THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1974 - You Forget To Answer by Nico

In 1974 Nico found herself on the same record label as friend and former Velvet Underground member John Cale, who'd produced and played on earlier albums. Together they performed a concert at London's Rainbow Theatre, along with Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and Kevin Ayers. Edited down it made the album titled - June 1 1974. This was the album that introduced me to Nico's distinctly enigmatic, melancholic music. She only sang one song on the June 1 !974 album, a rather daring nine minute plus version of The Doors song The End.  Eno, Manzenera and Cale were all subsequently to appear on her fourth album The End later that year. You Forget To Answer is from that LP.

Nico, John Cale & Brian Eno 1974

Listened to now that album is remarkable for its emotional range and musical versatility. Previous Nico albums tended to sound quite dourly uniform, with just Nico, on her harmonium, and sparse musical accompaniment. Here the music has more of an expansive breadth, almost a lushness to it, whilst still remaining intrinsically a romantically bleak view of the world. Its brim full of her sadness and references to Nico's life and loves. There is real pain here, and I find You Forget To Answer is particularly touching. At this time she was in the middle of ten years in a rather dependent, and occasionally abusive relationship, with the French avant garde film maker Phillipe Garrel. When it came to falling in love, Nico knew how to pick em.

Nico & Jim Morrison

You Forget To Answer, however, concerns a much earlier besotted love affair with the late Jim Morrison. The only lover, so she said, who truly made her happy and appeared to understand her. But he was already married, and eventually returned to his wife. It was during that relationship with Morrison she'd begun her serious experimentation with drugs and resulting dependency on heroin. You Forget To Answer is about a particularly distressing memory, of her misery at having phoned Morrison and being unable to reach him, on the day that he died. The song is filled with tender longing, a sense of regret at the fate of their relationship, and how unbearable the loss of him still felt to her three years later. It is a somber yet beautiful elegy to Morrison, it encapsulates the overall musical tone and theme of the entire album - death and bereavement. It opens with a gorgeous descending synthesizer from Eno, falling in immense emotionally mournful waves. Cale's guitar plangently pulls rills and rings out across the track. Whilst Nico intones in her characteristic manner -When I remember what to say, You will know me again. And you forget to answer.  

You Forget To Answer is classic Nico, brave, open, uncompromising, morbid certainly, yet daring to go deeper. As ever, The End received a mixed reception. The mostly male music reviewers being pretty negative, essentially hanging their misogyny on her and effectively saying - cheer up love, get off the smack and get a life - oh, and maybe stop making this dreary music while you at it.. Which sort of entirely misses the point of the album really. She was, unbeknownst to her, preparing the way for a whole host of adventurous female artists as diverse as Patti Smith, Bjork, Karin Dreijer and Anna Von Hassewolff, to follow in her wake.