nico - behind the iron curtain

Nico’s live album Behind The Iron Curtain has long been a favourite of mine, I first bought it on cassette, from a shop in Nottingham, while I was waiting to see my first Iggy Pop gig in June 1987.

 

This set was recorded on 9 October 1985, in a club in Rotterdam.

Now, the geographers amongst you may have noticed that Rotterdam is not exactly behind the Iron Curtain... The album sleeve actually states that it was "recorded live in Warsaw, Budapest and Prague between 29.9.85 and 31.10.85", but it wasn’t. Not one note.

 

The plan had been to record some dates of the October 1985 tour of Eastern Block countries but conditions turned out to be too primitive, electricity too unreliable, and Nico didn’t have access to her usual, er, supplies which resulted in some rather variable performances. However, her manager, Alan Wise, had already promised the record label a live album, so tapes from earlier in the European tour were dusted down and this Rotterdam show was presented as a document of the tour of communist countries. When the deception was exposed some years later, Wise cheekily said that it didn’t really matter as the basic set of songs was much the same as what had actually been played Behind The Iron Curtain...

The original double album was reissued on CD a few years later, but lost the vinyl side 3 in order to fit onto one CD. It's been reissued a few times but sadly the missing tracks have never been restored. It's also a little annoying that the flow of the gig was spoilt by a fairly random reordering of the set list and by fading the applause out after each song. Maybe one day this set could be reissued, complete and in the right order.

 

However, musically it’s a very solid 1985 Nico show. Nico was accompanied by a band for most of the 1980s. In 1981/82 this was more a regular guitar/bass/drums set up, but from 1984 until her death four years later the emphasis was on just piano / synth and percussion. Keyboard player James Young was in most of these bands and wrote a very funny, and very touching, account of life with Nico – Songs They Never Play On The Radio is one of the wittiest and most acutely observed books about being on the road.

 

By the time of this recording the band had settled down into a sharp unit, able to cope well with the vagueness of Nico’s timekeeping. In earlier shows there was a tendency for the band to insist on keeping a solid beat; but a regular steady beat seemed to fox Nico entirely, resulting in some disastrous train wrecks. By 1985 the band members had clearly decided to follow Nico’s own unfathomable take on keeping time, so some songs find the musicians speeding up or slowing down a little, but at least everyone is together!

The Nico ‘classics’ like “Janitor Of Lunacy” or “Frozen Warnings” are all here, along with a dramatically unaccompanied “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and a lovely gentle “Femme Fatale”. The band excels on the then current songs such as “Win A Few” or "Tananore" and there's a stunningly good version of “My Heart Is Empty” which is genuinely emotional. 

 

But my favourite is the opening semi-improvised piece called “All Saint’s Night”. The musicians would use this to warm up the crowd and the length of the piece would vary from night to night depending on how long it took Nico to make it to the stage, sometimes running for ages if she’d got lost on the way. Which she sometimes did... Once she’d actually found the stage Nico would add some la-la-la type wordless vocals. This Rotterdam version has been subtitled "from a Polish Motorway" to fake a bit of Eastern Block authenticity... It's an especially strong performance from everyone, and Nico’s vocals are astonishing. It's like she’s rising from a grave - her voice is more of an unearthly death rattle than it is singing. Yet, oddly, it’s perfect.