FINISHED READING - You Are Beautiful & You Are Alone by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

 A Biography of Nico

You Are Beautiful & You Are Alone, is a line drawn from a Nico song, self revealing as her songs often were. It's an existential metaphor for Nico's whole life. If Jennifer Otter Bickerdike has one aim in this biography its to salvage the real Nico from being permanently buried beneath her own self constructed mystique. Christa Paffgen turned herself into the Nico persona, early on in her life. That name Nico protected her, but also imprisoned. Becoming this coldly aloof presence, that she could hide all her pain beneath.

Nico fought her whole life to be taken seriously as a genuinely creative artist, often having to deal with being ridiculed. Reduced to a figure of fun, someone regularly chastised and lampooned in the music papers  In her time she was hardly taken at all seriously. If you listen to her albums however, these are not easy pieces of music to listen to. These are seriously challenging pieces of music, sometimes mesmeric. They're uncomfortable, they don't sit easily on the ears. They provoke a visceral internal response that often turns into abject rejection, because they are so distinct, so hard to accept. You could never have Nico's music played as aural wallpaper.

She suffered, as many beautiful women do, from being primarily judged on her external appearance. It was true, she was a stunning looking woman who attracted huge amounts of attention simply by entering a room. But not just because of her self evident beauty, but because there was a sense that here was a person in full self possession of who she was. Her early adult life as a successful model set the template for how she would be viewed for most of her life, Much as she hated it, she was often reduced to exploiting it simply to survive. She understood all too well what the world thought her USP's were, however self betraying it felt to use them.

Her scene stealing appearance in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, gave her the idea she might have a career as an actor. This helped eventually to extricate herself from a soulless dissatisfying  modelling career. Ending up in New York, she became one of a succession of female Superstar's in Warhol's art films. Warhol proved to be only one of the many men she allowed to steal agency over the direction of her life. Once Warhol adopted The Velvet Underground as his house band he announced that they needed a more charismatic lead singer upfront than Lou Reed, and proceeded to crow bar Nico into the band. Never a welcome move with the band, as you can imagine. It is discomforting to note, that even in 1996 when the The Velvet Underground were installed into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, no mention was made of Nico, of her ever having been part of the band. But by then she was dead and easily cut out of the story. Had she been alive she'd have stormed the stage demanding her place be acknowledged. Her exclusion being nothing short of inexcusable and retrospectively vindictive.

Nico's deep, mordant vocal style on those very few tracks she sang on the first Velvet's album, became so captivating and iconic. Filled as they are by the qualities of her voice with its shadowy languorous tone, as though lost in mournfulness and existential melancholy. Lou Reed may not have liked giving her his songs, but she made something of them he was incapable of. Her life was dominated, and so frequently exploited, by the men in her life who were supposed to be her lovers or friends. The only man who comes out of this with even a morsel of respect left is John Cale.

Her self penned songs are weighty affairs, often given titles that bear down on you with the immensity of their portentousness - Frozen Warnings - Janitor of Lunacy - Fearfully in Danger. Nico in later life struck this truculently defiant yet very sad figure, striding around 1980's Manchester. Being feted by all these young bands who owed her so much. Her influence continues to this day, clearing the space for the music of Bjork and Anna Von Hasselwolff.

That brief time of legendary musical involvement in The Velvet Underground was something she was forced to live off in later life. Endlessly touring to fund her heroin habit. making the occasional album, both often to a critical pasting. Rarely to be invited back. This became her travail. Moving around the world to perform, carrying just the travel bag she kept all her possessions in and her trusty harmonium. The persistent pain of her separation from Ari, her son. and that Alain Delon his Father wouldn't acknowledge paternity of. All of these are covered in quite forensic detail by Bickerdike. She pushes at the stories and the myths surrounding Nico, searching for the truth about notorious incidents. She gets multiple views in an attempt to excavate what really might have happened. Nothing is ever as it first appears. 

Some of what Nico does, can on the surface seem reprehensible, encouraging her own son's heroin habit, the wildly erratic behaviour, the rudeness, the insults, the racial slurs. Most of them Bickerdike places at the door of a lonely, permanently stressed out woman. The unrepresentative behaviour of decades spent as a heroin addict. The actions of a woman attempting to speak directly, plainly and uncensored in order to be true to herself. A woman whose darkly tragic family upbringing in the latter years of the Nazi era, haunted everything she subsequently did. Right up until she died at the age of 49, just when she felt finally free of drugs, men, and opprobrium. Always to be beautiful, yet always to be alone.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8