nico - again

It's summery, I'm back from my holiday and feeling chilled and relaxed. So what music do I reach for?

Nico.

Why on earth do I choose her? Surely some of the least summery and relaxing music I own...

But, bizarrely, and going against all rational logic, that's what I'm playing today. I started with Nico's June 1985 performance at the Chelsea Town Hall, and this was followed by her April 1986 concert in Tokyo. Two gigs, less than a year apart, with virtually the same musicians and set list, but sounding surprisingly different. 

The over-riding impression from both recordings is that there’s lots of slightly bizarre and sometimes inappropriate percussion, gently tinkling piano, and slabs of cheap sounding 1980's synth. And behind it all, ignoring all of the seemingly extraneous music, is the unsteady pulse of the harmonium and Nico’s phrasing, which is sometimes entirely unconnected from the song that’s attempting to be played.

She plays her harmonium and sings in her own sweet time, and nothing can stop her. The rest of the musicians just have to somehow work around her idiosyncratic ideas of timing and rhythm. Sometimes this means simply banging away at a relentless beat in the hope that sometimes Nico might accidentally fall into line with the music – a song like “Tananore” or “Fearfully In Danger” kind of works like this. The band tries to shoehorn the wayward melody into their solid rhythm. Usually this fails and the crashing percussion ploughs relentlessly on regardless. 

Sometimes though, songs with a more obvious sense of melody and a more conventional structure, such as the terrific “My Heart Is Empty” really need Nico to be in-synch with the rhythm of the song. She actually does this in Tokyo, and as a result we get one of the best and most powerful renditions of this track that I've ever heard. The version at Chelsea finds her doing her own thing and Jim Young’s piano is kind of attempting to drag her back to the beat and failing miserably. The result is a muddle of a song where the band and the singer are only occasionally on the same page. Yet it’s still weirdly listenable and somehow even quite impressive. Quite how this is possible is one of the enduring mysteries of Nico's music. There are many of these 1980s live recordings, and frankly many of them ought to be almost unlistenable, but unaccountably that simply isn't the case. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chelsea show, intended to showcase her then new album Camera Obscura, is the more tentative of the two performances. Many of the songs played were new to the set and there was the extra pressure of the show being at a fairly prestigious location, and attended by the press. The Tokyo gig is, by contrast, clearly more relaxed, the songs have been road tested for some time, the band have worked up some excellent arrangements and the whole set is delivered with more assurance, more confidence. The newer songs come across very well in Tokyo, with a particularly solid "Win A Few" - other highlights include the always wonderful "Sixty / Forty" and the aforementioned "My Heart Is Empty". But for me, the best track of this show is a delightfully jazzy "Das Lied Vom Einsamen Madchen", with Young's sparkling piano and some snappy percussion underpinning an excellent vocal performance from Nico.

At both gigs the oldies like “Femme Fatale” are always more assured, and the straight harmonium tracks like “Secret Side” or “Janitor Of Lunacy” are dependably brilliant. And it’s great that Nico revived one of my favourites, “You Forget To Answer”, which she wrote after the death of Jim Morrison. Good old Nico, always guaranteed to cheer us all up!

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. 

 

 

 

legendary gigs - bataclan 1972

There are some gigs that have attained legendary status, and not always for musical reasons. The final Ziggy Stardust gig, the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club etc etc. Shows that are frequently talked about, written about, and are thus given a reputation that perhaps they don't always deserve.

 

In January 1972, Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico gave a joint performance at the Bataclan club in Paris. At the time none of these musicians were terribly well known, especially in Europe, and it's only with hindsight that this partial reunion of the Velvet Underground has gathered almost mythical status.

 

Oddly no-one seems very sure as to why this gig actually happened. It was Lou's first live performance since he left the Velvets at Max's Kansas City in the summer of 1970. And it was John Cale's first performance since he'd left the Velvets two years before that! 

 

With Lou sporting a big afro and playing acoustic guitar, John on viola, piano or 12 string acoustic, and Nico on her trusty harmonium, someone had the sense to film this show (though I've never seen the footage), and the audio has been bootlegged for years before a semi official release about 10 years ago.

 

Trouble is, the semi official CD runs too slow. Way too slow. Some time ago I created my own corrected version by increasing the speed by about 10%. Now it's a decent listen. The slow CD sounded like all three were doped up to the eyeballs - and while that was quite possibly the case, even Nico never normally sounded quite that sllllooowww…

 

The show opens with just Lou and John on a sprightly "Waiting For The Man" with John playing a rather jaunty piano. He stays at the piano for the first ever performance of "Berlin", which Lou would record later that spring for his first solo album. Then we get "The Black Angel's Death Song", not as scary as the original, a bit slower too, but the required scratchy, maddening viola is well to the front. "Wild Child" follows, another premiere, with both Lou and John on guitars.  Then "Heroin" - the viola is back, droning menacingly throughout the song, just as it should be. A really good version. 

 

Then it's John's turn to take centre stage. "Ghost Story" is a cracking song, and this solo performance is excellent. Then two oddities "The Biggest Loudest Hairiest Group Of All" is a funny look at the misfortunes of a rock band, quite possibly the VU… Cale rarely does strum along folky songs but that's basically what this is. The audience even claps along good-naturedly - you never got that happening at VU shows! Then "Empty Bottles" which he wrote for Jennifer Warnes. A nice Paris 1919 style ballad, but not terribly remarkable. 

 

Finally, here's Nico. The boys strum and sing backing vocals on "Femme Fatale" - lovely performance. Then Lou sits himself down on a stool at the side of the stage to watch Nico at the harmonium while John accompanies on the viola - "Frozen Warnings", "No-One Is There" and a stunning, as always, "Janitor Of Lunacy". They wrap up the show with all three on a delightfully sweet "I'll Be Your Mirror" and an oddly ragged encore of "All Tomorrow's Parties". 

 

It's all very interesting, but overall it's not the most satisfying of gigs. At times it's clearly badly under-rehearsed, and occasionally rather lacklustre. This may be a little surprising considering who's playing, but perhaps not so surprising given that this was the first gig for many years for both Lou and John. It may be a legendary show, that wonderful near Velvets reunion, but as is frequently the case with legends, the truth of the matter is sadly rather less exciting. I've not listened to this gig for a good many years, and I doubt it'll get played again for a good many more. 

 

It's a bit daft really, but I'd never get rid of this recording as it's yet another one of those that I'm really glad I've got. Even if I don't play it much.

nico - live 1979 and more

I've been playing a lot of Nico's music recently. Can't explain why, really.

I listened to the marvellously icy wastelands of The Marble Index and Desertshore the other week - it's not really music in the commonly accepted sense. And the songs are only songs in a fairly loose sense. I don't know what it is really. But I genuinely do actually like it. So many of the lyrics are just that little bit skewed. As English wasn't her first language you get disconcertingly odd phrases, like in "Lawns Of Dawns": 'having thrown a joke on you and me' - throwing a joke? For that matter, I wonder what Lawns Of Dawns actually are?

The other day I dug out a couple of excellent gigs from CBGB's in 1979.

These represented Nico's first shows in the USA for about 8 years, and her first anywhere since about 1975. The period between 1974's The End… and this reappearance wasn't a good one for Nico. Lost in a deepening narcotic fog there's precious little information about her life for about five years of the 1970s. No gigs, no records, nothing. She even sold her harmonium in order to fuel her habit. She was living in Paris in 1978 and met Patti Smith at a concert. Patti was stunned to discover that Nico had no money, no home, nothing at all. Upon her return to New York Patti spoke to John Cale who was similarly shocked that Nico's life had sunk so low, and both agreed that the CBGB's crowd would be a good audience for Nico. So she was brought to New York and in early 1979 Nico played a series of shows at the famously scuzzy club. And, as Cale and Patti had predicted, went down a storm. 

I have two, very well recorded, audience recordings, two sets from one night in February, and Cale and guitarist Lutz Ulbrich accompany Nico on a number of songs. At later New York gigs the Dead Boys' Cheetah Chrome would sometimes play guitar, and at a couple of shows Roland Young, the saxophonist from the Sun Ra Arkestra, apparently accompanied Nico. Goodness knows what that sounded like!

Anyway, back to February - Cale adds viola to songs like "No-One Is There" and Lutz and Cale try to Velvet up "Femme Fatale" a bit. But mostly it was simply Nico and a harmonium, a new one bought for her by Patti Smith. Interestingly at least half the set is previously unrecorded songs, tracks that would later be recorded in radically different form on Drama Of Exile. Songs like "Genghis Khan" and "Henry Hudson" are simple harmonium pieces here, and never sounded sadder. "Purple Lips" had actually been debuted on French tv far back in 1975, but was still new to the Bowery audience. Nico sounds pleasantly surprised by the response of the crowd, and she delivers a cracking performance. During the second show she gets stuck during "Frozen Warnings" and plays the same part over and over whilst clearly rummaging around in her mind for the next verse, then some kind soul shouts it out for her, and she thanks him and continues with the song. But it's the only blip in an otherwise excellent gig. 

After she'd recorded Drama Of Exile in the UK in 1981 Nico went out on the road in earnest. Between 1981 and 1984 she was often supported by various combinations of Manchester musicians. Then, after the recording of Camera Obscura in 1985 the band was pared down to percussion and keyboards, as heard on Live In Tokyo, Behind the Iron Curtain and loads of other semi legit albums.

I recently got hold of a Nico gig from Basel in December 1986. Here the band is Eric Random's Bedlamites. I was surprised when I first heard this recording as I'd been under the impression that the Bedlamites were a percussion ensemble, frequently playing found instruments, banging bin lids and iron bars etc. Almost like a Mancunian pound shop version of Einstürzende Neubauten (and yes I did have to look up how to spell that!). This could have made for a fascinating experience. Well, maybe the Bedlamites did do that sometimes, but when backing Nico they're far more like a slick lounge band. Which is very, very odd. So tracks like "Purple Lips" are graced with a smoochy saxophone and a polite shuffle, more suited to a Sinatra type late night bar. "I'll Be Your Mirror" starts with a gently swinging beat and bouncy bass, then utterly falls apart when Nico starts singing and is totally at odds with the band. Different speed, timing, phrasing, everything! They do rally and try their best to match the rhythm section to Nico's own peculiar idea of rhythm but it never quite recovers to be honest. Which is a shame as "Mirror" was very rarely played live by Nico. 

Another rarity from this show is the "Eulogy To Lenny Bruce" ('I've lost a friend, and I don't know why…') which, as far as I can tell, was only ever played live during this short European run of shows in late 1986. This is far better than "I'll Be Your Mirror" as Nico sings her sad song accompanied only by some appropriately sparse guitar notes. Unsurprisingly the best part of the show is the middle section when the band leave the stage entirely and Nico mournfully plays "Frozen Warnings" and "The Falconer" all alone.  

No matter how they tried to dress up Nico's stage shows, with whatever musicians and instruments, she was always at her most compelling and commanding when sat at the harmonium, alone in the candlelight.   

the velvet underground and nico

A bit late to the party I know, but I've been listening to The Velvet Underground And Nico - the umpteenth reissue with all sorts of bonus tracks...

And this time, just to confuse everyone, there's a double disc, just like the last double disc from a few years ago, but with different bonus tracks. AND there's also a Mega Sized Box Set with the Valleydale Ballroom gig from November 1966, the original recordings from Scepter Studios in April 1966, and some tracks from a rehearsal, one of the very first with Nico, recorded at the Factory in January 1966. Add to this the mono and stereo versions of the album, plus the single versions and Nico's Chelsea Girl album and you have a Mega Sized Box Set containing an awful lot of stuff that we’ve all bought many times before. A sneaky FLAC download has revealed that, as I thought, there’s only a small amount of stuff that is strictly ‘new’.

Let’s start with the fabled Scepter Studios acetate. These are the first recordings for the album. And so it’s been treated a bit like the Holy Grail for VU fans. Apart from "Sunday Morning" which was recorded much, much later, pretty much the whole album was recorded at Scepter in mid April 1966. Tom Wilson apparently later oversaw a new mix of these tracks which is what ended up on the album, but essentially the Scepter Acetate IS the debut album, just hissier and less clear. Three tracks originally taped at Scepter were totally re-recorded for the album a month later - "Heroin", "Waiting For The Man" and "Venus In Furs" – which means that the Scepter versions are new to my ears, but otherwise listening to a de-clicked, de-hissed recording is not worth the effort when the pristine Mono version in this box set gives you mostly the exact same tracks. The only other difference is that "European Son" on the album was edited down from the nine minutes plus version recorded at Scepter, but do you really need three more minutes of guitar noise? I certainly don’t.

FWIW the original Scepter versions of the re-recorded songs are inferior to the remakes and clearly the Velvets made the right call in re-recording these songs. AND, a couple of the ‘alternative’ tracks on the Stereo disc are actually the Scepter recordings nicely remastered and mixed into stereo (so we have the longer "European Son" and the un-used "Heroin" as bonus tracks for example, even though they are also on the Demos disc but in Mono and less clear!)

So, basically, apart from a couple of tracks the Scepter acetate is a bit of a wash out.

The January 1966 rehearsal is quite good fun, and is surprisingly good quality, but ultimately it’s the Velvets mucking around and jamming with the only notable track being Nico attempting to sing "There She Goes Again" and proving conclusively that she’s entirely wrong for that track. But really, how often will you want to play these songs? A couple of times perhaps, but that’s it, they’re not that interesting. .

The Valleydale Ballroom gig is the only complete Exploding Plastic Inevitable gig, and one of only a couple of live recordings where Nico sings with the band. The gig is bookended by two lengthy half hour improvs which feature Nico wailing tunelessly at times. "It Was A Pleasure Then" on Chelsea Girl was an attempt to capture some of this free-form improv style. But if, like me, you are one those people who finds even eight minutes of tuneless warbling to be irritating, then "Melody Laughter" and "The Nothing Song" will drive you to despair. The rest of the gig finds the Velvets playing most of the debut album, and they play it competently, but that’s about it. It’s surprisingly low key, everything is professional and very very safe. No surprises at all, with virtually every song sounding just like the record. So again, how often will this get an airing? Not often. Plus, despite the best efforts of the audio restoration boffins it’s still a fairly ropey audience recording from 46 years ago, so it’s never going to sound that good. This show has been booted loads of times over the years and it sounds better now that it ever has; it’s perfectly listenable, but it’s still muffled, muddy and murky.

Chelsea Girl sounds good though – cleaner, sharper than my now very old CD, and I’d not got the Mono version of the VU&N album before, which is very sharp and some songs undoubtedly sound better in Mono, with some noticeable mix differences too.

So, the Mega Box Set actually includes very little that is genuinely new and worth having especially if you've already bought the VU&N album many time before. If you've not already got this record, then where have you been since 1967? Go out right now and get the double disc version. It's the best it has ever sounded and contains the Scepter / rehearsal material for good measure. 

  

nico

I still miss Nico, the foghorned voiced fraulein who I first heard singing with the Velvet Underground. Really weird that I should miss her, because I didn’t know her at all. I'd never even seen her in concert. I’d only ever heard her music, but when she died in July 1988 I felt terribly sad. Can't really explain why, but it felt almost like a personal loss. I played her records repeatedly in the weeks after she died and probably got very morbid... One song that seemed really pertinent was the “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce”, the last track on Chelsea Girl with it's opening line 'I've lost a friend, and I don't know why'.

In retrospect it seems odd that I missed her so much, as by all accounts she could be a deeply unpleasant individual - selfish and spoilt, a desperate junkie for most of her adult life until only a year or so before she died, either utterly lazy or genuinely virtually incapable of looking after herself. Yet for some unaccountable reason she inspired something approaching devotion from her band members, managers and friends.

Born in Cologne just before the Second World War Christa Paffgen grew up a solitary, lonely child. She adopted the name of a male friend when she started modelling in the 1950s. By the mid sixties she was to be found in New York hanging out with the Andy Warhol art set. Andy loved her striking features and Nico appeared in a number of Warhol films. It was his idea to introduce her to the Velvet Underground, a new band he had started managing. Such was Andy's persuasiveness that the Velvets somehow found themsleves agreeing to Nico fronting the band, despite her limited vocal range and inability to keep time. Lou Reed wrote three of his most beautiful songs for Nico to sing, and she would continue to play these songs throughout her career - "All Tomorrow's Parties, "I'll Be Your Mirror" and the song that became indelibly Nico's - "Femme Fatale".

Of course the Velvets soon tired of Nico's lack of contribution to the band and by 1967 she was recording a solo album although she was helped by Lou, John and Sterling. The original Chelsea Girl recordings were simple acoustic guitar songs. The record label, fearing that Nico's limited vocals were too exposed in such bare arrangements, added strings and flutes in order to sweeten the album. Nico was devastated. She vowed to write and perform only her own material from then on and with a surprising amount of self discipline taught herself how to play the harmonium, an instrument that required no outside power source (and was thus perfect for her candlelit existence), yet it could create crashing waves of sound. The constantly shifting rhythmic base provided by the harmonium suited her vocal style which seemed to have its own idiosyncratic sense of timing. Band members, especially drummers, would always have problems trying to play along with Nico's singing as she utterly disregarded any conventional idea of a steady beat. Yet her songs were highly structured and would fall apart if her skewed structure was not adhered to.

The Marble Index was the first album that Nico had written and performed herself. Issued in 1968 TMI is characterised by John Cale's musique concrete arrangements. Wind howls through some pieces, the whole album seems to inhabit some arctic wasteland; it's cold to the point of freezing; it's like no other album ever made. Underpinning every song is the powerful rise and fall of the harmonium, and piercing the gloom and the fog is Nico's lugubrious croon. It was a total flop of course, even the record label boss said that 'no-one wants to buy suicide', not exactly a ringing endorsement... It was so wonderfully out of step with sixties fashions and trends, an album as far removed from the hippy love-ins as it was possible to be. Even today it still sounds like music from another world entirely. And I love it.

Nico followed The Marble Index with Desertshore in 1971, which offered slightly more conventionally arranged songs and then The End in 1974, which didn't. Both contain some stunning, outre arrangements from John Cale, and on The End some synth and guitar work from Roxy Music's Eno and Phil Manzanera. 

By then, however, Nico was a junkie. She had no possessions, no home, she even sold her harmonium. Between 1974 and 1978 she drifted, in a heroin induced fog. No one seems to know where she lived, who she hung out with, what she did. Then she appeared backstage at a Patti Smith gig and poured out such a tale of woe that Patti immediately found her a place to stay and bought her a new harmonium in order that Nico might get her career going again. Perhaps surprisingly, she did, and Nico would always remember Patti's act of kindness. 1979 and 1980 would see Nico frequently performing in New York clubs playing a large number of new songs, sometimes backed by her old friend John Cale.

Then, and for no obvious reason, Nico relocated to Britain. She first recorded what can only be described as an arabic infused rock album. Many of her new songs had been radically reimagined by her new Turkish and French musician friends and the resulting album Drama Of Exile is a true one off in Nico's bizarre catalogue. In fact the album was recorded twice, as the original mastertapes were stolen or something - the true facts are somewhat obscure... Both versions are now available. But some of the songs are stunning - the mysterious "Purple Lips", the miltary "Sixty / Forty", the powerful "One More Chance".

In order to more easily source heroin Nico then moved to Manchester, in the early 1980s a haven for addicts. But despite her drug dependency Nico got herself a new manager and decided to hit the road. backed by various Manchester musicians in various configurations - sometimes she'd play solo, sometimes with a conventional drums, bass, guitar set up, sometimes with three or four drummers only, Nico toured with a vengeance. Not only the UK but all across Europe, venturing behind the Iron Curtain, across the Mediterranean islands, and sometimes criss-crossing the USA too.

Another new album, Camera Obscura, was once again produced by John Cale and showcases a percussion heavy sound that was a feature of Nico's live show at the time. It contains one of my favourite Nico songs, the devastating "My Heart Is Empty". There are numerous live albums, mainly from the 1980s, and most show that Nico could be a spellbinding performer - not always; some concerts display a somewhat indifferent or forgetful Nico. But when she put on a good show, often only with the harmonium for accompaniment, she could be incredible. There is a phenomenal version of “Janitor Of Lunacy” from 1983 on Do Or Die, in which the song is invested with a huge power that is actually very frightening.

Tours across Australasia and Japan in 1986 and 1987 coincided with Nico finally kicking her heroin habit for good. And things were really looking up when when she was chosen to headline a festival at the Berlin Planetarium. She worked hard on a new set of songs. Unfinished and partly improvised though they may be, the new material debuted at the Planetarium displays an improving mastery of dynamics and composition. After this triumphant performance Nico returned to Ibiza where she held a small apartment. 

  

In order to improve her fitness Nico had taken up cycling around the island. No-one actually knows what happened, but on 18th July 1988 Nico was found unconscious at the side of the country road, having apparently fallen off her bike. With proper medical attention she may well have survived, but the first hospital to which she was taken proved to be woefully primitive and due to the slightly bizarre attire in which she was found (heavy black motorbike boots, black clothing and a black shawl - in August - in Ibiza) she was assumed to be some sort of gypsy woman or a homeless beggar. Typically, she carried no ID. Partly because no-one could identify her she was left for hours on a trolley before being given any treatment. When a brain haemorrhage was diagnosed she was moved to a better hospital but by then the bleeding was too severe and there was nothing that could be done. Whether she suffered the haemorrhage and then fell off the bike, or the fall caused the bleeding is something that was never identified. In any case, the result was the same.

She was just 49, and after years of drug abuse and living in utter poverty it seems that simply riding a bicycle killed Nico. She would have found the irony very amusing.