 UK CD Jungle FREUDCD069 2002-04-22 |
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01. Recorded: Cargo Recording Studio, Kerion Street, Rochdale, Lancs., 1982-01-00 [?]
P: Martin Hannet. E: John Brierley. Arranged & performed by The Invisible Girls
Nico: vocal, Indian pump organ
The Invisible Girls:
Martin Hannett: guitars, bass. Rick Goldstraw [Eric McGann]: guitars. Steve Hopkins: keyboards. Paul Burgess: drums
First released: UK 1/2 Records 1/2 REC 1, 1982-10-02 (mastered off record)
02. Recorded: Cargo Recording Studio, Kerion Street, Rochdale, Lancs., 1982-01-00 [?]
P: Martin Hannet. E: John Brierley. Arranged & performed by The Invisible Girls
Nico: vocal, Indian pump organ
The Invisible Girls:
Martin Hannett: guitars, bass. Rick Goldstraw [Eric McGann]: guitars. Steve Hopkins: keyboards. Toby Toman [Phillip Tomanov]: drums
First released: UK 1/2 Records 1/2 REC 1, 1982-10-02 (mastered off record)
03-15 Recorded at The Venue, 160-162 Victoria Street, London, 1982-01-18 [+ The Blue Orchids];
Het Paradiso, 6-8 Weteringschans, Amsterdam, 1983-01-08;
and Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Vredenburgpassage 77, 3511 DL Utrecht, 1982-03-00
Saltlageret, Skt. Jørgens Sø, København, 1983-10-05
Engineer: Peter Hooker. Originally released on En Personne en Europe UK MC One Over Two
Cass2 (distributed by Jungle Records), 1983-00-00
Nico: Vocals Indian pump organ
Lyn Arthur Oakey: electric guitars & acoustic guitar
James Young [James Edward]: piano & synthesiser
Rick Goldstraw: bass guitar
Toby Toman [Phillip Tomanov]: drums
Mike King: 12-string acoustic guitar
Sam: saxophone & flute
15. Nico: Vocals, piano — Recorded Het Paradiso, 6-8 Weteringschans, Amsterdam, 1983-01-08
06, 07, 10 Recorded Saltlageret, Skt. Jørgens Sø, København, 1983-10-05
Nico: vocal, harmonium
The Blue Orchids:
Martin Bramah: guitar, backing vocals
Rick Goldstraw [Eric McGann]: guitar
Una Baines: Yamaha Synthesizer
Steve Garvey [Steven Patrick Garvey]: bass, backing vocals
Toby Toman [Phillip Tomanov]: drums
06-07 Nico: Vocals
Lyn Arthur Oakey: acoustic guitar
17 Recorded London 1982-01-18, originally released on Do or Die! Nico in Europe 1982 Diary US MC ROIR A117, 1982-11-15
Producer: Phil Rainford [The Duritti Column]
Engineer: Phil Rainford [The Duritti Column]
Production coordinator USA: John Hanti
Nico: vocal, harmonium
The Blue Orchids:
Martin Bramah: guitar, backing vocals
Rick Goldstraw [Eric McGann]: guitar
Una Baines: Yamaha Synthesizer
Steve Garvey [Steven Patrick Garvey]: bass, backing vocals
Toby Toman [Phillip Tomanov]: drums
16 — Recorded Saltlageret, Skt. Jørgens Sø, København, 1982-02-14, originally released on Do or Die! Nico in Europe 1982 Diary US MC
ROIR A117, 1982-11-15
Producer: Phil Rainford [The Duritti Column]
Engineer: Phil Rainford [The Duritti Column]
Production coordinator USA: John Hanti
Nico: vocal, harmonium
with Samarkand:
Vaskin & Mahamad Hadi (mastered off record)
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Liner Notes:
Nico Femme Fatale
by Nina Antonia
Given Nico's dark and melancholy mythology, which she spun about her like a glittering black web,
it's difficult to imagine that she ever was a child. That her voice might once have been light
and playful, that she ever skipped and sang nursery rhymes, or that she even had a name that connected
her to a family. Of course every story must start somewhere, and Nico made her debut into the world
in a hospital in Cologne as Christa Paffgen on 18 October, 1938. It was a terrible time and place to
have been born. Trains bound for Auschwitz rattled past her house. In 1969, she told a German Magazine,
Twen, "Yes, remember the war years very well. But that was not me, that was another girl. I seem to
myself to be a criminal who spends her entire life with faked documents. I can't identify myself with
the past. Life consists of experiences which one accepts or refuses; you are formed by the things
you accept. My memory consists of shreds and short flashes, never the whole picture." The dislocation
from reality became a constant motif, and her early career as a model only encouraged it. By 1956 she
had metamorphosed into Nico. An anagram of icon, it was like a magic invocation and everything else
followed: Berlin, Paris, Ibiza, Rome, Vogue, Elle, dancing, amphetamines, a role in La Dolce Vita. She
mingled with film stars and directors, could have married into money or cavorted with playboys, but Nico
wasn't meant to wander down the sunny side of the street. Indeed, she once told a journalist 'I'm a
nihilist so I like destruction...'
Knowing that modelling couldn't sustain her forever, she took acting classes in New York, but the
course of her life was altered when a liaison with French heartthrob Alain Delon culminated in the
birth of her son, Ari. The actor abdicated from all responsibility, and little Ari was left in the
care of relatives while Nico made her way around Europe picking up parts in art house movies and
sending money back home. Despite the emotional set back, it would seem that the languid blonde with
the flawless bone structure as steep as a mountain precipice, was always exactly where she should have
been. Just as she was nearing the end of the road as a model and the films had failed to generate bigger
and better rolls, she was introduced to Bob Dylan in Paris. He wrote her a song 'I'll Keep It With Mine',
which she included in her repertoire when she started performing in a New York club called the Blue
Angel. her voice was a stunning combination of austere drawnout Teutonic phrasing with the timbre of a
haunted cello. She sounded like the sandman's lonely sister.
By 1965, Nico was ensconced in London on a modelling assignment. She had hoped to find morer work in the
capital but the Quant look was in and there was little opportunity for a woman of 28 with the
appearance of a world-weary aristocrat amongst the flocks of wide-eyed teenage Twiggys. Instead, she
fell in with the Rolling Stones. Brian Jones was captivated by her, while the Stones manager, Andrew
Loog Oldham signed Nico to his own Immediate label. If Oldham had foresight and zest when it came to
the biys who entrusted their careers to him, the same could not be said of his approach with Nico,
and the result of their collaboration was one folksy little single 'I'm Not Sayin'/The Last Mile', notable
only in that Jones played guitar, and Jimmy Page wrote the b-side. Oldham tried to mould her into what
she was not, a plaintive waif, bue her next mentor, Andy Warhol, was far more sophisticated.
Warhol knew that all he had to do was present Nico in the right surroundings and set her up with his
latest protégés, The Velvet Underground. It was as great a match as placing the Sphinx
in the golden desert. Although Lou Reed by most accounts wasn't particularly pleased at having to share
the spotlight with a guest chanteuse, he did write a brace of extraordinary songs for her to perform
including, 'All Tomorrow's Parties', 'I'll be Your Mirror' and 'Femme Fatale'. She also wanted to sing
Reed's shady ode to scoring 'I'm Waiting For The Man' but he wasn't giving up the composition. Instead
she started living out the song's theme. Initially, her commitment to heroin was fleeting. Besides, she
was in a more prominent position than ever before. As well as appearing in Warhol's latest film
'The Chelsea Girls', her first significant outing on vinyl - The Velvet Underground and Nico - was
released on the Verve label. On the strength of all the press she was garnering, Verve then signed her
for a solo album. Although she had just been extradited from The Velvets both Lou Reed and John Cale
were involved in the project. The record stands as an impressive testimony of her collaborators of the
time; as well as reviving 'I'll Keep It With Mine' she also covers numbers by Cale and Reed, and
Jackson Browne's reflective 'These Days'. In many aspects 'Chelsea Girl' is her most accessible release,
her solemn voice in competition with the occasionally flowery arrangements, but it is also a departure
point.
Nico spent he summer of 1967 fitting between paramours Brian Jones and Jim Morrison. According to Richard
Witts in his superb biography 'Nico - The Life and Lies Of An Icon', Morrison encouraged Nico to start
writing her own material. Using the Morrison method of drugs, dreams and visions, she set sail into her
own chilled and swirling psyche. Becoming musically independent, she also purchased a harmonium, a wheezy
little organ with the desolate ambience of an abandoned church. Nico grew darker along with the decade,
or rather it could be said that the Sixties finally caught up with her, all colour snuffed out and in
mourning for what had been lost. Appropriately, her next album (for Elektra) was entitled 'The Marble
Index'. Once again, John Cale was drafted in, and like a guide to the sombre vista of Nico-land, he
orchestrated her compositions. Of all the strange and wracked numbers on the record, 'Frozen Warnings'
is quintessential Nico; lyrics that convey a sorrowful atmosphere and little comfort in the melody.
Elektra didn't know how to promote the record, the critics couldn't fathom it and 'The Marble Index'
vanished like a phantom in daylight.
At the start of the Seventies, Nico fully emerged in her final and most enduring incarnation. With her
hair now hennaed the colour of dried blood, she was Lady lazarus, funereal goddess. Her famous lovers
went to watery graves and her closest consorts were heroin and the avant-garde filmmaker, Philippe
Garrel. 'Desertshore' her third solo album, features a cover shot of the chanteuse astride a white
horse, taken during the filming of Garrel's latest cinematic enterprise 'La Cicatrice intérieure',
which happily translates as 'The Inner Scar'. As her tryst with the director deepened, she moved into
an apartment with him in Paris, which they painted black. There was no electricity, no heating, no
furniture, nothing but candlelight and heroin. A review of 'Desertshore' in Rolling Stone magazine
enshrined her sepulchral legend forever: 'Make no mistake, my friends, for this record is dark, dark.
Its dominant mood is Gothick: guttering candles sputtering black wax on cold stone floors as the sound
of Nico's harmonium drifrs in from another room. It doesn't have a beat and you can't dance to it...'
And neither did her next album 'The End'.
As had become ritual, she resumed her working relationship with John Cale who had endeavoured to get her
signed to Island records, with whom he had a deal. Accompanied by Cale, Eno and Phil Manzanera, Nico
assumed the role of spiritual widow for her fines LP thus far, which includes a harrowing rendition of
The Doors' 'The End.' While Jim Morrison slumbered in Père Lachaise cemetery, Nico drifted
around Europe playing the occasional show and continuing to feature in Garrel's films. However, as the
decade slipped into its second half, Lady Lazarus hit the concert trail to maintain her habit. Gradually
she built up a following of mainly pallid aesthetes, and with the advent of Punk was heralded by the likes
of Siouxsie Sioux and Patti Smith. When Nico's harmonium was stolen, Smith bought her a new one. In 1978,
Nico supported Siouxsie and The Banshees on their first major tour. Alas, if the figureheads of the new
movement were able to appreciate Nico's gloomy reveries, their audiences couldn't, and she was subjected
to a hail of beer cans and spittle.
Self-containment had always been Nico's best form of defence and she continued upon her lonesome trail
of solo gigs. Eventually she crossed paths with Philipppe Quilichini and Antoine Giacomoni, two young
Corsicans enamoured by her myth. Despite her now reduced circumstances, Nico remained the archetypal
femme fatale. It's not beauty that lures men to thir doom, but the seduction that promises oblivion. Nico
relocated to London, where Quilichini and Giacomoni whiskey her into the studio. They had hoped to make an
album, but the tapes from the sessions were waylaid in a void of contractual confusion and allegations of
piracy. In the ensuing fall-out, the lives of Nico's Corsican cohorts spun out of control and into tragedy,
and Lady Lazarus would up down and out in Manchester. Although one can imagine Nico being more at home in
a ruined castle in the Carpathian Mountains, Manchester offered some respite in the form of entrepreneur
Alan Wise who became her manager. After Wise dusted her down, and found her somewhere to stay, she
commenced touring with a band. her son Ari, no longer a child, occasionally joined her on the road.
Nico's latter-day adventures from 1980 until her death in 1988 are strongly chronicled by her keyboard
player James Young in 'Songs They never Play On The Radio'. Similarly, this 'Femme Fatale' CD stands as an
artefact of the last bloom of Nico's career that fuses the past with the present. As well as containing
live material captured in concert in Europe, 'Femme Fatale' includes a version of David Bowie's 'Heroes' in
which Nico overcomes the heavy handed backing by warrant of her ever stately vocals. A souvenir of the
Manchester connection, the CD also features two tracks produced by Martin Hannett who had risen to prominence
through his work with Joy Division. In Hannett's care 'All Tomorrow's Parties' manages to tread lightly yet
maintains the quality of lamentation, while 'Procession' conveys the full dread of the best of Lady Lazarus.
Sublime Gothic, no one ever bettered Nico, she was someone shadows were made for and every song was an elegy.
One wonders if the little harmonium, lost in a dusty attic somewhere ever strikes an inexplicable and
ghastly note deep in the starless night.
Nina Antonia is the author of published biographies on Johnny Thunders, Peter Perrett, and the New York
Dolls. Further info at Jungle Records
A comprehensive NICO website with complete discography, filmography, biogs and lyrics is available online at
Nico | Web | Site
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Serge Mironneau