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You Are Beautiful And You Are Alone: The Biography Of Nico
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE ALONE is a new biography of Nico, the mysterious singer best known for her work with the Velvet Underground and her solo album Chelsea Girl. Her life is tangled in myth--much of it of her own invention. Rock and roll cultural historian Jennifer Bickerdike delivers a definitive book that unravels the story while making a convincing case for Nico's enduring importance.
Over the course of her career, Nico was an ever-evolving myth: art film house actress, highly coveted fashion model, Dietrich of Punk, Femme Fatale, Chelsea Girl, Garbo of Goth, The Last Bohemian, Heroin Junkie. Lester Bangs described her as 'a true enigma.' At age 27, Nico became Andy Warhol's newest Superstar, featuring in his one commercial break out hit film Chelsea Girls and garnering the position of chanteuse for the Velvet Underground. It wasn't Nico's musical chops which got her the gig; it was her striking beauty. Her seeming otherworldly and unattainable presence was further amplified by her reputation for dating rock stars (Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, among others). She became famous for being Nico.
Yet Nico's talent and her contribution to rock culture are often overlooked. She spent most of her career as a solo artist on the road, determined to make music, seemingly against all the odds, enduring empty concert halls, abusive fans, and the often perilous reality of being an ageing artist and drug addict. She created mesmerizing and unique projects that inspired a generation of artists, including Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Siousxie Sioux and the Banshees and Iggy Pop.
Drawing on the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico's record labels, various private collections, and rarely seen footage, and featuring exclusive new interviews from those who knew her best, including Iggy Pop and Danny Fields, and those inspired by her legacy.
Over the course of her career, Nico was an ever-evolving myth: art film house actress, highly coveted fashion model, Dietrich of Punk, Femme Fatale, Chelsea Girl, Garbo of Goth, The Last Bohemian, Heroin Junkie. Lester Bangs described her as 'a true enigma.' At age 27, Nico became Andy Warhol's newest Superstar, featuring in his one commercial break out hit film Chelsea Girls and garnering the position of chanteuse for the Velvet Underground. It wasn't Nico's musical chops which got her the gig; it was her striking beauty. Her seeming otherworldly and unattainable presence was further amplified by her reputation for dating rock stars (Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, among others). She became famous for being Nico.
Yet Nico's talent and her contribution to rock culture are often overlooked. She spent most of her career as a solo artist on the road, determined to make music, seemingly against all the odds, enduring empty concert halls, abusive fans, and the often perilous reality of being an ageing artist and drug addict. She created mesmerizing and unique projects that inspired a generation of artists, including Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Siousxie Sioux and the Banshees and Iggy Pop.
Drawing on the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico's record labels, various private collections, and rarely seen footage, and featuring exclusive new interviews from those who knew her best, including Iggy Pop and Danny Fields, and those inspired by her legacy.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published July 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
November 29, 2021
I'd love to one day read a book on Nico that actually properly analysed her incredible solo records - among the strangest and most original albums of that or any other time - rather than just noting that they were good and not bad, and then moving on to several pages about Jim Morrison or Iggy Pop, but as a straight biography this is good and is refreshingly (if sometimes excessively) sympathetic to someone who usually gets a very raw deal from biographers. Especially fun on the notorious 'Manchester years'.
December 10, 2021
The author misspells Pete Townshend’s name in the notes section at the end of the book, which, for a certain contingent, will say everything.
For those not of that certain contingent, congratulations! Not only are you probably extremely functional at a lot of regular people things, I think you might actually have been the intended audience for this book because I definitely wasn’t. But I should have been, and that’s part of what made this such a disappointing read.
Nico is my favourite singer EVER. It was the summer before ninth grade when I plunged headlong into my (still ongoing) David Bowie obsession and of course there were two groups that would come up in everything I’d read: The Stooges and The Velvet Underground. I knew immediately that I needed to learn everything about these bands and listen to them immediately. But I don’t think I listened to The Stooges properly until like that winter (when I saw the first 30 minutes of Velvet Goldmine for the first time?), and that’s because I got completely stuck on The Velvet Underground and Nico and Chelsea Girl.
There were already plenty of songs that I thought had been written Just For Me, to describe some feeling I was having decades before I could have felt it, and there were plenty of girl singers I looked at and thought yes, that is So Me, but Nico was like that times a million. Hearing her sing for the first time was, and still is, unlike anything else. If you are a weird girl with an artistic streak and an inclination toward the glamorous, Nico is your beacon. When you take refuge in the costume shop every day after ninth grade, you play her early albums OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER, as if somehow they’ll infuse you with the ability to speak seven languages and look stunning and move to foreign countries and fall in with cool crowds and record music and appear in weird films and generally have a life that is way more interesting than spending your days getting bullied and your nights being harangued for either not wanting to be a lawyer or certainly being one more failed geometry grade away from certain heroin addiction.
Of course, having that life is boring and sad in its own way (ok FINE I never got to look STUNNING but that was sort of unrealistic to hope anyway and I’m WORKING on the seven languages, CHILL OUT!!) but it doesn’t stop you from leading your best friend in Berlin and your husband on an expedition to Grunewald on Nico’s birthday to try and find her grave because you’re moving in like a week and this was like the one thing you ever cared about seeing here and somehow you’ve never actually made it there (and we didn’t then either and it got dark as we got near the spot and my friend was like ummm you know Wildschwein live here and we were like 😬 and thankfully we were not gored by boars in the pitch black but we did see a porcupine which happened from time to time when I lived there and was out late and was always extremely weird) and then you leave the country and the band you were in releases the EP you did and you send it to your mother and she says that it reminds her of the years of hearing Nico albums coming out of your room which is both actually an insult because she doesn’t like Nico at all (on a nice day, she’ll say she just sounds like a man; most other days she’s summarily dismissed as a junkie) but also really the nicest thing she could have been expected to say, because at least, in some way, listening to all of those albums maybe did some of what you hoped.
I would venture to guess that most girls whose hobbies range from making their own clothes to staring into space in vague yet somehow sad ways have very similar stories. The author of this book does not, and says so in the introduction. How dare you! I thought, but then I was like, hey!! this isn’t ninth grade!! Give the lady a chance, Dienstag!! Just because someone didn’t get obsessed with something when they were in ninth grade doesn’t mean they’re never allowed to like it! People come to stuff at different times! Maybe she likes her that much NOW!
But she doesn’t give much indication that she does. Just that she researched Nico and was like oh she’s always talked about in the context of men she was with and they all used her to further their own aims so now it’s apparently the time for a woman to write about her to further her own aims, because that’s a flavour of feminism in 2021 🥴
The actual book then opens with a lot of mysticism ascribed to German bureaucratic documents und als eine Person die in Deutschland gewohnt habe..... nein. Diese Dokumenten haben keine Signifikanz so groß wie die Autorin wünscht. Die sind nur ein Teil von Alltagsleben. Und sie schreibt über wie Nicos Geburtsdatum sind auf zwei oder drei Dokumenten nicht gleich und ich konnte nur denken ok?? Willkommen in Europa im 19. Jahrhundert?? Meine Familie ist aus Polen aber wenn es Posen war gekommen so ich habe similare Dokumenten wo die Geburtsdaten oder Namen zwischen Vater und Sohn oder Brüder und Brüder getauscht sind gefunden. Ich weiss nicht warum aber mein eigener Name ist auf meinem Geburtsschein falsch geschrieben so 🤷🏼♀️
This book stressed me out so much I started thinking in German, which I usually only do when I’m getting a filling or something equally panic-inducing. Like a million paragraphs are dedicated to rando quotes from like Dave Navarro (why??) and then there’s LITERALLY ONE LINE about how Nico ended up playing the harmonium in her particular style because ORNETTE COLEMAN explained it to her and FOR SOME REASON THIS IS NOT ONLY NOT EXPLAINED BUT NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN?!? BUT WE HAVE TO READ THOUGHTS FROM THE GUY FROM MERCURY REV?!!?
An irritating amount of significance is also placed on Nico being given her name, and it is significant - but not in the way the author seems to think. Here is the thing - the author has a name that people know and pronounce. It’s also not going to get completely mangled by people in other countries, and it doesn’t contain any characters that are going to be difficult to typeset in countries other than her home one. I remember listening to an interview with Elvis Costello like a hundred years ago where he was like yeah Declan is like an impossible name for people to understand over a phone because it’s basically all consonants so changing my name was pretty much a necessity for booking. It’s the same thing. The author has already revealed her lack of Deutschkentnisse. Getting someone outside of Germany to pronounce Christa Päffgen correctly is so unlikely. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can’t get even close to saying Nico right (and somehow you’re more forgiving when it’s not your real name - getting called Nicole is like 😡 while getting called Uma is just like lol no it has an I).
Anyway like halfway through I was like WHERE IS IGGY and then he shows up for like six pages which is a delight and you’ll recall from my review of White Bicycles that I docked Joe Boyd one (1) star for including but one sentence about producing Desertshore so his like two pages are nice but a lottttt of this book is taken from the relevant parts of Please Kill Me which I obviously read at like 16 and have had seared into my brain ever since, and then there’s all the rando 90s musician interviews, and this is when I started to be like... whom was this book even written for?
The big Nico obsessives have already been collecting all of this stuff for ourselves forever - we’ve delighted in her appearance in How Not to Run a Club, marvelled at realising we pass by a place she lived almost every day thanks to its mention in an article on the Brixton Buzz blog last year, sat mesmerised in front of the screen tests at MOCA, spent a weekend in Köln (you half expect the author to draw some hackneyed parallel between the famed cathedral (Dom) and Andy Warhol’s club Dom when Nico performs there; mercifully, we’re spared), even smoked our first cigarettes outside the Chelsea Hotel!! WE KNOW ALL OF THIS STUFF ALREADY!! (We may be inclined to think we know EVERYTHING already, and, well...) WE WANTED A BOOK THAT COULD TEACH US SOMETHING NEW AND INTERESTING! BEYOND THE ONE SENTENCE ABOUT ORNETTE COLEMAN!
I guess this is good if you’re a casual Nico fan (I don’t think that exists) or you’re one of those people who likes to go on about how some artist was Really Underrated and Ahead Of Their Time. But I literally don’t even think she was that? The writer harps on how undervalued her contributions to music are and I just can’t get behind that? Like halfway through, when this stuff all really starts ramping up, I just felt like, do I live on some other planet to this woman? I feel like I was always around people who were talking about how cool Nico was and how great all of her albums were? And I was not hanging around massively cultured people, and this was in the 00s when it was harder to find stuff, and it just made me feel very weird but then a sing from Here Come The Warm Jets came up on shuffle on my ipod and then I put on the album and was like ahhhhhh, right! People who get it have always loved and appreciated Nico. (Unsurprisingly, Eno is not featured in this nearly enough and his quotation about the first Velvets album is quoted from their website as like a weird joke and without attribution to him in the afterword for like no reason)
Weird art scene hangers-on and people with agendas will irritate but eventually fade away, and the actual work that matters will remain and be meaningful to the right people - and I guess if nothing else, this book is a testament to how good everything Nico made STILL is.
For those not of that certain contingent, congratulations! Not only are you probably extremely functional at a lot of regular people things, I think you might actually have been the intended audience for this book because I definitely wasn’t. But I should have been, and that’s part of what made this such a disappointing read.
Nico is my favourite singer EVER. It was the summer before ninth grade when I plunged headlong into my (still ongoing) David Bowie obsession and of course there were two groups that would come up in everything I’d read: The Stooges and The Velvet Underground. I knew immediately that I needed to learn everything about these bands and listen to them immediately. But I don’t think I listened to The Stooges properly until like that winter (when I saw the first 30 minutes of Velvet Goldmine for the first time?), and that’s because I got completely stuck on The Velvet Underground and Nico and Chelsea Girl.
There were already plenty of songs that I thought had been written Just For Me, to describe some feeling I was having decades before I could have felt it, and there were plenty of girl singers I looked at and thought yes, that is So Me, but Nico was like that times a million. Hearing her sing for the first time was, and still is, unlike anything else. If you are a weird girl with an artistic streak and an inclination toward the glamorous, Nico is your beacon. When you take refuge in the costume shop every day after ninth grade, you play her early albums OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER, as if somehow they’ll infuse you with the ability to speak seven languages and look stunning and move to foreign countries and fall in with cool crowds and record music and appear in weird films and generally have a life that is way more interesting than spending your days getting bullied and your nights being harangued for either not wanting to be a lawyer or certainly being one more failed geometry grade away from certain heroin addiction.
Of course, having that life is boring and sad in its own way (ok FINE I never got to look STUNNING but that was sort of unrealistic to hope anyway and I’m WORKING on the seven languages, CHILL OUT!!) but it doesn’t stop you from leading your best friend in Berlin and your husband on an expedition to Grunewald on Nico’s birthday to try and find her grave because you’re moving in like a week and this was like the one thing you ever cared about seeing here and somehow you’ve never actually made it there (and we didn’t then either and it got dark as we got near the spot and my friend was like ummm you know Wildschwein live here and we were like 😬 and thankfully we were not gored by boars in the pitch black but we did see a porcupine which happened from time to time when I lived there and was out late and was always extremely weird) and then you leave the country and the band you were in releases the EP you did and you send it to your mother and she says that it reminds her of the years of hearing Nico albums coming out of your room which is both actually an insult because she doesn’t like Nico at all (on a nice day, she’ll say she just sounds like a man; most other days she’s summarily dismissed as a junkie) but also really the nicest thing she could have been expected to say, because at least, in some way, listening to all of those albums maybe did some of what you hoped.
I would venture to guess that most girls whose hobbies range from making their own clothes to staring into space in vague yet somehow sad ways have very similar stories. The author of this book does not, and says so in the introduction. How dare you! I thought, but then I was like, hey!! this isn’t ninth grade!! Give the lady a chance, Dienstag!! Just because someone didn’t get obsessed with something when they were in ninth grade doesn’t mean they’re never allowed to like it! People come to stuff at different times! Maybe she likes her that much NOW!
But she doesn’t give much indication that she does. Just that she researched Nico and was like oh she’s always talked about in the context of men she was with and they all used her to further their own aims so now it’s apparently the time for a woman to write about her to further her own aims, because that’s a flavour of feminism in 2021 🥴
The actual book then opens with a lot of mysticism ascribed to German bureaucratic documents und als eine Person die in Deutschland gewohnt habe..... nein. Diese Dokumenten haben keine Signifikanz so groß wie die Autorin wünscht. Die sind nur ein Teil von Alltagsleben. Und sie schreibt über wie Nicos Geburtsdatum sind auf zwei oder drei Dokumenten nicht gleich und ich konnte nur denken ok?? Willkommen in Europa im 19. Jahrhundert?? Meine Familie ist aus Polen aber wenn es Posen war gekommen so ich habe similare Dokumenten wo die Geburtsdaten oder Namen zwischen Vater und Sohn oder Brüder und Brüder getauscht sind gefunden. Ich weiss nicht warum aber mein eigener Name ist auf meinem Geburtsschein falsch geschrieben so 🤷🏼♀️
This book stressed me out so much I started thinking in German, which I usually only do when I’m getting a filling or something equally panic-inducing. Like a million paragraphs are dedicated to rando quotes from like Dave Navarro (why??) and then there’s LITERALLY ONE LINE about how Nico ended up playing the harmonium in her particular style because ORNETTE COLEMAN explained it to her and FOR SOME REASON THIS IS NOT ONLY NOT EXPLAINED BUT NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN?!? BUT WE HAVE TO READ THOUGHTS FROM THE GUY FROM MERCURY REV?!!?
An irritating amount of significance is also placed on Nico being given her name, and it is significant - but not in the way the author seems to think. Here is the thing - the author has a name that people know and pronounce. It’s also not going to get completely mangled by people in other countries, and it doesn’t contain any characters that are going to be difficult to typeset in countries other than her home one. I remember listening to an interview with Elvis Costello like a hundred years ago where he was like yeah Declan is like an impossible name for people to understand over a phone because it’s basically all consonants so changing my name was pretty much a necessity for booking. It’s the same thing. The author has already revealed her lack of Deutschkentnisse. Getting someone outside of Germany to pronounce Christa Päffgen correctly is so unlikely. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can’t get even close to saying Nico right (and somehow you’re more forgiving when it’s not your real name - getting called Nicole is like 😡 while getting called Uma is just like lol no it has an I).
Anyway like halfway through I was like WHERE IS IGGY and then he shows up for like six pages which is a delight and you’ll recall from my review of White Bicycles that I docked Joe Boyd one (1) star for including but one sentence about producing Desertshore so his like two pages are nice but a lottttt of this book is taken from the relevant parts of Please Kill Me which I obviously read at like 16 and have had seared into my brain ever since, and then there’s all the rando 90s musician interviews, and this is when I started to be like... whom was this book even written for?
The big Nico obsessives have already been collecting all of this stuff for ourselves forever - we’ve delighted in her appearance in How Not to Run a Club, marvelled at realising we pass by a place she lived almost every day thanks to its mention in an article on the Brixton Buzz blog last year, sat mesmerised in front of the screen tests at MOCA, spent a weekend in Köln (you half expect the author to draw some hackneyed parallel between the famed cathedral (Dom) and Andy Warhol’s club Dom when Nico performs there; mercifully, we’re spared), even smoked our first cigarettes outside the Chelsea Hotel!! WE KNOW ALL OF THIS STUFF ALREADY!! (We may be inclined to think we know EVERYTHING already, and, well...) WE WANTED A BOOK THAT COULD TEACH US SOMETHING NEW AND INTERESTING! BEYOND THE ONE SENTENCE ABOUT ORNETTE COLEMAN!
I guess this is good if you’re a casual Nico fan (I don’t think that exists) or you’re one of those people who likes to go on about how some artist was Really Underrated and Ahead Of Their Time. But I literally don’t even think she was that? The writer harps on how undervalued her contributions to music are and I just can’t get behind that? Like halfway through, when this stuff all really starts ramping up, I just felt like, do I live on some other planet to this woman? I feel like I was always around people who were talking about how cool Nico was and how great all of her albums were? And I was not hanging around massively cultured people, and this was in the 00s when it was harder to find stuff, and it just made me feel very weird but then a sing from Here Come The Warm Jets came up on shuffle on my ipod and then I put on the album and was like ahhhhhh, right! People who get it have always loved and appreciated Nico. (Unsurprisingly, Eno is not featured in this nearly enough and his quotation about the first Velvets album is quoted from their website as like a weird joke and without attribution to him in the afterword for like no reason)
Weird art scene hangers-on and people with agendas will irritate but eventually fade away, and the actual work that matters will remain and be meaningful to the right people - and I guess if nothing else, this book is a testament to how good everything Nico made STILL is.
July 14, 2023
Interesting biography of nico from being born on the eve of ww2 Germany to her film modelling career to music and her drug use. Enjoyed this book overall
September 1, 2021
Tosh and I discuss this with the author on our Book Musik podcast.
Nico is an icon best known for her otherworldly beauty and for her time hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory and singing a few tunes with The Velvet Underground but her real story extends far beyond the cool gaze from under those blonde bangs. She managed to leave behind the detritus of post-WWII Germany by remaking herself first into a hugely successful model then catching the eye of Federico Fellini and eventually making her way to New York to become a Superstar of Warhol’s Factory. But her real artistic output came after this celebrated time with her solo recordings and constant touring. Bickerdike fleshes out the mythology of this complicated, imperfect woman with a dense and fascinating narrative.
Nico is an icon best known for her otherworldly beauty and for her time hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory and singing a few tunes with The Velvet Underground but her real story extends far beyond the cool gaze from under those blonde bangs. She managed to leave behind the detritus of post-WWII Germany by remaking herself first into a hugely successful model then catching the eye of Federico Fellini and eventually making her way to New York to become a Superstar of Warhol’s Factory. But her real artistic output came after this celebrated time with her solo recordings and constant touring. Bickerdike fleshes out the mythology of this complicated, imperfect woman with a dense and fascinating narrative.
August 20, 2021
There are probably enough Nico books out there and I am not sure this one adds anything.
I also find any interview with Paul Morrissey very one sided as he uses every opportunity to criticise Lou Reed. For some reason he hates Lou Reed and this mars the book as the notion Lou Reed was not a good front man for the Velvets is nonsense.
Truth is Nico had some talent and yes women in music (life) did/do get a raw deal but in all honestly her solo albums, excluding Chelsea Girls, are not mainstream in any shape or form. Once listened to then that is enough for most folk.
Nico was a drug addict and her decline was mainly self inflicted. She was not commercial enough to sell enough records and being an addict and poor only tends to end one way.
She was not a good Mother and apart from giving inspiration to Lou Reeds Berlin her life was sad.
I understand the point the author wants to make but Nico is probably not the best subject as she did trade on her looks and she ruined them by addiction not choice.
So yes women get evaluated on their looks and the fact she was intelligent gets lost but this was not her tragedy that was her lifestyle choice.
I also find any interview with Paul Morrissey very one sided as he uses every opportunity to criticise Lou Reed. For some reason he hates Lou Reed and this mars the book as the notion Lou Reed was not a good front man for the Velvets is nonsense.
Truth is Nico had some talent and yes women in music (life) did/do get a raw deal but in all honestly her solo albums, excluding Chelsea Girls, are not mainstream in any shape or form. Once listened to then that is enough for most folk.
Nico was a drug addict and her decline was mainly self inflicted. She was not commercial enough to sell enough records and being an addict and poor only tends to end one way.
She was not a good Mother and apart from giving inspiration to Lou Reeds Berlin her life was sad.
I understand the point the author wants to make but Nico is probably not the best subject as she did trade on her looks and she ruined them by addiction not choice.
So yes women get evaluated on their looks and the fact she was intelligent gets lost but this was not her tragedy that was her lifestyle choice.
September 1, 2021
We are fortunate to have Jennifer Otter Birckerdike as our guest on Book Musik. Hear it here:
Book Musik podcast
Book Musik podcast
January 23, 2023
probably the most detailed and well put together biography ive read so far, nicos life is so interesting and impressive.
February 5, 2024
Een gedegen en volledige biografie, die een scherp portret geeft van een fascinerende artiest (ik ben een beetje bevooroordeeld, Desertshore is één van mijn favoriete platen). Ik had graag wat meer focus gehad op en analyses gelezen over haar muziek, ipv. constant te lezen over ventjes die geilen op haar uiterlijk, maar je kan niet alles hebben. Nico forever!
August 4, 2021
Not sure we needed another Nico bio. Good if you haven't read the others, but not a lot of new insights, except she really hammers home the idea that Nico was more than her beauty.
December 22, 2021
Found this one lurking in a tiny bookshop in Lakeland, and couldn’t resist.
Another biography of a German icon, after recently finishing the epic one about Nietzsche. Ironic then that he should be name-checked in chapter 5, as the young model apparently carries a copy of “Beyond Good and Evil” presumably to further her bohemian credentials.
There are some interesting claims in this book.
“It was not uncommon for Nico to be netting 10,000 francs a month”. This is the equivalent of £1000 sterling in 1957. About three years wages for the average person. Sadly she seems to have squandered it all on substance abuse.
“The average adult in 1960’s France consumed 250ml of wine per day”. That’s basically only one large glass. Seriously? They would seem to have increased that amount significantly based on my own experience.
It also states that Rolling Stones Brian Jones had “fathered four children by four different women before hitting twenty”. This is inaccurate. Jones was in fact 22 when his 4th child was born. So It’s probably worth taking some of the other claims with a pinch of salt.
Nevertheless. One has to acknowledge that the author has not relied solely on existing published biographies, but has tracked down ordinary people that lived with Nico during some of her turbulent periods. In particular her later times as a resident of Manchester and Brixton. It’s seen through this lens that her dark days are most illuminated. In fact, the End is for me the more revealing part of the story, the unsavoury characters that she hung out with, the constant touring, the underbelly of the rock scene. The less glamorous side of rock n’roll indeed.
According to the book it says that Nico played 1200 gigs in just 6 years to fund her heroin addiction, which is an incredible schedule for anyone. The list of musicians she has played with reads like a who’s who of rock music during the 70’s and 80’s.
(There’s even a very graphic description of her performing oral sex on Jim Morrison!)
She was a one off, Nico, we’ll probably never see her like again. But she left us some cool memories anyway. This book, as Iggy says, is the odyssey of the oracle to the giants and losers. One may quibble that it’s perhaps overly sympathetic to the subject, that’s all.
An entertaining romp through a vanished era of excess and artistic invention, that todays “stars” could never imagine. Shame that there isn’t much of an attempt to evaluate her solo albums which were amongst the more original of that period. Or indeed any period. In fact the extensive list of sources (over 100 pages) doesn’t even contain a discography.
It must be time to play that ACNE live album once again.
March 1, 2022
Prior to reading this book i knew nothing about Nico other than she sang with the Velvet Underground and the infamous story she told about being raped by an American GI amidst the ruins of Berlin when she was young.
What i discovered from this book was that there was a lot more to her than that.
She was a real artist in her own right who deserves to be remembered for more than being a side kick to Lou Reed's ego. A true Bohemian in the classical sense.
The author has really done her research and interviewed everyone she could who had any contact with Nico. The whole book reads very well without sacrificing depth.
Well worth a read.
What i discovered from this book was that there was a lot more to her than that.
She was a real artist in her own right who deserves to be remembered for more than being a side kick to Lou Reed's ego. A true Bohemian in the classical sense.
The author has really done her research and interviewed everyone she could who had any contact with Nico. The whole book reads very well without sacrificing depth.
Well worth a read.
November 1, 2021
In many respects this new biography is a good addition to the information and a good biography of Nico, that if you are not a big fan of her music and only really know her from the songs she sang with the Velvet Underground would be an okay starting point to find out a lot more about her life.
The book is very good when it comes to contextualizing Nico’s early life growing up in Germany in the 1940’s and how Nazism and the war and the trauma it inflicted on almost everyone who lived through it and then how that then gave Nico, first her drive to get out of Germany, first through her modelling career and then how the darkness of that period of German history left a shroud of pain and trauma that Nico self-treated with drugs and music and a generally peripatetic life style, where all her possessions could be put into a couple of suit cases and moved as quickly and easily as those who had been bombed out in the war would see as normal.
The book has good detail about her rise as a model and her willingness to say yes to many offers as she rose to be a cover star of Vogue and other fashion mags of the 50’s and her part in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, although the focus on how much money she made in this period was a bit annoying as Nico never really seemed to be that money focused.
Where the book has problems for me was when Jennifer started to discuss Nico’s music career as it became quickly obvious that she had never seen Nico live and took far too many previously stated views on Nico’s music at face value while trying to present this as a deep look at her music.
This became more of a problem when dealing with some of Nico’s more legendary shows including the ACNE album that she almost gets right as to how they worked together, but it then falls down when discussing the infamous show she played with Eno and Cale in Berlin as she clearly didn’t read all of Lutz Ulbrich’s description of why the audience behaved as they did and how Nico, Cale and Eno reacted to it. But even more serious was the omission of the most infamous show Nico ever played at Reims Cathedral in 1974 with Tangerine Dream, even though Jennifer quoted from Kris Needs interview in Zig Zag that discusses the show in detail.
As the book moves into the 80’s and the period where as the author points out Nico played over 1200 lives shows, I get the feeling the author looks down her nose at the thought of a musician touring and playing anywhere that asks them to come and play, and not just the major cities, no matter if that was driven by Nico’s drug habits, or far more realistically by the fact that her music was far more middle European than it was Anglo American in appeal. Yes she was based in Manchester and Brixton but her bands often had a far more European sound mixed with all sorts of Arabic and African influences that she sort of discusses while dismissing all of the live albums that come out in a paragraph or two, when for many fans they are the way in and best way to discuss the sort of performances Nico was making, and that Nico often stated in interviews that she preferred the sound of live albums as it really lets you hear how the songs were.
But then when discussing Camera Obscura she only mentions a couple of the songs. I wanted a discussion as to what songs like Tananore or Das Lied Von Einsanen Madchens are about rather it being glossed over.
Then when dealing with Andy Warhol’s passing the author seems to think Nico saw his death as a release from the cult or sphere of Warhol, while not only totally missing that Nico played two tribute shows to Andy Warhol in Manchester and London when she does mention the show in Brixton it is in derisory terms for what for me was one of the best shows I ever saw Nico perform, yes by the time Nico came on The Fridge was half empty but the show was sold out and was meant to run from 8 till 11 pm but the first act didn’t come on till 11.30 and Nico didn’t come on till 1.30 so lots of fans had left needing to catch trains home etc, the key thing she should have mentioned of this performance was the astonishing versions of The Falconer and Eulogy To Lenny Bruce, but she would have had to be a real fan of Nico’s music for that to be the case.
So while this book is a good read and has some great information it is in many ways far from the new evaluation of Nico that it claims to be.
The book is very good when it comes to contextualizing Nico’s early life growing up in Germany in the 1940’s and how Nazism and the war and the trauma it inflicted on almost everyone who lived through it and then how that then gave Nico, first her drive to get out of Germany, first through her modelling career and then how the darkness of that period of German history left a shroud of pain and trauma that Nico self-treated with drugs and music and a generally peripatetic life style, where all her possessions could be put into a couple of suit cases and moved as quickly and easily as those who had been bombed out in the war would see as normal.
The book has good detail about her rise as a model and her willingness to say yes to many offers as she rose to be a cover star of Vogue and other fashion mags of the 50’s and her part in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, although the focus on how much money she made in this period was a bit annoying as Nico never really seemed to be that money focused.
Where the book has problems for me was when Jennifer started to discuss Nico’s music career as it became quickly obvious that she had never seen Nico live and took far too many previously stated views on Nico’s music at face value while trying to present this as a deep look at her music.
This became more of a problem when dealing with some of Nico’s more legendary shows including the ACNE album that she almost gets right as to how they worked together, but it then falls down when discussing the infamous show she played with Eno and Cale in Berlin as she clearly didn’t read all of Lutz Ulbrich’s description of why the audience behaved as they did and how Nico, Cale and Eno reacted to it. But even more serious was the omission of the most infamous show Nico ever played at Reims Cathedral in 1974 with Tangerine Dream, even though Jennifer quoted from Kris Needs interview in Zig Zag that discusses the show in detail.
As the book moves into the 80’s and the period where as the author points out Nico played over 1200 lives shows, I get the feeling the author looks down her nose at the thought of a musician touring and playing anywhere that asks them to come and play, and not just the major cities, no matter if that was driven by Nico’s drug habits, or far more realistically by the fact that her music was far more middle European than it was Anglo American in appeal. Yes she was based in Manchester and Brixton but her bands often had a far more European sound mixed with all sorts of Arabic and African influences that she sort of discusses while dismissing all of the live albums that come out in a paragraph or two, when for many fans they are the way in and best way to discuss the sort of performances Nico was making, and that Nico often stated in interviews that she preferred the sound of live albums as it really lets you hear how the songs were.
But then when discussing Camera Obscura she only mentions a couple of the songs. I wanted a discussion as to what songs like Tananore or Das Lied Von Einsanen Madchens are about rather it being glossed over.
Then when dealing with Andy Warhol’s passing the author seems to think Nico saw his death as a release from the cult or sphere of Warhol, while not only totally missing that Nico played two tribute shows to Andy Warhol in Manchester and London when she does mention the show in Brixton it is in derisory terms for what for me was one of the best shows I ever saw Nico perform, yes by the time Nico came on The Fridge was half empty but the show was sold out and was meant to run from 8 till 11 pm but the first act didn’t come on till 11.30 and Nico didn’t come on till 1.30 so lots of fans had left needing to catch trains home etc, the key thing she should have mentioned of this performance was the astonishing versions of The Falconer and Eulogy To Lenny Bruce, but she would have had to be a real fan of Nico’s music for that to be the case.
So while this book is a good read and has some great information it is in many ways far from the new evaluation of Nico that it claims to be.
February 13, 2022
There is something I really appreciate about reading biographies written by women, specially those related with women in the music scene, due to we are not going to read just things like "she was with so many guys in the rock scene", "she was extremely beautiful", "she was a groupie", "her beauty was gone through the years", "she was a junkie", etc. But instead we see her as a human, a very talented and clever human that lived in a misogynistic era and that point of view is very important to understand Nico not only as the Warhol's beautiful muse but to understand what happened to the mysterious girl.
I really enjoyed its reading, Nico was a brave woman and the author did a great job collecting data through interviews and other stuff. Hence If you're a fan, do yourself a favor and read it!
I really enjoyed its reading, Nico was a brave woman and the author did a great job collecting data through interviews and other stuff. Hence If you're a fan, do yourself a favor and read it!
August 26, 2021
Absolutely brilliant bio of Nico. I was lucky enough to see her a few times performing in Manchester in the 1980s. This really brought it all back. Fascinating look at her early life too. Meticulously researched. Highly recommended.
December 18, 2021
I'm not a usual reader of biographies, so part of my reaction to this latest review of Nico's life might be a response to the genre itself. This was billed as a more scholarly take and perhaps it does view the singer-songwriter through a modern lens, taking into account her gender and how it shaped people's views. Did Nico's beauty influence how people judged her, both in the early days when she modelled and briefly worked for Fellini and later when she moved into the music scene, first with Warhol/the Velvet Underground and subsequently solo? Was her descent into not caring about her physical appearance a reaction to the constraints/expectations placed on her earlier? Dr Jennifer Bickerdike has added a range of new interviews to widen our understanding -- including those who knew Nico such as Danny Fields and Iggy Pop (and other non celebs) and those who did not (such as random artists like Dave Navarro or Mark Lanegan, who seem to have less "standing"). There is also a lot of salacious detail, as Nico had affairs with a range of celebrities and a child with Alain Delon. The second half of the book is largely an account of her addiction to heroin and how it affected her music, lifestyle, and relationships. I did not know she spent so much time in Manchester, UK. Sadly, Nico was turning her life around when she had the bike accident that ended her life. Although the book is longish and repetitive, it does paint a picture of stoic determinism (and hedonism as a reaction to trauma) that might recast Nico for those unfamiliar with her. For me, it was a chance to sit down and listen to her music again and for that it was worth the time.
August 21, 2022
this book was… okay? it wasnt a bad biography but often times there was too much of one thing and not enough of another. bickerdike talks very often about how nico didnt care for her looks anymore and wanted to put that past herself, but the author references her looks in every new interview that is conducted. surely, many of these were spurred by the answers to the interview but why the author constantly included them, im not sure. there is also surprisingly little focus on the actual contents of nico’s albums, which was again surprising to me. bickerdike accents heavily that nico was an “artist” in the true sense of the word, which i do agree with, but from reading this book, itd be hard to know how intently the author actually listened to the music. other than the reference to the lyrics the book takes its title from, there is hardly any examination of the songs. if i had not listened to the album already, the only thing i would know about “drama of exile” is that it contains 2 covers. overall, parts were very disappointing, with some facts missing and the book often feeling like it jumps around a certain period without establishing a steady timeline. maybe wait for the paperback version if you want to read it. im not sure if its worth the $40CAD, although the design of the book is immaculate
January 15, 2022
There are already movies, and a few other biographies about Nico, and yet here is one more to add to the list. I haven't read the other books about Nico, but the author of this one repeatedly makes a very strong case for Nico as a serious, professional, important musician deserving of more attention.
The detail is exhaustive as Bickerdike describes how Nico dealt with the profound trauma of her childhood by destroying herself, while pursuing an artistic vision so unique that she remains an incomparable and challenging musician in a class by herself. The author doesn't spare us the horrifying circumstances of Nico's sad life, and sometimes it's a tough read. But Nico was such an interesting, complicated, and puzzling enigma that I kept going to the end. Although I knew what the end was going to be, I wondered how Bickerdike was going to handle all the confusion surrounding it, and I believe, overall, she impressively made sense of Nico's bizarre life and death.
The detail is exhaustive as Bickerdike describes how Nico dealt with the profound trauma of her childhood by destroying herself, while pursuing an artistic vision so unique that she remains an incomparable and challenging musician in a class by herself. The author doesn't spare us the horrifying circumstances of Nico's sad life, and sometimes it's a tough read. But Nico was such an interesting, complicated, and puzzling enigma that I kept going to the end. Although I knew what the end was going to be, I wondered how Bickerdike was going to handle all the confusion surrounding it, and I believe, overall, she impressively made sense of Nico's bizarre life and death.
January 2, 2022
I won a copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This book was written as an attempt to give Nico the due the author feels she deserves, to save her reputation from the pits of misogyny and myth and give a fuller picture of a complicated woman. Sadly, it doesn’t really succeed. The writing style is a little unpolished and chapters veer back and forth in time making it really complicated to follow. Nico comes off as, frankly, a mess—immature, irresponsible, desperate to be famous and not terribly pleasant. She seems to just drift from one thing to another, hoping for the one person (man, usually) who can take care of her and lead her to the next thing. I really didn’t know much about Nico before reading this book and I can’t say I feel better knowing what I do know now. I wouldn’t recommend this one.
This book was written as an attempt to give Nico the due the author feels she deserves, to save her reputation from the pits of misogyny and myth and give a fuller picture of a complicated woman. Sadly, it doesn’t really succeed. The writing style is a little unpolished and chapters veer back and forth in time making it really complicated to follow. Nico comes off as, frankly, a mess—immature, irresponsible, desperate to be famous and not terribly pleasant. She seems to just drift from one thing to another, hoping for the one person (man, usually) who can take care of her and lead her to the next thing. I really didn’t know much about Nico before reading this book and I can’t say I feel better knowing what I do know now. I wouldn’t recommend this one.
September 15, 2024
As fascinating as Nico was, the book itself turned out to be quite distracting. Quotes often emerge in random places, breaking the narrative, and look like a random name-dropping attempt to hammer down the author’s personal opinion on Nico. Also, despite the author’s (rightful) claim that Nico was more than her looks, the descriptions of her appearance ended up to be almost fetishistic.
February 11, 2022
Nico is an enigmatic figure in the history of Rock 'n Roll. Mainly remembered as the deep-voiced singer of the Velvet Underground for a few years in the 1960s, she continued to write and perform music until her death in 1988. By that time, her shows were mainly attended by people curious to see a living legend, or by people motivated by a morbid curiosity about this heroin-addicted wreck - in other words : not really a solid fan base to support a career or lead to lucrative record deals.
This book traces Nico's life from her early years in the wreckage of post-war Berlin, to her glamorous modeling career in Paris from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, and then her arrival in New York, where Andy Warhol and his entourage decided she would be the face and voice of the Velvet Underground. This did not sit well with Lou Reed and Nico eventually left the group, trying to figure out what to do next - the start of a not very successful solo career.
I, like many others, am fascinated by this enigmatic figure, and I gobbled up the book in a few days. It certainly deserves 4 stars, if only for the hard work the author has done in tracing people who knew Nico and doing in-depth interviews.
The book tries to make two somewhat contradictory arguments : 1. Nico was exploited and neglected by the music industry and the men who ran it, with most of the focus on her blonde, statuesque and aloof beauty rather than her musical talent and 2. she was a strong woman doing her own thing. I didn't quite buy either argument, and I feel that the author almost inadvertently made the case that Nico, with her roster of lovers (Alain Delon, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Jackson Browne), her proto-Goth style (black clothes, boots, heavy eyeliner), her bohemian lifestyle and her decades-long heroin addiction was a Rock 'n Roll personality rather than a Rock 'n Roll artist. An icon perhaps, and certainly an outlier in the world of 60s and 70s popular music (not a lot of singers with heavy German accents intoning songs about heroin and femmes fatales around), but a musical innovator? Not sure I was quite convinced after reading the book and listening to some of her post-Velvet Underground music.
A challenge in writing biographies of aloof, reserved, taciturn subjects, is that it's hard to know what exactly motivated and drove them. And so the author was largely dependent on interviews with Nico's friends and bandmates, as well as some rare published interviews and a some (not always very coherent) extracts from her diary. And so it's not too much of a surprise that there are many contradictions, especially about Nico's commitment to the hard work of making and performing music.
I also noticed a couple of things that made me wonder about the accuracy of some details. The author wrote something to the effect that the seeds of Nico's opiate addiction may have been sown when she took diet pills during her modeling years - but diet pills are not opiates, they are two quite distinct types of drugs. The second is that she mentions that one of her lovers, a French alternative film maker, was about 3 years younger than Nico, whereas his wikipedia page has him as being about 10 years younger. Wikipedia may be wrong, of course - it's just something I noticed. (Incidentally, this man, who was Nico's on-and-off companion for a decade, was not interviewed for the book).
This book traces Nico's life from her early years in the wreckage of post-war Berlin, to her glamorous modeling career in Paris from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, and then her arrival in New York, where Andy Warhol and his entourage decided she would be the face and voice of the Velvet Underground. This did not sit well with Lou Reed and Nico eventually left the group, trying to figure out what to do next - the start of a not very successful solo career.
I, like many others, am fascinated by this enigmatic figure, and I gobbled up the book in a few days. It certainly deserves 4 stars, if only for the hard work the author has done in tracing people who knew Nico and doing in-depth interviews.
The book tries to make two somewhat contradictory arguments : 1. Nico was exploited and neglected by the music industry and the men who ran it, with most of the focus on her blonde, statuesque and aloof beauty rather than her musical talent and 2. she was a strong woman doing her own thing. I didn't quite buy either argument, and I feel that the author almost inadvertently made the case that Nico, with her roster of lovers (Alain Delon, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Jackson Browne), her proto-Goth style (black clothes, boots, heavy eyeliner), her bohemian lifestyle and her decades-long heroin addiction was a Rock 'n Roll personality rather than a Rock 'n Roll artist. An icon perhaps, and certainly an outlier in the world of 60s and 70s popular music (not a lot of singers with heavy German accents intoning songs about heroin and femmes fatales around), but a musical innovator? Not sure I was quite convinced after reading the book and listening to some of her post-Velvet Underground music.
A challenge in writing biographies of aloof, reserved, taciturn subjects, is that it's hard to know what exactly motivated and drove them. And so the author was largely dependent on interviews with Nico's friends and bandmates, as well as some rare published interviews and a some (not always very coherent) extracts from her diary. And so it's not too much of a surprise that there are many contradictions, especially about Nico's commitment to the hard work of making and performing music.
I also noticed a couple of things that made me wonder about the accuracy of some details. The author wrote something to the effect that the seeds of Nico's opiate addiction may have been sown when she took diet pills during her modeling years - but diet pills are not opiates, they are two quite distinct types of drugs. The second is that she mentions that one of her lovers, a French alternative film maker, was about 3 years younger than Nico, whereas his wikipedia page has him as being about 10 years younger. Wikipedia may be wrong, of course - it's just something I noticed. (Incidentally, this man, who was Nico's on-and-off companion for a decade, was not interviewed for the book).
September 26, 2024
“I’ve been on the top, I’ve been on the bottom. Both places are empty.”
-Nico
There’s a lot to say about Nico. Once her finger wraps around you, she just has a way of pulling you into her world. One thing clear to me, is that she deserves more than to be recognized as a Junkie, or for the men she slept with. She wanted to be artist and was willing to put in the work, but addiction had destroyed. But even as her skin turned bad, and her teeth rotted, and her hair turned grey, she was a beautiful, terrifying Goddess through it all. Nico was a complex person, but so is everyone to an extent.
There was just this overwhelming sadness as it got further and further into her addiction. From growing up in WW2 Berlin, to losing custody of her son for years, to people that never showed her any respect, even as she suffered. Lou Reed, and Alain Delon, you are evil bastards. I wish more people talked about the last few years of her life, when she came clean off of Heroin and onto Methadone replacement. She had a new spark of life, another chance even. I find it almost poetic that addiction wasn’t what killed her, yet biking on the hottest day of the year in Spain, decked in heavy black garments. And she died alone, suffering from a brain hemorrhage. And because 15 years of heroin has destroyed her arms, there wasn’t a viable vein left to save her. Meaning she died, slow, alone and afraid.
Death has followed Nico her whole life, as if it were a person. She knew it too. Years later, in 2023 her only child died from a Heroin Overdose. His body was discovered in a severe state of decay. And the father who refused to acknowledge paternity his whole life, died a few weeks ago. It’s now that Nico finally comes into focus, and her work has gotten the recognition it deserves. She wasn’t afraid to pursue her own sound, and there is still no one like her. No one was able to embody that darkness better than her. She was a true artist, a bohemian, a junkie, a hasfrau, a mother, and a friend. I know years to come, I will still be talking about Nico. I hope she knows how loved she is.
-Nico
There’s a lot to say about Nico. Once her finger wraps around you, she just has a way of pulling you into her world. One thing clear to me, is that she deserves more than to be recognized as a Junkie, or for the men she slept with. She wanted to be artist and was willing to put in the work, but addiction had destroyed. But even as her skin turned bad, and her teeth rotted, and her hair turned grey, she was a beautiful, terrifying Goddess through it all. Nico was a complex person, but so is everyone to an extent.
There was just this overwhelming sadness as it got further and further into her addiction. From growing up in WW2 Berlin, to losing custody of her son for years, to people that never showed her any respect, even as she suffered. Lou Reed, and Alain Delon, you are evil bastards. I wish more people talked about the last few years of her life, when she came clean off of Heroin and onto Methadone replacement. She had a new spark of life, another chance even. I find it almost poetic that addiction wasn’t what killed her, yet biking on the hottest day of the year in Spain, decked in heavy black garments. And she died alone, suffering from a brain hemorrhage. And because 15 years of heroin has destroyed her arms, there wasn’t a viable vein left to save her. Meaning she died, slow, alone and afraid.
Death has followed Nico her whole life, as if it were a person. She knew it too. Years later, in 2023 her only child died from a Heroin Overdose. His body was discovered in a severe state of decay. And the father who refused to acknowledge paternity his whole life, died a few weeks ago. It’s now that Nico finally comes into focus, and her work has gotten the recognition it deserves. She wasn’t afraid to pursue her own sound, and there is still no one like her. No one was able to embody that darkness better than her. She was a true artist, a bohemian, a junkie, a hasfrau, a mother, and a friend. I know years to come, I will still be talking about Nico. I hope she knows how loved she is.
March 11, 2025
Honestly, Nico is a character that had never particularly interested me. I've never been a fan of hers, and I think that still holds true. But a friend gave me this biography a couple of years ago, and after sitting on my shelf for a while, I decided to give it a chance. It was absolutely worth it :)
It's a meticulous and fascinating biography, and you can really appreciate the immense effort the author put into it (she researched for four years and interviewed more than 100 people). Whether you're a fan of Nico or not, Christa Päffgen was a woman with an incredibly interesting life—one of luxury and misery (more misery), of light and darkness. I was captivated by getting to know such a versatile and imperfect person, full of nuances, and by seeing beyond the preconceived image I had of her. It's a raw read that doesn't leave you indifferent.
Moreover, it's very interesting to read about the other influential figures from the cultural world she was surrounded by and the various social and artistic movements that were unfolding at the time.
It's a meticulous and fascinating biography, and you can really appreciate the immense effort the author put into it (she researched for four years and interviewed more than 100 people). Whether you're a fan of Nico or not, Christa Päffgen was a woman with an incredibly interesting life—one of luxury and misery (more misery), of light and darkness. I was captivated by getting to know such a versatile and imperfect person, full of nuances, and by seeing beyond the preconceived image I had of her. It's a raw read that doesn't leave you indifferent.
Moreover, it's very interesting to read about the other influential figures from the cultural world she was surrounded by and the various social and artistic movements that were unfolding at the time.
January 13, 2024
A well researched and pleasurable to read tale of one of the more fascinating artists to have ever drawn breath. Nico’s life and art was truly unique. Is her work for everybody? Probably not. But like a lot of the very best things, if it speaks to you, it becomes an important part of you. If you do not get it, well, you were never meant to. There are too many incredible incidents to highlight here, but my favourite? If I could be a fly on the wall, oh to be in Detroit, when Nico was living with The Stooges in a ramshackle house, as they were working on Fun House, sleeping with Iggy and cooking for the band. This happened? Mind blown. It has been a pleasure to be in Nico world during reading of this book. I have played her music daily and love her work even more than I already did before.
This book was a Xmas gift from my equally ‘Velvets’ obsessed daughter. Beautifully inscribed for me, as all gifted books should be, I shall cherish its place in my home always.
This book was a Xmas gift from my equally ‘Velvets’ obsessed daughter. Beautifully inscribed for me, as all gifted books should be, I shall cherish its place in my home always.
February 23, 2022
If you're into Nico, then this is a good one to read. I got through it in a few nights, as it's not a difficult read and is quite engaging. It is a difficult read in the sense that there is a lot of tragedy on offer here, of course.
The book has been well researched and features stories from many of the key players. Sadly, John Cale doesn't get to say his bit (I'm sure he was asked). John comes out of this book as one of the few people sympathetic to Nico and would have been a treasure trove of insights. As he was producer/arranger for the majority of her solo work, it would be great to hear about the recording process and time spent with Nico in the studio.
As another reviewer here has commented, wouldn't it be great one day to have a book about Nico's MUISC! Although this book does contain a lot about her live performances spanning her whole career, the studio albums get short shrift. Her final album gets one sentence, I think.
In the beginning, the author sets out her stall to debunk some of the myths surrounding Nico and demystify the idea that her life and career were all about her looks and heroin use. Yet the book almost exclusively focuses on her appearance and her drug use. This is partly due to the fact that it's those two things that most people recollect when looking back at memories of Nico, or so it seems from this book anyway.
The misogyny she faced right from the off is covered nicely here, and it helps us understand some aspects of Nico's life. It seems clear that only the people from her Manchester era had any real interest in her as a person, which can be summed up by the fact that it was only some of them and her family at the funeral.
Anyway, it's not a disappointing book and it's better than James Young's book. It just left to us to put the solo albums back on again and listen to what Nico had to say. Here's wishing for a book that covers those Marble Index / Desert Shore albums!
The book has been well researched and features stories from many of the key players. Sadly, John Cale doesn't get to say his bit (I'm sure he was asked). John comes out of this book as one of the few people sympathetic to Nico and would have been a treasure trove of insights. As he was producer/arranger for the majority of her solo work, it would be great to hear about the recording process and time spent with Nico in the studio.
As another reviewer here has commented, wouldn't it be great one day to have a book about Nico's MUISC! Although this book does contain a lot about her live performances spanning her whole career, the studio albums get short shrift. Her final album gets one sentence, I think.
In the beginning, the author sets out her stall to debunk some of the myths surrounding Nico and demystify the idea that her life and career were all about her looks and heroin use. Yet the book almost exclusively focuses on her appearance and her drug use. This is partly due to the fact that it's those two things that most people recollect when looking back at memories of Nico, or so it seems from this book anyway.
The misogyny she faced right from the off is covered nicely here, and it helps us understand some aspects of Nico's life. It seems clear that only the people from her Manchester era had any real interest in her as a person, which can be summed up by the fact that it was only some of them and her family at the funeral.
Anyway, it's not a disappointing book and it's better than James Young's book. It just left to us to put the solo albums back on again and listen to what Nico had to say. Here's wishing for a book that covers those Marble Index / Desert Shore albums!
March 8, 2024
This biography could and should have been 150 pages shorter, with a better structure, and a better sense of linear time. Too many repetitions of the very same things told by other people about her.
Too many unjustifiable jumps back and forth in the timeline. The ugly feeling that this book has been written by a man, indulging in sexual gossip, on the physical image and ignoring the depth of the soul of the enigmatic Nico.
After more than 400 pages, full of the same concepts repeated again and again, we kind of have an image of this woman, but that image doesn't pay any tribute to her soul, her artistry, the people who surrounded her but neither to the author of the biography. It could have been less, and it could have told us more.
With all and everything Nico has been, I wish the author would give her more credit, to tell about herself, between the lines of her diaries, and her songs, and not mainly through the words of other men. This book tells us how Nico suffered from being objectified, and then falls into the same objectification, failing the opportunity to give an honest portrait of the woman and of the artist by her very same words. That this objectification comes from a female pen is an original sin to me.
Too many unjustifiable jumps back and forth in the timeline. The ugly feeling that this book has been written by a man, indulging in sexual gossip, on the physical image and ignoring the depth of the soul of the enigmatic Nico.
After more than 400 pages, full of the same concepts repeated again and again, we kind of have an image of this woman, but that image doesn't pay any tribute to her soul, her artistry, the people who surrounded her but neither to the author of the biography. It could have been less, and it could have told us more.
With all and everything Nico has been, I wish the author would give her more credit, to tell about herself, between the lines of her diaries, and her songs, and not mainly through the words of other men. This book tells us how Nico suffered from being objectified, and then falls into the same objectification, failing the opportunity to give an honest portrait of the woman and of the artist by her very same words. That this objectification comes from a female pen is an original sin to me.
December 9, 2021
I saw this in a bookshop and picked it up because I like Nico but then wondered if I would ever read it - it is long. But started it and was hooked from the start. Fascinating music and lifestyle history and I've now listened to more of Nico's music, some of which I love, some less so, but that's good. And by the way she was neither a nazi nor a racist. Not a genius or a saint either. An alpha female in a world of alpha males.
January 11, 2022
Amazing amount of research and interviewing went into creating this sympathetic but not rose-colored biography.
February 12, 2022
Another biography of Nico, adding to the growing list of biographies, memoirs and personal recollections. There is not that much in this biography that is new to anyone who has followed the "Nico industry" since her death in 1988. Richard Witts' biography, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon, was the first to clear away a lot of the mythological fog that Nico had spread around herself. Nico: Icon, Susanne Ofteringer's biographical documentary film, also covers Nico’s whole life. James Young's memoir of life on the road with Nico in her final decade, Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radio, gave a frankly disarming picture of the underbelly of the music industry. This period was also given a film treatment by Susanna Nicchiarelli in Nico, 1988 – a fictionalised biographical road movie. Lutz Graf-Ulbrich's personal account of their relationship in Nico - In the Shadow of the Moon Goddess paints a vivid portrait of their time together and sheds further light on the period between the earlier Warhol days and the later Manchester days. The Warhol/Velvet Underground days have been reported on ad nauseum for years (was there anyone in the Warhol circus who wasn't a publicity seeking egomaniac with a hazy memory?). Consequently, with this rich seam of past documentation, there is not a great deal still to be said. The well-known blanks in Nico’s life remain - the relationship with Alain Delon (why has he always disclaimed paternity of Nico's only child and refuses still to have it confirmed one way or the other?); Philippe Garrel's view of their relationship, although he did provide his version of some of their life together in the fictionalised film (J’entends plus la guitare) so can be forgiven for not wanting to comment further; and many of the issues around Nico's own paternity and the Paffgen extended family following her birth - all those blanks remain. There is some new interesting documentation presented from Nico's infant years, and this I thought was the strongest part of this biography, adding substantially to the collective knowledge, and there are many interviews with new people who had known her in the final London and Manchester days (although much of what they say are really just footnotes to what is already known). The author pleads the case for Nico's art to be seriously appreciated (quite rightly), but does not really get beyond the biographical details. Witts' biography did better in trying to place Nico musically. She also gets in a bit of a pickle when arguing that Nico as a woman is treated differently from men in terms of how her sex life has been obsessively scrutinised (true), but then spends much time focussing on who Nico did and did not have sex with, and even describes in pornographic detail how Nico performed a blow job. The most annoying part of this biography and Witts' too, is that they both pick up the story of Nico's assault on Emmaretta Marks (named by Bickerdike but not by Witts), collecting and repeating the views of many people from the Nico world on what may or may not have actually happened, but not from Emmaretta Marks herself (who died only weeks ago) or her friends and associates who might know more about the incident. If you are new to Nico, this biography would be a good place to start, for Bickerdike has done a sterling job in reviewing most of what is already known and published. For long-time Nico obsessives, like myself, you will not find a great deal that is new. The best work I've ever seen about Nico was "The Nico Project", a stage performance created by Maxine Peake (who also plays Nico) and Sarah Frankcom (who also directs). Performed in Manchester in 2019, Peake explores the drama and trauma that was Nico's life, against the backdrop of The Marble Index performed almost in its entirety by students from the Royal Northern College of Music. That really was a work of art and should be put onto film (if it hasn't already).
January 24, 2022
This is an absorbing, meticulously researched and detailed biography of a woman who can only be described as an enigma. An iconic and mythical figure in the ferment of the late 1960's cultural revolution, who in the end was famous for being famous, but for what? A myth born out of the cultural hothouse of Andy Warhol's Factory, an illegitimate son to French actor Alain Delon, fleeting relationships with anyone and everyone ... a unique musical talent, a life that can only be described as a head on car crash.
Bickerdike has written a very readable account of Nico's life and it is detailed and well researched, yet I kept thinking as I read, that I was looking for something else besides the parade of cultural celebrities and their sexual or drug proclivities (there is definitely one "too much information" incident recounted). This is an epic tragedy in the classical sense.
3.5 stars
Bickerdike has written a very readable account of Nico's life and it is detailed and well researched, yet I kept thinking as I read, that I was looking for something else besides the parade of cultural celebrities and their sexual or drug proclivities (there is definitely one "too much information" incident recounted). This is an epic tragedy in the classical sense.
3.5 stars
January 21, 2022
I listened to this on audio, the narrator was really good and I liked how she used the correct pronunciations for German names and words. This is the first Nico biography I've read, so I don't know if Bickerdike included more information than others, but I did learn a lot. Nico's records, other than the first which she didn't write, are quite bizarre, and I really enjoyed Bickerdike putting those records in context to show what Nico was going for and what she accomplished. My only complaint about it would be I think Bickerdike excused some of the racist things Nico said a little bit. I'm not sure if Nico was racist but I think the writer too quickly dismissed the concerns about her instead of exploring them. It's uncomfortable but sometimes the creators we love also have very shitty parts about them!
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