She hugged her plaything softly
Broke it in pieces then
And felt a longing still
But knew not what it meant
Since she was alone
And her hair so blond
And as red as wine her kiss
Whoever drank that wine would
Never again feel bliss
The "Lied vom einsamen Mädchen" (Song of the Lonesome Girl) was written and performed by Nico for her last album "Camera Obscura" in 1985, three years before she died. Childhood, longing, longing for death, loneliness, love and pain are the recurring themes in her life and art.
Nico was a model, an actress and a musician. While she considered modeling the job that paid her bills, and largely played herself in her film roles instead of putting her acting skills to the test, she took to songwriting and singing as her true means of artistic expression. Nico's music had a bearing on the Dark Wave, Gothic, Punk, Ambient and Pop scenes. Solo artists such as Björk, Patti Smith or Cat Power found an inspiration in Nico's uncompromising style and her idiosyncratic songs, which often tilt from sweetness to a tragic tone and back again.
Born under the name of Christa Päffgen in Cologne on October16, 1938, Nico grows up with her mother Margarete and at her grandparents' in Lübbenau near Berlin, and later moves to Berlin with her mother. Photographer Herbert Tobias discovers Nico as a photo model and is the first to shoot pictures of her. Fashion designer Heinz Oestergaard books her as a mannequin. From age 16, Nico travels back and forth between Berlin, Paris, London and Rome.
In 1959 she settles down in Paris and falls in love with film maker Nico Papatakis, who is twenty years older, and whose name she adopts for herself. Her first appearance in a film is in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (1961), where she meets Alain Delon on set. Nico becomes pregnant shortly after the shoot and names Delon as the father, but Delon denies his fatherhood. In 1962 Aaron Päffgen, called Ari, is born. Nico and Delon's mother Edith Boulogne raise Ari together. Since Nico can longer stand to live in Paris, she relocates to London. She records her first single "The Last Mile/I'm Not Sayin´" there for Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham's label, and Bob Dylan gives her the song "I'll Keep lt With Mine" as a present.
Nico leaves Ari in the care of her mother on Ibiza and moves to New York, where she takes acting classes at Lee Strasberg's school. The attractive, elegiac German soon becomes part of New York's in-crowd. Bob Dylan introduces her to Andy Warhol, who gives her a role in his film "Chelsea Girls", and arranges for her to become the singer of the band "The Velvet Underground". Nico has an affair with Lou Reed, who composes "Femme Fatale", "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "I'll Be Your Mirror" for her. Angelic Nico with her deep voice becomes the androgynous-mysterious star of "The Velvet Underground" and of Warhol's "Factory". Her lovers include Jim Morrison, Jackson Browne and Leonard Cohen. Cohen dedicates his love song "Take This Longing" to her and gives her the valuable advice to play the harmonium to accompany her solo voice.
When Nico learns that her mother was diagnosed with severe paranoia and Parkinson's disease, she takes her son to New York to live with her. Ari becomes the mascot of the "Factory". He is dragged to and fro by his mother for nights on end, until Edith Boulogne takes him in and adopts him in 1978. After her break-up with "The Velvet Underground", Nico's first solo album release is "Chelsea Girl" (1968), on which her vocals sound muted, dark and desperate. An admirer of her voice, her harmonium play, and her strong, melancholic personality, John Cale arranges and produces Nico's subsequent solo albums "Marble Index" (1968) and "Desertshore" (1970) as well as her last album, "Camera Obscura" (1985).
Nico withdraws more and more from her surroundings. Her mother Margarete's death of pneumonia in 1970 drives Nico into desperation. She would never recover from Margarete's death. In her concerts Nico often performs the song "Mütterlein" (Little Dear Mother) with the following lines:
Little mother dear to me
At last I come to be with thee
The longing and the solitude
Resolve in utter beatitude.
Nico goes back to Paris. She falls in love with French filmmaker Philippe Garrel, to whom she is intimately connected in a lifelong, complicated and passionate relationship. Garrel makes films about her, his relationship with her, and lets her be an actress in them. Nico has solo gigs in Paris, where she sings and plays her harmonium, and begins to take heroin. At one guest performance Nico meets musician Lutz Ulbrich from Berlin, who is 14 years her junior, and who becomes her faithful companion from then on. He is with her when Nico joins Brian Eno and John Cale for a performance in London in 1974, and later records the Jim Morrison song The End with them. While she is adored abroad, and especially in France, she finds little recognition in Germany, which is cause for grief for Nico, who is often proud to tell that she is German. British concert promoter Alan Wise persuades Nico to move to Manchester. He rounds up support musicians for her, organizes concerts and tours, and supplies her with drugs. Nico is soon in a wretched physical state, wears the same black clothing for weeks on end, does without make-up, seldom washes herself and her hair, stays drugged in her room for days and chain-smokes. Her harmonium play and the three shots of heroin per day she now regularly needs give her comfort. Since the drugs are expensive, she has to keep on performing. In her concerts she gives off the very authentic impression of a tragic figure. At the end of her 40s, Nico has left behind for good her image of the Dolce Vita model. The elegiac, intriguing angel has turned into an alien with cracked skin and rotten teeth. Friends no longer recognize her on the street.
Ari joins his mother in Manchester and starts to shoot heroin. Nico takes to bragging about how she got him hooked on it, which Ari disputes. Mother and son live like a couple. They share needles and sleep in the same bed.
When the "Camera Obscura" longplay record is released in 1985, critics give the album high marks, which reinvigorates Nico's spirits. She now delivers better stage performances, switches to methadone after 15 years of taking heroin and follows a strict vegetarian diet. She works on a biography and on a new record. In June 1988, Nico and her band "The Velvet Underground" receive enthusiastic ovations from the audience at a Berlin festival organized by her Ex, Lutz Ulbrich. The last song Nico performs on a stage is "You Forget to Answer", with the lines:
You seem not to be listening
The high tide is taking everything
And you forget to answer
Since that concert in Berlin, Nico suffers from headaches. She rents a house on Ibiza for herself and Ari. Wearing her typical outfit of black leather pants and a black sweatshirt, on 18 July 1988, she rides her bike in the intense heat of noon to Ibiza City. A bout of weakness strikes her on her way to the market and she falls off her bike. A couple finds her and asks several doctors on the island to help her. She finally undergoes an operation in a hospital, but dies as a result of a blood clot in her brain. Having been invited by Nico, Lutz Ulbrich lands on Ibiza on the same day. He does not see Nico alive. All that is left for him to do is arrange the funeral with Ari. On 16 August 1988, Nico's ashes are buried beside her mother at the so-called suicide cemetery in Berlin-Grunewald.