What Costume Shall The Poor Girl Wear?

Three Nico and The Velvet Underground coincidences came to me recently and I don't ignore these things when it comes to writing posts for the blog. First, the latest issue of Mojo (the music magazine for middle aged men) has a feature on the 50 Best Lou Reed and Velvet Underground songs in it, in which the song below features (as you'd expect). Second, the day after reading this countdown I played a clip to my GCSE History class about opposition to the Vietnam War. As the footage of students demonstrating, soldiers fixing bayonets and tear gas blowing about played the familiar and thrilling sounds of All Tomorrow's Parties came into earshot, John Cale's treated piano powering its way into my classroom as Moe Tucker's drums bashed away. Nico's deadpan, monotone vocal just about started as the clip finished. I had a little moment quietly to myself in front of a class of fifteen and sixteen year olds, a small shudder of 'fuck me, that was good', almost like hearing it for the first time again.

All Tomorrow's Parties

It is by any standards an amazing song, discordant and adrenaline filled, with nagging, off key guitar lines (Lou's famous ostrich guitar tuning) and claustrophobic production. The song is about Andy Warhol's clique at The Factory, a place where everyone said the 'most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things', while Andy just watched. Cale later said it was about a girl called Darryl, 'a beautiful, petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her'. Which is one of the saddest things as an observation on its own. 

Lou Reed and the others didn't want Nico in the band. Andy pushed her in, believing she could be a star. All Tomorrow's Parties was written partly to give her something to do on stage. But she makes it- her flat, accented, dead eyed, double tracked vocals are as important to this song as any other element of it. 

The third part of the triptych of coincidences was that not long ago I finished reading Nico, Songs They Never Play On The Radio, an account of Nico and her life from 1982- 1988, by James Young, the pianist in her touring band in the 80s. It's really well written recreation of the demi- world of Manchester musicians, hangers on and promoters who orbited around her, while she existed on heroin, red wine and cigarettes. There's no money, few gigs, no seems to enjoy themselves apart from occasionally very briefly, Nico hates everyone she's stuck with, especially the musicians- sometimes she appears on stage on her own with her harmonium, reluctant to let her ban join her. Occasionally they play a gig somewhere in Europe and an uber- fan appears which pisses her off as much as no one turning up. Touring is the only way to make any money but it disrupts her drug habit. James witnesses it all, participates in the gigs and recordings, writing sympathetically and making it clear there's little romance in this world (somehow though, even the absolute lack of romance has its own grimly romantic appeal). The book finishes with Nico's sad death in Ibiza in 1988 and her funeral in Germany, the mystery of her father and what happened to him and what he did during the war all wrapped up as part of Nico's allure. Highly recommended if you're after something to read. 

Cease To Know

This mural of Nico by an artist called Trafford Parsons adorns the gable end of a building, not far from the Apollo in Ardwick (a walk from the Piccadilly town of about fifteen to twenty minutes). The building is Spirit Studios, something I didn't know when I took the picture at Easter. Amusingly, the front entrance to Spirit Studios is on Downing Street. I'll leave that hanging there- you can probably fill in your own joke/ remark. 

Nico had a history with Manchester, moving here in 1981. Her past as a model and then member of Andy Warhol's Factory set, role in his Chelsea Girls film and her vocals on The Velvet Underground's first album are the stuff of legend. Her solo albums of the 70s too, The Marble Index especially, with Nico taking up the harmonium, a very un- rock 'n' roll instrument, at the suggestion of Jim Morrison. She lived with John Cooper Clarke for some of the 80s (in Brixton) but spent much of it living in Prestwich (home to Mark E Smith) and Lower Broughton, Salford. She was deep in the grips of heroin addiction. Fall guitarist Martin Bramah said she liked the less salubrious parts of inner city Manchester, gazing at Manchester's dirty post- industrial mills and saying they were romantic. Some of Manchester's musical scene treated her like royalty but she equally preferred to played pool in the pubs of Prestwich, go to Chinatown for a meal or pop to the local shops on her bike. She played gigs to pay the bills/ support her habit and various members of The Fall, the Factory set and promoter/ manager Alan Wise tried to get her to write and record but accounts suggest she drifted, burning bridges and chances, and would lose interest easily. Eventually she began to clean up, switching to methadone and taking up cycling and healthy eating. She died while on holiday in Ibiza in 1988 while out on her bike, suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, and is buried in Grunewald, a cemetery near Berlin. 

Her life as a child, born in 1938, adds yet more to her story- her father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the war and there are multiple accounts of his death, some attributed to Nico and her frequent changes to the story- variously shot by a French sniper resulting in terrible head injuries and then being shot by his commanding officer or ending up in a concentration camp or living out his final days in a psychiatric hospital or fading away from shellshock. Whatever the truth, after the war Nico and her mother ended up in Berlin, a far cry from their wealthy background in pre- war Cologne. 

This song, Afraid, is from 1970's Desertshore album, an album she made with John Cale, and seems imbued with all the life she'd lived up to that point.  

Afraid

A Hand Me Down Dress From Who Knows Where

I like this photo of the early incarnation of The Velvet Underground, mainly because it's in colour. The banana period Velvets are usually in stark black and white, occasionally with some of Andy Warhol's silver balloons. This picture punctures that and makes them something else.

This song is almost without equal. Not just in their back catalogue but in anyone's. It's so out there- the drone and detuned piano are woozy and discordant, the guitar is scratchy and spindly, the drum thuds and then there's Nico's double tracked vocal, the blank and sneery lyrics about a party girl. Lyrics sung behind her back, straight out of Warhol's amphetamine psychosis Factory. Jon Savage describes it as coming at the listener sideways which makes sense. Why they released as a single in 1966 makes little sense at all, other than as a statement of 'they'll never play this on the radio'.

All Tomorrow's Parties

In 2006 John Cale said "The song was about a girl called Darryl, a beautiful petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her", which makes it human and sad. 

It's a song that almost dares bands to cover it, inviting them into the trap, taunting them. Japan got away with it, adding synths, neon and pastels and some drama.

Away Again

A quick turn around and I'm off again, with the family this time, down to the Dordogne in South West France for the next couple of weeks, stopping off in the Loire for three nights on the way back. It's looking good.

I'll leave you with a couple of songs to speed us on our way and to keep you happy. Rikki Turner's new band The Hurt released a cracking song a few months back, the moody and epic Berlin. The new one is a cover of Nico's One More Chance and is a stately throb.



The new Hardway Bros ep Pleasure Cry is one of my records of the year thus far. This song, Argonaut, was written specifically by Sean Johnston to be played on the boat at Croatia's Electric Elephant Festival. It starts off like Weatherall's mix of Come Together and then heads off into the sunset putting its arms around you and doing a little dance.



And just so's there's some screaming guitars and drawled vocals here's J Mascis and The Fog covering Teenage Fanclub's Everything Flows with Mike Watt on bass. It then diverts into Pavement's Range Life and The Ruts' In A Rut. Is it any good? Of course it is. It is seven minutes of good.



See you in August.

I'll Keep It With Mine

Nico may have been one of the coolest looking girls of the 60s  (Exhibit A, the shots of her with The Velvets). Despite her looks and Teutonic cool she was shoe-horned into the group against their will by manager Andy Warhol. She was deaf in one ear and often struggled singing in key but her voice on the banana album works perfectly as a foil for Lou Reed's nasal drawl. Her solo albums can possibly be best described as an acquired taste. She got to know the big shots of the 60s scene too- Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Bob Dylan all stepped out with her at some point, Dylan writing I'll Keep It With Mine for her, a lovely little song that you can find below.

Addicted to smack for fifteen years she lived with Salford's number one punk poet John Cooper Clarke, flitting between London and Didsbury, Manchester, walking distance from where I grew up (which seems a bit odd now I think about it. How did we all live near a member of the Velvet Underground?). Nico died in 1988, suffering a minor heart attack while cycling in Ibiza, cracking her head on the pavement. A life less ordinary, even if it was 'brushed by the wings of something dark' (to quote Nigel Blackwell).

I'll Keep It With Mine