Chapter 43 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

As 1985 started, work began on an album for British independent record label Beggars Banquet. Alan Wise called Aaron Sixx to tell him about the new project. After all of the issues with Drama of Exile, Sixx ‘didn’t really want to be involved’ in any new Nico under­taking. According to him, Wise said it was John Cale whom the label had originally wanted to sign. Nico had been added because she was inexpensive. ‘Alan told me that Beggars wanted to do some­thing with John Cale,’ says Sixx. ‘They weren’t really interested in Nico, they wanted Cale. Nico was somebody that was very easy to work with. Cale could control her easily, given all the history. The story I got via Alan was that Cale said he would work with Beggars, but it has to be a Nico album.’ Whatever the genesis of the reunion, the duo were back in the studio after a decade apart. A name had already been chosen for the LP: Camera Obscura – a darkened box with an aperture for projecting the image of an external object onto a screen.

Recording started in March at Strongroom Studios in London. This time it was Cale, not Nico, who was suffering. ‘John Cale was actually worse than Nico,’ recalls Graham Dowdall. ‘He was coming to the end of his period of excess, so he was taking reason­able amounts of cocaine but drinking phenomenal amounts; he was getting bottles of champagne and crates of Grolsch delivered.’ Nico, however, was starting to reassess her health. ‘She was in a much better place by then,’ says the drummer. ‘She’d say things like, “This is the best I’ve felt since the ’60s.” I think she felt like it was an opportunity to get back into the game properly.’ Cale, too, noticed a change in his old friend. ‘She had a lot of depth in her personality that she didn’t have before, better lyrics and sens­ibility. She wasn’t as abrasive as she used to be,’ he said. ‘She’s very together, a great lady, for somebody who most people don’t asso­ciate with being a professional musician. She’s very determined, has a very professional attitude towards her work.’ Even though he may have battling his own demons, Cale still came through for his former bandmate. ‘He had this production genius, and it was incredibly exciting to work with him,’ says Dowdall. ‘He and Nico were like old mates, and it was pretty focused. John believed in her as an artist and he wanted to make sure she got a good album, under budget and on time.’

Camera Obscura also formalized the relationship between Nico and some of the musicians with whom she had been regularly work­ing. The record was officially attributed to Nico and ‘the Faction’, the name given to her backing band. Dowdall recalls, ‘The core Faction was me and Jim [James Young], with Eric Random being the third member. The relationship between me, Nico and Jim was a really, really positive, creative relationship. We’d come round here to my studios; this is where we would rehearse often and demoed all of Camera Obscura. She trusted both of us hugely, musically. She was a little bit socially removed from Jim and was closer socially with Eric and myself, because Jim – love him! – he’s a bit Oxford. We used to call him “Gentleman Jim” and make jokes about how he had a butler who would clean his house and all of this silly stuff. And Nico was really in on that joke. She’d take the piss out of him for being this Oxfordian kind of character; obviously, Nico was from a different world. And I suppose Eric, myself and Nico were a little bit more street and a little bit more rock’n’roll than Jim. But she really trusted him musically and in terms of finding ways to support her melodies. I suppose the writing of Camera Obscura was a pretty pleasurable experience. It’s a flawed album; it’s not perfect, but some of that’s down to Cale more than it is down to Nico. I’m proud of it.’

The final touch was the silver and black cover art designed by Factory Records maverick Peter Saville. Saville had already cre­ated iconic LP artwork for Joy Division, New Order, John Cooper Clarke, Roxy Music and Wham! when the opportunity to work on an image for Camera Obscura came up. Speaking to me from his studio, Saville confesses, ‘It was quite a thrill to unexpectedly do something for Nico. I didn’t meet her; a photograph was chosen and we made an acknowledgement to Warhol in a very ’80s way. I had an American assistant [Chris Mathan], who designed the Nico sleeve. It’s a hybrid of a sensibility of the ’80s whilst acknowledging the prominence of Nico … The idea of doing something for Nico was like a moment of connection between the Velvet Underground and Warhol. It was irresistible.’

Positive reviews began coming in for the album upon release. ‘She might be pushing 50, but she still looks a debauched 30,’ said Dave Thompson in Melody Maker. ‘Not for her the ravages of time. Perfectly preserved, she’ll run forever, baffling 21st century anthropologists with her note-perfect impersonations of an industrial computer with a Greta Garbo fixation … Listening to Nico is … essentially a cathartic ritual, best experienced with the shutters pulled tight and the gaslight casting eerie shadows on the wall.’ Noting the new direc­tion of the songs – ‘It is not classic Nico … there’s no “Janitor of Lunacy”, “Julius Caesar” or “Genghis Khan”’ – Thompson writes, ‘But hell, a Nico album’s a Nico album, and, accepting that John Cale’s overwhelming presence should at least win him a co-billing in the credits, there really is no one else who could have made a record like this one.’ Mark Lanegan agrees. ‘I think Cale just appreciated her art and loved her as a person, even though by all accounts neither one of them was the easiest to get along with,’ he says. ‘They had some­thing special between the two of them where they created great art, and that’s really all that matters – making great art.’

Other reviewers were not as gracious, once again dragging out the tired analysis of Nico’s destroyed countenance. ‘She raises a hand to her face, feeling the lumps and the lines, her past marked out in secret codes,’ writes Don Watson in the NME. ‘Suddenly conscious of how badly she had applied her make-up this morning … her pale, powdery face, its lumps like a relief map of the modern age. Underneath all that fat was a face she once knew. How terrible she looked now,’ he concludes.

*

By 1986, Nico was going back and forth between Brixton and Manchester, if she wasn’t on tour. A revealing Australian interview illustrates the nomadic, unstable lifestyle of the singer. After the DJ welcomes her to Melbourne, Nico responds, ‘I’ve not quite arrived yet.’ She goes on to tell him that she doesn’t have a home, and even her passport notes her transient existence: ‘It says “ohne ­festen Wohnsitz”, which means “without a fixed address”.’ She claims that she prefers it this way, ‘as it’s like being married when you have a home. God, it’s terrible.’ Attempting to establish common ground, the interviewer says that living in Brixton must be very ‘intense’, a nod to the neighbourhood’s racial tensions, reports of which had been shared around the world. Nico shoots him down, answering witheringly, ‘Not as much as people make out; Hell’s Kitchen on the Lower East Side [sic] in New York is much more dangerous.’ In another interview, Nico is asked why she lives in Manchester. ‘Where I live right now reminds me of Berlin,’ she replies. ‘Manchester reminds me of Berlin, in a way.’

Nico returned to the city not long after getting back from the Australian tour, her appreciation for her new home shining through. This time, Ari came with her, taking up residence with his mother.

In Manchester, Nico’s appreciation of the city shines through via her diary, as she writes of local pubs (‘Tonight we shall go for a drink at the Foresters’) and of being inspired by the city’s his­tory, referencing former residents Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (‘The real  reason for my Residence here In M.[anchester] are Karl Marx And his friend F.[riedrich] Engels’). She even takes note of her neighbours and their culture, documenting, ‘The Jewish New Year is the most religious time of the Year and all the People are fasting during the day, I wonder if they can touch their Baking ovens them­selves, or if they’ll burn their fingers doing it. On Singleton Road they did burn their fingers.’11 An entry from 25 October shows how comfortable she feels in the city, saying, ‘Now that I am back in M[anchester] … I slept so very well here, I am mentioning it because that doesn’t happen often that I get any decent sleep.’

The last place Nico lived in Manchester was in the Century Park neighbourhood. In 1988, the house was divided into flats and sold to a young married couple, making Nico an unwanted tenant. Homeowner Janet Wraeng recalled the gruesome state of the place when she found it:

She ended up in squalor … that’s the only way I can describe it. I know it’s my house now, but at the time, it was appalling. There was water dripping everywhere. There was no heating. It was quite shocking, really … for someone to be living like that. Especially someone who knew so many rich and famous people, someone who moved in those circles … and she ended up in a squalor [sic] bed sit. It was quite shocking. She left the house in a taxi and we just stood there and watched her go. Literally [all of her possessions] fit in the back of a black cab. That was her whole life in three, four bags.12

With the encouragement of friends, and feeling comfortable in Manchester, Nico finally quit heroin. It was a long time coming, according to Phil Jones. ‘It was a different time, and I think we should’ve put her in a care home, got her cleaned up and she could’ve flourished. It was almost a Shakespearean tragedy. She was vulner­able, and all those people ignored her,’ he says. Sixx also recalled conversations about Nico’s substance abuse. ‘I remember talking to Alan about the heroin problem. He said he’d get her into a metha­done programme.’ That is exactly what happened. ‘She decided to stop, and to get on the methadone,’ said Ari in Nico: Icon. ‘That was in 1986. She never took heroin again.’

Jane Goldstraw remembers when Nico finally decided to embark on quitting smack. ‘She just said she’d had enough. She’d had septi­caemia13 and she’d had to go into hospital for about a week. She wanted me to brush her hair because she couldn’t move, she couldn’t get out of bed … She had a drip in and things,’ Goldstraw recalls. ‘The doctors told her that if she got septicaemia again, she would die. Once she came off heroin, she started looking really well. It was a huge difference, as she had got to a point on the drugs that she looked dreadfully ill.’

Besides being almost fatally sick, the combination of encourage­ment from Wise and the imprisonment of her reliable drug dealer also helped tip Nico towards starting a recovery programme. But though now off heroin, she was far from living the ‘clean’ and ‘healthy’ lifestyle that has often been attributed to this period of her life. Methadone is an opioid, originally created to help people in extreme pain, and it is often used as part of a treatment programme to help people beat heroin addiction. However, it is not a ‘cure’ and it has its own side effects. ‘Methadone is a horrible drug; it zombifies people,’ says Young. ‘She was on that evil “chemical cosh” methadone; in my view it was methadone that contributed to her demise. I didn’t like what it was doing to her. I guess it made her easier to manage – no more running around to find a connection.’

Though off heroin, Nico was never completely ‘clean’. ‘Nico clean? You kidding?’ laughs Young. Whether it was white wine, the occasional beer imbibed while playing pool or hashish, Nico still partook of various other substances. ‘She preferred to smoke hashish, not weed,’ echoes Barbara Wilkin. ‘She didn’t roll ordinary joints but what she called “New Yorkers” – pure hashish in rolling paper – which she smoked with pliers all the way to the end – quite a skill without burning your lips. She also would share “ordinary” joints or pipes if others were offering. I think she was happier on that, and without the hassle of getting the other stuff in seedy and dangerous places.’ Wilkin also notes that by this point, Nico ‘didn’t have any veins left suitable to inject herself’.

While using any drug at all is often frowned upon in recovery programmes, this may have been the form of harm reduction that worked for Nico, dialling down the chaos of the previous decades. Though Young and others now argue that the methadone possibly had more far-reaching effects on her health, the singer’s immediate improvement once she came off heroin seemed evident after years of a life that revolved around scoring and using.

Throughout the final pages of Nico’s diary, there is a vivid deter­mination to stay off heroin and stick with the methadone plan – her ‘medication’. Her observations show how she is noticing, and appreciating, the world around her:

They’re cutting the trees down in the Garden and I like those trees. The new landlord seems to be rich but unromantic … Never mind, they were doing it on Singleton Rd. too, and I was furious, those clean-cut assholes have a lot to answer for … The little boy downstairs is too small to understand, but he would agree with me about pruning the trees, and the grass they’re going to cut as well. Time for Ibiza, because of my Medication, it isn’t easy to just live anywhere. At least it doesn’t include Australia and Paris, because I know now where to go.

Here Nico is identifying where she feels comfortable travelling, her routine and plans no longer revolving around scoring heroin, instead focusing on places where she knows she will be able to stick to her methadone programme. A later passage flips this around, as here Nico is ‘scoring’ a cheque from a record label, while again not­ing the world around her:

As sure as it had to be today, my first check from Beggars Banquet and the sun is shining a perfect October day in these Northern Regions of the Globe. Some trees have real gold leaves …

Nico documents her healing in the pages of her diary. ‘Starting Monday, I will get my medication from Prestwich hospital and I am extremely relieved on this matter.’ She began to ride her bike more and take on responsibilities that she had never contemplated engaging with previously, like getting a bank account of her own. She marvels at each small victory, writing, ‘Opening a new Bank account has been easier than I thought it would have been, at least they can negotiate my checks instead of myself having to do so. The convenience is staggering.’

The idea of past and present clashing against each other is a repeated motif. In a passage marked as being from ‘Tuesday morn­ing, afternoon’, Nico references two ghosts – one the previous resi­dent of the house she is living in, the other herself – once again flipping between first and third person (the ‘long gone ghost’):

When a man from the council rapped at my door, asking for Fiona, a long gone ghost, this girl is too much, a life full of struggling for some false recognition. Bringing or rather getting facts all mixed up. Last night they showed some excerpts of ‘La dolce Vita’ on T.V.

While addiction had held her hostage for decades, it had also created a persona which defined her – both to herself and to ­others. In her recorded thoughts she appears to be coming to grips with the time she has spent as a ‘ghost’ herself because of the drugs. ‘My superstition being justified each time I did not keep my prom­ise. Perhaps [someone] will change me the check from America, Something to show that I have lived there,’ she writes on 3 October – again, a reference to existing, as if previously, when on heroin, she lacked subsistence. There is a constant push/pull in her words, between wanting/yearning to have permanency of any kind and the fear of taking this step. ‘The walls are shelter from the cold and rain,’ she notes, as she looks for furniture in the form of a settee for her home. ‘What the hell am I going to sit on. Some of us have the walls and others have the furniture,’ she argues, as if picking necessity (walls), while longing for, yet scared of, comfort (furniture). This internal tension is underscored when she realizes, ‘If I should go to Australia then I would abandon the damn furniture anyway,’ as if tossing away any actual acceptance of having a stable and homely place of her own. In a later entry, she writes, ‘Oh yes, I feel very privileged being here at this very moment, the walls are alive and well, what the hell is going on there, Someone is coming through the walls.’ It may be that she feels secure, but also that ‘walls’ in this context refers to her ability to connect with others, something she has not done in a significant manner for a very long time.

Nico also seems to be taking her various critics to task, at last striking out, if only in her own personal notes, at the decades of cruel and unfair depictions of her perpetuated in the media. ‘A Newspaperman doesn’t even have enough creativity to write a piece on somebody without needing a Tape recorder, even so they don’t get the right picture. One’s Identity is at the mercy of some spook story, totally untrue or out of focus, a big Lie. A good Newspaperman gives a credible Portrait of the Individual,’ Nico argues.

Nico is clearly starting to plan, or at least contemplate, an exist­ence beyond a next hit. ‘Human nature is clumsy dealing with the future in such a futuristic way of invention,’ she writes. She looks to other stars for guidance, noting how old they are, as if to prove to herself that she can still be relevant at her age. ‘Bette Davis is still doing it, with as much as Parchment paper over her skinny face and body. Being thirty-five years my adversary. Lillian Gish being forty-three years older than myself. Marlene, she’s still singing sometimes, when she runs out of money, if she runs out of money. Unless she was dealing with creeps like myself.’

Nico returns to her lament about poor management, noting, ‘Somehow I never managed to find the Person to take care of my business.’ Yet this time, she admits that being without heroin is making it difficult to see not only the decisions she made before, but also what she must take on; being stoned would be an easier escape: ‘I expect some changes in the near future, my lucidity is half killing me, or should I say my Intuitions.’ Her dance with her own mortality still lingers at the forefront of her mind, as she writes, ‘Crossing Bury New Road past midnight last night on my bicycle, a car honked his horn at me as he passed, did he think I was suicidal, crossing the street just avoiding a crash excites me.’

James Young also noted how the new, heroin-free version of Nico was less fatalistic and more hopeful than he had seen her in the past:

We were talking about death, as you do after a good spaghetti dinner. ‘I’ve got so close to it, so many times … it’s like you begin to see it. First, when you’re young, it doesn’t exist. Then later it’s a shadow, indistinct. Then you begin to recognise it as it gets closer …’ Though she’d been intimate with the deaths of others – her father, murdered by the Nazis; her mother’s death of cancer in a mental asylum; the execution of the American sergeant who’d raped her; the grave dust-laden air of Berlin; she’d also monitored her own mortality in her songs and in her life. Other people’s deaths are not the same as your own.

Yet through all the internal damnation and inventory, Nico seems determined and excited to begin a new chapter in her life. ‘The moment is mine, and he who takes it is an Intruder to Here and Eternity. Unless you allow the occasion to happen you cannot think of yourself as a convincing actress,’ she writes in one passage, while in another she declares, once again using walls as an analogy to explain the changes in her life, ‘Winter penetrating these old walls, October, November, December 1988 this will be the most important turning point of my life, I better believe it too.’