build on the acting career she had started with Warhol. But she also had romantic inclinations. ‘She said, “They’re going to make a film and I’m supposed to star in it with Bobby.” Suddenly it was Bobby this and Bobby that, and they realized that she had a crush on him,’ says Malanga in 2009’s Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story.

12. Edie left the Factory and Warhol aged twenty-two, returning for spor­adic visits. Addicted to heroin, she took to always wearing long sleeves to hide her track marks from the probing eyes of former friends. She passed away from an overdose at the age of twenty-eight.

13. Another Warhol protégé, who appeared in several of the artist’s films, including Chelsea Girls.

14. Warhol was especially appreciative of their stylish attire, writing in POP­ism, ‘The kids at the Dom looked really great, glittering and reflecting in vinyl, suede, and feathers, in skirts and boots and bright-colored mesh tights, and patent leather shoes, and silver and gold hip-riding mini­skirts, and the Paco Rabanne thin plastic look with the linked plastic disks in the dresses, and lots of bell-bottoms and poor-boy sweaters, and short, short dresses that flared out at the shoulders and ended way above the knee. Some of the kids at the Dom looked so young that I won­dered where they got the money for all those fashionable clothes.’

15. Though Cale recalls this as being the studio where the initial tracks were recorded, other sources say it was at Scepter Records Studio on West 54th Street in New York.

16. Dolph said of the artist’s participation during the sessions, ‘Warhol was there on occasion. He had his little tape recorder, which he carried all the time. I seem to remember him there probably for about two hours in the aggregate over maybe three occasions. But he was totally fascin­ated by what was going on, and I don’t think he made any aesthetic judgment whatsoever. “Gee, that sounds good” might have been it. He was a spectator.’

17. On both, the chanteuse signed her name as ‘Nico’ and ‘Christa Päffgen’.

18. Gerard Malanga later claimed that Morrison ‘adopted his look’ of trade­mark skin-tight leather pants after seeing Malanga dance on stage at the Trip with the EPI.

19. Sessions took place at TTG Studios in Hollywood.

20. Though no known footage exists of the eight-week series, an interview with Paul Morrissey in 1967 recorded that Nico’s appearance had a price tag of $500 attached (Warhol charged $1,500). A script from one episode survives, and it seems farcical that Nico would be in­volved. In this particular show, Nico was to talk about the 1947 movie thriller Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. The pages read: ‘Hi luvs. I’m Nico. It’s just super-marvellous being Miss Pop Art of 1966. It’s something I’ve always dreamed of, but never thought would happen to little me. Imagine! Andy Warhol, the famous pop artist, Campbell Soup Cans, underground movies, the Plastic Inevitable, picking me! But, I’m not here to talk about little me, I mean, what I’m here to talk about is so super-­fabulous, these movies that Channel 7 is going to show for the next eight weeks, they are REALLY what’s happening.’ The lines are completely improbable and show again a complete disconnect between the woman striving to be taken seriously as an artist and any other good-looking generic presenter.

21. Another cause for stress was the loss of their stronghold at the Dom. Upon returning from California, they were greeted with a nasty sur­prise: in their absence, Bob Dylan’s manager had swooped in on the growing following the EPI had built and renamed the venue the Balloon Farm. This led to the band refusing to play any New York shows, as they were annoyed and worried that any additional scenes they started would also be snatched from under them. ‘There was a lot of backbiting going on in the band,’ John Cale later recalled of the time. To top it all off, Warhol was noticeably absent from EPI gigs, his attention and interest clearly pulled somewhere else. A short tour of the Midwest in October and November, with shows sometimes paying less than $1,000 each for the entire group to split between them and de facto tour manager Paul Morrissey having to use a Greyhound bus as transport, did not help sweeten an already dour atmosphere. ‘It wasn’t very good when Andy started losing interest in the whole project,’ said Cale, as ‘For one thing, traveling with thirteen people and a light show is a kind of mania if you don’t get enough money. And the only reason we got a lot of money … was because Andy was with us.’ Nico echoes this frustration in her diary, writing, ‘Touring with The Velvets and Ari was fun but no money was to be made, we used to get five dollars each to live on per day, it just reminds me, what the Papers said about the fabulous amounts of money we were supposed to have made, sometimes we did not have a bed at night and had to spend the night in the car with little Ari, as he was. There were too many people involved and travelling with us, even when they had nothing to do, they all wanted to be part of it … “The Plastic Exploding Inevitable.”’

22. Such statements, though not made by Nico, arguably have impacted on her legacy, and help to underpin the myth of her being racist.

23. The ceremony included Warhol painting one of the paper dresses from Abraham & Straus – this time worn by a model – with ketchup, as he ‘thought they were so great’ he ‘couldn’t help doing something with one at that wedding’. Wedding presents included ‘an inflatable Baby Ruth bar’ from Warhol.

24. Though advertised to appear with the band for a 17 February perform­ance in Massachusetts, the chanteuse was absent, with many of those attending saying that her failure to appear negatively impacted the show – another indication that, more than a year after joining the band, she was still considered the star attraction.

25. Nico did not return the singer’s affections, which may have led to a later altercation. Friend and former lover Lutz Graf-Ulbrich remembered Nico showing him, ‘… a scar on her wrist, there was a little fight with Leonard Cohen or something, he tried to hold her somehow … I don’t know what really happened.’ Nico herself told Twen magazine in 1969 that she was ‘afraid’ of Cohen, confiding, ‘Every time I see him, I have to make it clear to him that this is not what he wants. He always imagines I’m the ideal girlfriend for him, as if I should become his wife or something. I should not say that, but he does not make any secret of it, and that’s why I can tell you. I like him as a person as long as he does not make any applications.’ Regardless, Cohen always had respect for Nico, being one of the few men – one of the few people, in general – to recognize her artistic talent as an individual. These feelings are obvious in a 1974 interview, as he openly praised Nico, saying, ‘She’s incredible. She’s a great singer and a great songwriter. Completely disregarded from what I can see. I don’t think she sells 50 records, but she’s one of the really original talents in the whole racket.’

26. The Velvet Underground & Nico eventually went gold, selling over 500,000 copies.

27. Emerson went on to feature in Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys and Paul Morrissey’s Heat, before being found dead on a New York street in 1975 after a rumoured drug overdose.

28. ‘These Days’ was originally called ‘I’ve Been Out Walking’ on the masters filed with Verve on 17 May 1967 (it also had that name when Browne recorded it as a publishing demo for Elektra on 7 January 1967).

29. The meeting took place at the apartment of Robert Fraser, Warhol’s art dealer in Britain, who was already making a name for himself in Lon­don’s underground scene. Several months earlier, he had been arrested with the Rolling Stones in a much-publicized drug bust and was about to go on trial. David Croland was at the meeting, recalling, ‘We went to his [Fraser’s] house, and sitting on the bed was this cute guy he was talking to – that was Paul McCartney. I didn’t really know who a lot of these people were. I knew who Paul was, but in the context where it’s just eight people and one of them is Paul McCartney, I didn’t really piece it together. And then I realized, “Oh that’s him.” He was so nice!’

30. Nico never spoke negatively about the drummer in the press, even refer­ring to Tucker as the ‘best drummer ever’ in one interview.

31. The documentary, called Monterey Pop, was directed by D. A. Penne­baker, and it captures the live performances of many of the bands who graced the events stage, including Jefferson Airplane, the Who and the Mamas and the Papas. A quick glimpse of Nico can be seen at the 35 minute, 15 second mark.

32. Journalist Bruno Blum talked about the same story, having heard it from the same source, the Doors’ manager Bill Siddons.

33. The song was also featured on The Marble Index, the first album featur­ing songs written by Nico.

34. Warhol had just had a successful run with his newest film, My Hustler, which showed at the Hudson Theater in New York. Hudson owner Maury Maura wanted Warhol to give her a movie similar to the risqué Swedish film from earlier in the year, I, a Woman. He conceded to her wishes, titling the new film I, a Man, and planned to pack in a lot of scintillating scenes with the gorgeous duo of Morrison and Nico.

35. An MGM royalty statement revealed that a mere 459 copies were sold between 1 September 1968 and 14 February 1969.

36. There is also a fourth section of Four Star, which was only screened once, when the complete twenty-five-hour marathon was shown in its entirety. Referred to as Nico – Katrina, it was publicly viewed only at the New Cinema Playhouse on 15–16 December.

37. There is one additional film, shot in 1967, that included Nico. In Sunset, the viewer can hear a disembodied Nico reciting a poem while images of a sunset float across the screen. The thirty-three-minute film was shot in Houston instead of Warhol’s usual location of New York.

38. The book included a pop-up castle; a paper accordion (with sound); a multicoloured pop-up airplane; a folded geodesic dome and paper disc with ‘The Chelsea Girls’ printed on it suspended on a wire spring between two unopened pages; a 45 rpm flexi-disc with a portrait of Lou Reed, which plays a supposedly unreleased song by Nico and the Velvet Underground; an illustration of a nose with two coloured overlays on a double-folded page; a Hunt’s Tomato Paste can; a sheet of stamps to be placed in water; and a melted gold balloon that fuses two pages together.

39. Many of the traits that friends, collaborators and especially journalists described in Nico from 1968 onwards are attributable to the long-term effects of heroin use, including poor dental hygiene and a failure to address basic needs, like eating or washing. Other more serious issues also arise with addicts, such as brain damage similar to that associated with the early stages of Alzheimer’s. The accusations that Nico ‘lied’, created completely fictitious stories and would stare into the ether do not take into account that opiate abuse impairs many mental functions, including memory. Other problems include poor reasoning, impaired decision-making, emotional processing and behaviour regulation, and a weakened ability to imagine future events and interactions, which can have a strong effect on a person’s goal-directed action. Nico’s seemingly spaced-out replies in interviews, detachment from those around her and inability to look beyond scoring her next fix – before she got into metha­done – are also in line with the well-known impacts of heroin.

40. Mohawk’s real name was Barry Friedman.

41. Morrissey once described Nico’s ‘Innocent and Vain’, taken from her 1973 album The End, as ‘my youth in one piece of music’. From the mid-1990s until 2002, ‘Innocent and Vain’ was also the last song on Morrissey’s concert interval tape prior to his stage entrance music.

III: EXISTENCE

1. Clémenti had already gained notoriety as a questionable admirer of Catherine Deneuve in 1967’s Belle de Jour.

2. Townshend’s piece was called, ‘A Normal Day for Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day,’ and was printed in The Times; Morrison’s work was titled, ‘Ode to L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased.’

3. Garrel forbade subtitles, a problem for anyone who did not speak French or German, the two languages that are used in the movie. In 2005, a Japanese version popped up on DVD that did, at last, supply a translation for the rest of the audience.

4. Nico also made a movie called Cleopatra with Michel Auder in 1970. The cast was made up almost entirely of Warhol prodigies, including Viva, Ultra Violet, Ondine and Gerard Malanga. It is extremely rare and hard to find.

5. Ari had limited contact with his grandmother before her passing, saying, ‘We had previously exchanged a few letters, but hers were not easy to understand.’

6. French singer and actress.

7. Record label where Fields was working at the time.

8. This is a dig at Cale about his new role as producer.

9. Iggy Pop’s real name.

10. This is probably a reference to Fields sending Nico to his Uncle  Herman for some much-needed dental work. ‘I was never crazy about him, but still he was a really good dentist,’ says Fields. ‘The bill was around $400 … Andy said, “See if he’ll take a painting,” for payment. Herman was so offended! He said, “I’d rather not be paid at all than take that gar­bage.” He was offered some cans or flowers or Liz Taylors or something – ha ha.’

11. Dallesandro was the star of three Warhol/Morrissey films, including cult classics Flesh and Trash.

12. Nico harboured distrust and dislike for the Panthers after the passing of her friend, actress Jean Seberg, in 1979. Seberg had died of probable suicide after a mental breakdown. It was rumoured to have been caused by a false story that the FBI planted about Seberg becoming pregnant with a Black Panther’s child in 1970. Nico blamed the political organ­ization for her friend’s death.

13. Not that this is an excuse for her horrendous actions. It does, however, illustrate that it was not a premeditated attack.

14. Fan tributes marked Morrison’s grave for the first couple of years after his death, until a concrete grave kerb was installed. It wasn’t until 1981, on the tenth anniversary of his death, that he got a proper headstone and bust, created and installed by Croatian artist Mladen Mikulin. Less than seven years later, by March 1988, the bust had been stolen.

15. A bootlegged tape, featuring twenty minutes of Reed and Cale fiddling around, eventually surfaced. While Nico does not sing or play on the recording, she can be heard in the background.

16. Nico’s mention of doing press and interviews is another indication that she was trying to be as proactive as she could without formal support.

17. This is a strange inclusion, as the movie is documented as coming out in February 1972.

18. Perhaps she felt burned after being called out by a music journalist in New York for having her hand firmly down the front of Iggy Pop’s ­trousers several years before.

19. Which was Andy Warhol’s favourite Velvets song.

20. The controversial lyrics referred to territories ceded at Versailles and eventually seized back by Hitler.

21. Vicious and Nico had met when Spungen moved from New York to London to pursue Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls. Nothing hap­pened with Nolan; however, Spungen did meet the Sex Pistols, and immediately took up with the band’s bassist, Vicious.

22. Charles Pierre Baudelaire, French poet.

23. Translated as ‘Flowers of Evil’, this controversial book of poetry, first published in 1847 by Baudelaire, deals with topics of modernity, eroti­cism and decadence.

24. Images of Nico are rare after The Marble Index, as it appears she did few photo shoots once she was no longer a part of the Velvet Underground. This makes the Giacomoni set of pictures that much more important in tracing Nico’s visual history.

25. The initials stand for the club’s full official name, Country, Bluegrass, and Blues.

26. Located in the New York neighbourhood of TriBeCa, the Mudd Club was a venue for emerging music and underground events.

27. Post-punk band fronted by singer Neneh Cherry.

IV: END

1. Founder of Factory Records.

2. When asked if Nico had mentioned Jimi Hendrix as one of her con­quests, J said that his name was not included on the list of luminaries.

3. Toman also played with the Durutti Column and Primal Scream.

4. His main subject would have been Romantic literature, specifically William Blake.

5. This would have been in either 1979 or 1982, when Nico performed at the venue.

6. Iconic Manchester producer who was a partner at Factory Records. Also produced Joy Division.

7. Alphonse Mucha was an artist who was heralded as the ‘master of the art nouveau poster’, thanks to the popularity of his designs

8. In a 1985 Melody Maker article, Nico talks about her vegetarian diet. ‘I’m a vegetarian for now about 20 years, and I like to wear leather. It shows that animals are precious. One is never stuck anywhere if you have a pair of boots on and leather pants and your car breaks down in the middle of the desert. I can wear very warm clothes in the desert and it doesn’t bother me.’

9. An orgy.

10. Post-punk band from Manchester who were on Factory Records.

11. According to Alan Wise, around this time Nico received a marriage ­proposal from a Jewish neighbour. ‘He was about 110. He owned the house she lived in. What she used to do was light the fires for him on a Saturday. Jewish law states that one shouldn’t do any work on a Saturday, so they invite non-Jewish people in. Incredible as it sounds, she volun­teered to light the fires for him and put the oven on. She’d done this as a child. But he asked her to marry him. She seemed to think it was serious.’

12. Another bizarre twist was later revealed in an interview with Alan Wise. ‘We went back to her hold out with a BBC camera crew, this was a few months ago [in 2018]. We returned to the house on Prestwich Park South, “Moresby” it’s called. It’s a big Victorian house; Nico lived in the upper part of the house, the new owner restored into one about 20 years ago. When she saw the BBC crew, the owner came down. She said, ‘You must have come about Nico; she left her room in a mess.” I said to her “Do you mean to tell me you haven’t tidied it up in all that time?” “No, I left it the same but I found a letter.” Unfortunately, the BBC crew nicked it but it was written by Nico to Alain Delon asking him to look after Ari. It was never sent.’

13. Blood poisoning.

14. It’s unclear if the capitalization of ‘Superstar’ is also a reference to ­Warhol’s Factory intimates.

15. Nico often uses an upper-case ‘E’ when writing the word ‘End’ in her diary. Again, this may be a reference to the song of that name and/or death – or neither.

16. There is a photograph on the internet of the two of them playing pool together.

17. Illustrating the slight changes in ‘truth’ that can occur, manager Alan Wise said in an interview that ‘they saw her at a café and waved and she waved back’.

18. Nico’s notebook was eventually turned into a book, which has been used as source material throughout this biography.

19. Wilde and Nico share a birthday: 16 October.

20. Saturn return is an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Sat­urn returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied at the moment of a person’s birth. While the planet may not reach that exact spot until the person is twenty-nine or thirty years old, the influence of the Saturn return is considered to start in the person’s late twenties – notably, at the age of twenty-seven.