Nico @frozen-borderline - Tumblr Blog

Nico by Andy Warhol

“Show me the way to morning / Mourning for the morning light / I will stab it with a knife… There is no witness to my anger / When it stabs until it dies / I am looking for the strangler / To help me, help me with my crime …” from “My Heart is Empty” by Nico.

Released on this day (12 July 1985): Camera Obscura, the majestic sixth and final solo studio album by the Velvet Underground’s ghostly erstwhile femme fatale, Nico (1938 – 1988). Camera Obscura reunited the heroin-ravaged Marlene Dietrich of punk with fellow Velvet Underground alumni John Cale for their fourth (and last) collaboration and the first since The End in 1974. According to Nico’s biographer Richard Witts, the atmosphere between them was tense: they had only three weeks to complete the album on a shoestring budget, and most seriously, Cale wouldn’t permit Marlboro addict Nico to smoke in the studio. Reviews were mostly positive: Melody Maker called Camera Obscura “a glowing return to form” that “pushed that all-or-nothing voice back to full expression.” Creem magazine characterized the sound as “layering a warm, undulating electronics-and-percussion groove beneath That Voice.” Nico agreed, saying, “You know, I would have gone to the Amazon to record it … the Amazon Jungle … because of the rhythm section. I wanted just a whole bunch of Amazon drumming. You’re supposed to have a heart attack …” Most significantly, Camera Obscura demonstrated that - like Billie Holiday or Marianne Faithfull - no matter how troubled her life, Nico could marshal her energies and produce powerful music. The two songs sung in German ("Das Lied vom einsamen Mädchen", "König") are haunting. Chanting “When I dream in / When I scream in / When I wipe my / Dirty hands clean …” on “Tananore”, Nico evokes Lady Macbeth. Her sombre rendition of jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” is like being handed a dozen dead roses. And the alienated confessional “My Heart is Empty” is one of the best things Nico ever recorded. Portrait of Nico in London by Peter Noble, 1985.

bitter69uk

S&D: What are your plans? Nico: Possibly the album, other than that … I would give myself at most, five more years … S&D: Well, things aren’t going to last much longer than that anyway. But you – you’re irreplaceable … Nico: The reason that I don’t shoot myself right now is because I know I’m the only one.

/ Nico interviewed in the San Francisco punk zine Search and Destroy in 1977 /

“In recent years Nico dyed her hair jet black, moved to Manchester and became a pillar of the punk movement, of which the Velvets had been the forerunners. She also gave up heroin for bicycling, which was to turn out the more dangerous amusement – she died when she fell off a bicycle while on holiday.”

/ From The Daily Telegraph obituary for Nico /

“I overheard her being asked how she would like to be remembered. She deadpanned: “By a tombstone.””

/ John Keenan, club promoter, quoted in The Guardian in 2019 /

Light a black candle! The late, great heroin-ravaged German chanteuse, actress and fashion model Nico (née Christa Päffgen, 16 October 1938 – 18 July 1988) - the Marlene Dietrich of punk, Edith Piaf of The Blank Generation, Warhol Superstar, Moon Goddess, Exiled Countess of Gloom, inscrutable Velvet Underground femme fatale, “possessor of the most haunting wraith cheekbones of the twentieth century” (James Wolcott of Vanity Fair), purveyor of what The Daily Telegraph termed “depraved Germanic lullabies” and my all-time favourite singer - died on this day aged 49 in Ibiza, Spain. Portrait of Nico in New York (presumably late 70s – early 80s) by punk photographer Stephanie Chernikowski (1941–2026), who died earlier this year. Seek out her work: Chernikowski also took exceptional photos of the likes of The Cramps, Lydia Lunch and Deborah Harry.

“I'm very constructive," Nico said of her music. "I'm not only destructive. You have to be or else you're a loser."

Nico ❤️

Mom and I were on vacation in Ibiza, in an old finca. I had salmonella and she took care of me like a real mother, cooking me rice and boiling fresh water. On July 13, she went down to town to go shopping and buy water. She pushed her bicycle 7 km under the blazing July sun, with two ten‑liter cans of drinking water, plus food and bread. I remember her arrival, I was sitting in the shade, very ill, she sank into the chair next to me, outside. On July 14 she typed the lyrics to her last song. For four days, she took great care of me, until the 18th when, like a ceremonial, in front of the Egyptian eye of Horus, giant and made of small square pieces of glass, arranged in a mosaic, she made herself beautiful and spent an hour wrapping her head in a black scarf. She asked me to reinflate the front tire of her bicycle. I tried but, seeing me staggering, she then said to me: ‘Go and lie down, darling.’ She inflated it herself.

It was precisely one o’clock when she took the road for the last time. She wore her sunglasses, had a book by Mark Twain, Roughing It, in the pocket of her black coat, and enough money to buy a stick of hash and have a drink somewhere. My mother waved at me, saying, ‘See you later, darling.’ I saw her go down the rocky dirt path and disappear behind the pines.”

Ari Päffgen, NICO: From Saeta to Neutrino  (1998)

Nico died on this day, 38 years ago in Ibiza

Celebrate Nico today by listening her music 🖤

Nico

By Laurie Lewis

frithurikja

Nico in a London cemetery, for use on the cover of the 'Drama Of Exile' LP, 1979.

Photos by: Antoine Giacomini.

mossy-birkin

assorted polariod photos of nico, mid-late 60s <3

“The thing about myths and about mythologising people is that actually you don’t get the real person behind it,” says Rainford. “You don’t get that very sad, broken, lonely woman that we first met. We did grow to really love her and feel protective of her. She was just a human like anybody else. People forget that.”

“He was the first man I was in love with, because he was affectionate to my looks and my mind,” said Nico. “He said to me one day, ‘I give you permission to write your poems and compose your songs!’ Nico on Jim Morrison

Nico

Photo by Miguel Vallecillo Mata, 1979.

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