Birthdays : NICO

Nico was born as Christa Päffgen in Cologne, Germany on this day in 1938. 

In a case of crime, in a case of death. 

a favourite track from Nico and from a favourite album

Route

YouTube play here . . . . . . 

Nico in Striptease and her first single [Bitterness Personified] | Graham Russell

Reflections on ... Nico in Strip-tease (1963)

Graham says: 

In June 2025, I screened Strip-tease at my monthly Lobotomy Room film club. As I put it on the event page:  

"Join us on Thursday 19 June, when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room film club at Fontaine’s (committed to cinematic perversity!) whisks you away to early 1960s Paris with Strip-tease (1963)! Note that this film is in French (ooh la la!) and will be subtitled (so bring your reading glasses!). This one (directed by Jacques Poitrenaud) should be catnip for cult cinema connoisseurs. For one thing, it stars Nico. Yes, that Nico! Strip-tease follows the German diva’s earlier vivid appearance in Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), but it captures her a good few years before she became a Warhol superstar and the Velvet Underground’s chanteuse. (For some reason lost in the mists of time, she’s billed as “Krista Nico” – which seems to partially acknowledge her real name, Christa Paffgen. Strip-tease would be Nico’s sole starring role in a relatively mainstream film: her destiny lay in the underground cinema of Andy Warhol and her lover Philippe Garrel). And the moody finger-snappin’ cool jazz soundtrack is by Serge Gainsbourg (and he even appears in the film! The theme tune is huskily warbled by beatnik chanteuse Juliette Greco). Not without justification Strip-tease was promoted as a sexploitation flick (it was released in the US as The Sweet Skin in 1965 with the tagline “Fills the screen with more adult entertainment than you dare to expect! The intimate story of a striptease goddess!”), but more accurately it’s a stylish, melancholy melodrama. Nico plays Ariane, an idealistic ballet-trained German dancer in Paris with high-minded artistic ambitions. Out of economic necessity, Ariane reluctantly accepts a job at Le Crazy burlesque club – and soon captures the attention of a rich, louche playboy (John Sobieski). If you’ve seen Lobotomy Room’s presentations of other burlesque-themed movies like Too Hot to Handle (1960), Beat Girl (1960) and Satan in High Heels (1962), you won’t want to miss this obscure French gem!"

Strip-tease is a criminally unsung and fascinating movie and boy, do I have notes. So, I had to write a blog post about it! 

In brief: Strip-tease shows Nico like you’ve never seen her before! So why have you probably never heard of this movie? Neither director Jacques Poitrenaud nor Nico herself took a lot of pride in Strip-tease. For Poitrenaud (1922 - 2005), this was probably just another assignment and he’s also seemingly not well known outside of France. (He’s certainly not a filmmaker I’m otherwise au fait with). 

Strip-tease is Nico’s sole starring role in a relatively mainstream film, but for the rest of her life, Nico never discussed it in interviews. It most definitely didn’t align with the deeply serious, austere and gloomy “Moon Goddess” image she embraced later in the sixties. BUT: within a few years after its continental debut Strip-tease was belatedly released in the US under the title The Sweet Skin (which makes it sound like a movie aimed at cannibals). In the 1995 book The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965-67 by photographer Stephen Shore, there’s a great shot of Nico standing outside The World Theatre in New York where The Sweet Skin is showing on a double bill (“2 Daring Adult Films!”) accompanied by a group of her Warhol Factory friends, so clearly she assembled them to “come see this film I made in France in the early 60s!”  The other “daring adult film” on the double bill is called The Love Statue (1965), which I’ve Googled and it sounds interesting. 

Read on for Graham’s fascinating critique here . . . .

Bitterness Personified

Alain Delon 1936-2024 (around this time last year)

I said at the time and post again here largely because of his music connection to Marianne and Nico . .

 . . . . controversial enigmatic actor Alain Delon has died (88) and his relationships with the opposite sex seem to have troubled his career and reputation as a fine actor. His private life was notoriously complex and whilst frequently described as amongst the most beautiful of handsome men in the world, his political affiliations (with gangsters the far right and allegedly the mob) his associations with the darker side coloured his standing in the film and acting world.

From the legendary ‘Le Samourai’ (seen here above) to the notorious vehicle for him and Marianne Faithful in 'Girl on a Motorcycle’ he was always mesmerising. Faithful stands as possibly the only women to openly resist his charms and seduction technique finding him rather laughably gauche [“not my type at all". Cheating on his then fiancé the scintillating German actor Romy Schneider (I collect pictures of them both and especially Romy - there is a film bio there . . . ) with Velvet Underground’s Nico fathering her only son, Ari. Delon never acknowledged his son but the boy was brought up by the actor’s mother so . . . . After her untimely death he described Schneider as the love of his life and still put flowers on her grave on a regular basis. 

We will not see his like again. 

 

Nico - The Marble Index

 Nico, The Marble Index

"If all you know of Christa "Nico" Päffgen's music are her vocals for that iconic first VU album, this, the first of what has come to be seen as her trilogy (Marble Index / Desertshore / The End…), may help refine your view of her talent and accomplishments (album lyrics here). 

When one thinks that she wrote and recorded these—with the collaboration of old bandmate John Cale, who brought his arranging, composing, and recording nous to work with her sound and vision—in 1968, not 1988, it's quite remarkable as a sui generis piece of individual genius and as the forgotten progenitor of much of what would become goth, darkwave/cold wave, and the like.

Some background via Wikipedia:

"The American singer Jim Morrison, whom Nico later called her 'soul brother', encouraged her to write her own songs; this was 'a key breakthrough' for her. They were together in California in July and August 1967, often driving into the desert and experimenting with peyote. Morrison, who encouraged Nico to write down her dreams, read the writings of Mary Shelley, William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to her. He recorded his chemical visions and dreams, using the material for his songs as he imagined the opium-addicted Coleridge had worked. In 1986 Nico said, 'He taught me to write songs. I never thought that I could … He really inspired me a lot. It was like looking in a mirror then.' She began writing material and performing it to an intimate audience at Steve Paul's club, the Scene. Nico composed her music on a harmonium bought, according to Richard Witts, from a San Francisco hippie. Her manager, Danny Fields, said that she may have acquired it through the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. The harmonium became her trademark with which 'she discovered not only her own artistic voice but a whole new realm of sound'." 

(more details on the inspired/troubled Morrison-Nico relationship here) well sort of

She dipped into Wordsworth, one of her favorites, and his magnum opus, The Prelude (the 1850 posthumous, final version), for her album's title: 

And from my pillow, looking forth by light

Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold

The antechapel where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

John Cale - Frozen Warnings - (for Marble Index)

Nico - Secret Side  & Valley of The Kings

Nico - The Marble Index (1968) | Zero G Sounds

 Nico - The Marble Index (1968)

Zero hat gesagt : "The quirky, orchestrated folk-rock of Nico's 1968 debut album, "Chelsea Girl", in no way prepared listeners for the stark, almost avant-garde flavor of her 1968 follow-up, "The Marble Index". The chanteuse presented an uncompromisingly bleak, gothic soundscape on her second album. 

Dominated by spare harmonium and Nico's deep, brooding vocals, this album unveiled her singularly morose songwriting (her first record featured none of her compositions). Owing more to European classical and folk music than rock, it found little favor with 1968/1969 audiences. But like the work of the Velvet Underground, it proved to be quite influential in the long run on a future generation of black-clad goth rockers. “

Tracklist:                                                        

1 Prelude 0:50

2 Lawns Of Dawns 3:12

3 No One Is There 3:36

4 Ari's Song 3:20

5 Facing The Wind 4:52

6 Julius Caesar (Memento Hodie) 4:57

7 Frozen Warnings 4:00

8 Evening Of Light 5:33

9 Roses In The Snow 4:06

10 Nibelungen 2:44

The original album was released in November 1968, tracks 9 and 10 are bonus tracks, mixed and engineered at Skyline Studios, NYC, May, 1990.

Pretty sure we had this before and will check but meanwhile y’ere ’tis agin!

Zerosounds

The Fairest of The Seasons - Nico | O My Soul

O My Soul

The Fairest of the Seasons | Nico

ZEROSOUNDS present the Drama of Exile from Nico

Nico - Drama Of Exile

Zero gesagt : "It was a shock at the time and today, the thrill still lingers. Almost 15 years after she quit the Velvet Underground, and with four stunningly stubborn solo albums under her belt, Nico was finally ready to return to rock & roll, with a conventional band and a clutch of great songs which proved that, whatever else she'd lost during a career spent on the bleakest fringe of the idiom, the arts of composition and interpretation were not part of it. 

As a member of the Velvets, she'd performed two songs, the stately "All Tomorrow's Parties" and the fragile "Femme Fatale." Now she added a third to her bow, a relentless "Waiting for the Man" which took its lead from composer Lou Reed's own recent revisions of the song but never lost sight of the trademark primitivism which gave it its original power -- that's not Maureen Tucker on drums, but close your eyes and it could be. Elsewhere, David Bowie's "Heroes" was given an almost militaristic going over, the chopping guitars, rolling drums, and a triumphant Davey Payne sax solo conspiring to prove that while Bowie had written about what he saw in Berlin, Nico sang of what she knew. It was stirring stuff and, again, all the more surprising for who was behind it. Nico reveled in the confusion. "It was really boring, all that quiet stuff," she said of her past albums and, as if to hammer home the point, ensured that even her most reflective moments now swam within a brittle swirl of new wave-inflected rock, and the traditional Eurasian influences which band members Philippe Quilichini and Mahammad Hadi added to Nico's own unique references. 

Across her own compositions, "Drama of Exile" explored the faces and places Nico witnessed during her own dramatic exile - she had spent the first half of the 1970s in hiding, convinced that the Black Panthers had a contract out on her; she resurfaced and was then forced to retreat once again, after an interview quote was interpreted as espousing brutal racism. The haunting, almost Indian-sounding "Orly Flight," the rattled funk of "The Sphinx," and the droning/hypnotic "Purple Lips" all suggested adventures which never made the newspapers, while "One More Chance" made it obvious that she didn't regret one of them. Nor, once this album was assimilated by the world at large, would she ever need to.  "

Tracklist  

Genghis Khan

Purple Lips

One More Chance

Henry Hudson

Waiting For The Man

Sixty Forty

The Sphinx

Orly Flight

Heroes

Nico - These Days | Zero G Sound

Nico - These Days - My Funny Valentine (Bootleg)

Nico was a model, actress, chanteuse, and former Velvet Underground frontwoman known for her sultry voice and ice-goddess presence.

The original goth rocker, Nico's albums are demanding and bleak, but map a unique and starkly powerful vision that has become more influential with age. An intimate of Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, the Velvet Underground, the Stones, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and others, her fascinating story is recounted in the biography "Nico: The Life & Lies of an Icon" by Richard Witts, published in Great Britain by Virgin books; "The End" by James Young is a seedy look at her drug-addled final years by a member of her touring band.

This is a compilation with tracks recorded live between 1968 and 1974 in New York City. It was released as "These Days" and - with the same tracks - as "My Funny Valentine".

Tracklist:

1 Heroes 9:20
2 Procession 4:45
3 My Funny Valentine 4:13
4 All Tomorrow's Parties 5:27
5 Secret Side 3:13
6 Femme Fatale 3:08
7 The End 9:52
8 The Fairest Of The Seasons 4:08
9 These Days 3:33
10 Little Sister 4:26
11 Winter Song 3:22
12 Chelsea Girls 7:28
13 I'll Keep It With Mine 3:24
14 Somewhere There's A Feather 5:53
15 Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams 5:19

Bought when it came out as a single and it always makes me smile . . . . . 

NICO - CAMERA OBSCURA (1985) | ZEROSOUNDS

 

Long out of print classic Nico with the Faction (James Young and Graham ‘Dids’ Dowdall) produced by John Cale

Nico - Camera Obscura - Zerosounds

Zero G says (and thinks it not a classic but each to their own huh?)

"One of the most fascinating figures of rock's fringes, Nico hobnobbed, worked, and was romantically linked with an incredible assortment of the most legendary entertainers of the '60s.

The most noticeable thing about "Camera Obscura", only Nico's sixth solo album in almost 20 years, is how relaxed she seems. Maybe it was a result of the security that now enveloped her, following her rediscovery and total reinvention in the arms of the British post-punk/goth scene - people say that artists do their best work while they're living on the edge, and Nico's canon was living proof of that. But it was all behind her now and, if "Camera Obscura" does not sound positively comfortable, it's at least less despairing than its predecessors. Not that she had changed her stance too much - listening to Nico remains a cathartic, solitary experience. But the claustrophobia that was so essential to each of her albums as far as "Drama of Exile" has given way to vistas that, aided by John Cale's wide-open production, render "Camera Obscura" an easy listen by comparison. 

Indeed, the reliance on the studio is so pronounced that there are moments when the album's closest antecedent lies in Cale's own past albums, with Nico's voice buried so deeply inside the mix that it's almost unnoticeable. Both the (studio improvised?) title cut and the lengthy "Fearfully in Danger" are absolutely Cale territory and, if Nico is allowed to shine at all, it's on "My Funny Valentine," executed precisely as one would hope she'd do it - all sad and dark, with just a faint smile playing around her lips - and "Das Lied vom einsamen Mädchen", a strident Teutonic ballad that, were its source better known, would doubtless be as universally effective as her rendition of "Deutschlandlied" proved a decade before. The title, incidentally, translates as "the song of the lonely girls," a subject about which Nico certainly knew a thing or two. 

"Camera Obscura" is not classic Nico, but it's by no means disposable. Indeed, accepting that Cale's overwhelming presence should at least earn him a co-billing in the credits, there really is no one else who could have made a record like this. "

Live Journal - Recollections of Nico and The Faction

Song and chanteuse of the day| Nico : Afraid (from Desertshore) Le Ramasseur De Mégots

Afraid

camberwellfoxes:

Nico Afraid

from her 1970 album Desertshore

"There has never been anyone like her in music. I think she is a genius.” Le Ramasseur De Mégots

Now I liked Nico and bought pretty much everything and saw her live in a local ‘dance’ club (how they booked her into a venue more used to ‘ladies' dancing around their handbags is anyone’s guess but . . .) and I appreciated her place within the Velvets but “genius”? Nah! She is a messed up Germanic chanteuse plumbing the depths of heroin induced despairing Teutonic mono drone rock which presumably explains why I own pretty much everything! (sic?)

And there was just something about her that made me “AFRAID!” 

This again via Le Ramassuer De Mégots via Radio Camberwell . . . .Radio Camberwell calling!

Let’s hear it for the Camberwell Foxes!

Desertshore was Nico’s third album and under the orchestrations and production and Jon Cale’s piano playing it was a highly listenable sensitive album. Here on Afraid she almost sounds like a gentler little-girl-lost almost vulnerable and tender but hey . . . . . enjoy!

Julian Cope on Desertshore in The Book of Seth

Rock Beauty of the Week : Christa Päfgen - NICO

Speaking of the Velvet Underground . . . . . . . . . 

Before the smack kicked in . . . . . 

"Recognise this dazzling blonde? It’s Nico (yes, THAT Nico!) aka Christa Päffgen in her pre-Warhol / Velvet Underground international supermodel days, photographed by Jerry Schatzberg in 1961. Photographer and filmmaker Schatzberg knew a thing or two about complicated women with great cheekbones: in the 1960s he was engaged to Faye Dunaway (she ditched him for Marcello Mastroianni!) and later directed Dunaway in the intriguingly weird 1970 psychodrama Puzzle of a Downfall Child.” Only perhaps here can you see why Alain Delon would have had a child (Ari) with her behind the back of his then fiancée the equally breathtaking Romy Schneider

 

Nico - Do or Die 1982 - In Europe | ZEROSOUNDS

 Next up there was some more Nico (obsessed? Moi?) 

A compilation of her tour of that year across Europe  .

Nico In Europe - Live compilation - Zero G

Zero quotes from Alternative Press

Nico, the punk princess of the mid '60's Warhol entourage, joined the Velvet Underground as a singer in 1965 after a brilliant European career as a top model and actress.

This began a new career for one of the truly unique vocalists and rock personalities of our times. Noted for her Teutonic inflections, amazing beauty and heartbreaking baritone, she exuded a deep-seated sense of European worldliness and angst. She in many ways set the stage for the "gloom and doom" English romanticism and the Goth movement so popular today.

Truly an individualist, in style, presentation and her approach to material, Nico created a unique vision that in time became her own personal reality.

Nico´s "Do or Die" was originally released by ROIR as a cassette-only in November 1982. It is a collection of live performances, both solo and with her band, from her 1982 European tour that garnered considerable interest from collectors, press, her fans and also the followers of The Velvet Underground. It has now been 24-bit digitally remastered and re-edited for CD release by Doug Pomeroy.

"Drawn from five European gigs and featuring the best of Nico's many bands, The Blue Orchids, 'Do or Die' is the greatest hits package Nico never got. The power she unleashes dismisses any doubts regarding her role in rock and roll. Skillful beauty - spine-chilling isolation" - Alternative Press

 . . . . . . . 

Nico & The Blue Orchids - Berlin Audimax - Live 07.05.1982 - ZEROSOUNDS

One of the most fascinating figures of rock's fringes, Nico hobnobbed, worked, and was romantically linked with an incredible assortment of the most legendary entertainers of the '60s. The paradox of her career was that she herself never attained the fame of her peers, pursuing a distinctly individualistic and uncompromising musical career that was uncommercial, but wholly admirable and influential. 

It was a very demanding show for Nico and the audience and neither Nico or the audience were satisfied. The expectations were too far apart and Nico provoked at the end with a successful version of: "Das Lied der Deutschen"

01. Heroes
02. Sãeta
03. Vegas
04. 60/40
05. Janitor of Lunacy
06. The End
07. All Tomorrow's Parties
08. Femme Fatale
09. I'm Waiting for the Man
10. No One Is There
11. Das Lied der Deutschen
12. Shouting for encore & is Reinhard Frahm out there ?

Nico: vocal, harmonium
with The Blue Orchids:

Martin Bramah: guitar, backing vocals

Rick Goldstraw [Eric McGann]: guitar

Una Baines: Yamaha Synthesizer

Steve Garvey [Steven Patrick Garvey]: bass, backing vocals

Toby Toman [Phillip Tomanov]: drums

Nico and The Blue Orchids - Berlin 82 - Zerosounds

Song of the Day :: Nico, Lou and John ‘FEMME FATALE’ - Live at The Bataclan 1972 - for all who fell!

• Track Name

  Femme Fatale

• Album

  Le-Bataclan - ´72

• Artist

  Nico - Lou Reed - John Cale

Nico, Lou Reed and John Cale - Femme Fatale (1972)

Recorded at Le Bataclan in 1972 when Lou Reed, Nico and John Cale joined the stage together.

from the always brilliant Guess I’m Dumb

Nico - Live in Japan 1982 :: ZEROSOUNDS

Nico - Live in Tokyo - 1982 - ZEROSOUNDS

Too much of the Christmas season already? Well, here's a nice Christmassy bauble and this should fit the bill!?

 Try 60/40 LOUD! Great quality this and well worth having. Nico at her prime peak with the excellent keyboard player James Young and Graham 'Dids' Dowdell a truly wonderful percussionist and drummer, backed with Eric Ramsden on tabla and other keyboards they make this signature sound of hers!

or try acapela All Tomorrow's Parties for the holiday season ahead!

NICO - 'HEROINE' (sic) - Manchester 1994 - Zero G Sounds

    Well extraordinarily enough Zero G has posted a Nico in Manchester concert from 1994 long after she had moved away from the city but she always enjoyed living there . . . . . . . from Doc Watson to Flappers and Slappers to Nico's mournful harmonium! Talk about eclectic! Extraordinary weblog

This is well worth a listen though slightly distant and clearly an audience recording . . . . . . . . 

Nico - Heroine - Manchester Library Theatre 1994 - Zerosounds