Nico/Christa Päffgen

[tarnished youth]

Nico: The Marble Index pt. 1

These are from Guy Webster's photoseries with Nico.
(guywebster.com)

 

[tarnished youth]

Nico: The Marble Index pt. 2

These are from Guy Webster's photoseries with Nico. Interesting that her hair was red, because judging from the Marble Index album alone her hair looks very dark brown or black. The last photo attachment is my favorite from the series. I like the dramatic headshot ones as well. As well as the above lighter fair.
(guywebster.com)

I read that Nico was most fond of this Marble Index series out of all the posters made of her.

 

[tarnished youth]

Nico: Handbill & Record

I found this handbill humorous. The story that goes along with the event, as well as all other details can be found here: http://recordmecca.blogspot.com/
(recordmecca.blogspot.com/)

 

[tarnished youth]

Nico: Fashion Factory Series pt. 1

I found this great Peter Lindbergh "It's the Fashion Factory" shoot from Harper's Bazaar (August 1995).

Amber Valetta plays Nico
Jaime Rishar as Edie Sedgwick
Stéphanie Seymour as Ultra Violet
Shalom Harlow as Jane Forth

(claire.belliard.free.fr/)

 

[tarnished youth]

Nico: Fashion Factory Series pt. 2

"It's the Fashion Factory" shoot from Harper's Bazaar cont.

I liked spotting all the Warhol Superstars in the session!

Amber Valletta* as Nico (er...her name is misspelled on the source site).
(claire.belliard.free.fr/)

I think this shoot really captured the feel of the cast of characters. Amber Valletta is a good choice for Nico, since they have similar coloring, strong features & great beauty.

 

[EvaLaDiva]

Your Nico photos are beautiful, and I love your avatar!

 

[babydoll1125]

Welcome tarnished youth! Thank you for all the pictures Some of them are new to me!

 

[PinkGoddess]

Thanks for your contributions, Tarnished_Youth!

I don't think this interview has been posted:

Liner notes by Pat Patterson
I don't really know anything about her. Although we'd talked for more than an hour she'd requested that I not ask any "everyday questions;" questions like where she was born, her nationality, what she was trying to do.

And so, factually, I know only that her name is Nico ... mother lives in Paris ... son is four and a half ... top Parisian model ... had a part in Fellini's La Dolce Vita ... came to the States two years ago ... is part of Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground.

And all this I learned from her manager, Paul Morissey, while Nico sat behind the bar of the dusky Dom down on St. Mark's Place and sang very soft, sad songs in a deep voice which, when stretched out, has a little mourn to it; like a child's last sob.

I watched as she sat, her head hanging to one side, her long flaxen hair fallen to her waist, catching highlights from the kaleidoscopic light works projecting ever-changing images on the walls. She held the mike with both hands, her long neck reaching out towards the ceiling as she went for a note. There was a strange existentialness to her; she was at once both cool and warm and her style of singing stretched words to the point where they were out of shape — their meaning shaded in graduations until they were no longer words conveying thoughts but sounds conveying feeling.

I'd seen Nico a year ago when Warhol first opened his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I was rounding a corner of the stairs when this tall lithe figure moved past like a sudden thought-picture you saw so totally you saw no details; the parts creating none of the sum.

Her set ended finally and her manager told me not to be surprised if she turned her head when introduced.

"She's very shy, really," he said.

"No, I'd like to talk. It's not that I have to talk ... I just don't see why I should be silent right ... now."

Nico seemed relaxed and extremely feminine in that personal, yet distant, way which is the mark of so many European women.

After promising that I wouldn't ask any everyday questions, I did just that: How long had she been singing.

"Well, yes," she said, but instead of continuing she stopped and seemed to search back past all the timeless copouts, past the obvious to what she really did think.

"I don't even see that it makes a difference," she replied finally, "because everyday I feel that the day before doesn't count ... so much happens ... I don't sing for the audience. I try to remain as much alone as I can ... not to make contact at all. (Except for the people who come every night)."

"I like sad songs, tragic ones ... I like to improvise with the notes, with the feeling I have at the time about the song."

Even those people who were friends of hers only six months ago she feels isolated from, because in this Underground movement (the italics are hers) things move so fast because yesterday doesn't exist.

"They think I'm not polite ... but whatever I have to say to these people seems so unnecessary ... I just can't be around ... be around anything that is forced ... I'd rather just remain how I feel ... what happened before happened ... now it's only sentiment that you can't scratch out."

People, places, the years no longer exist for Nico except as blocks of emotion that can't be recaptured but only re-felt.

"I can't respond in the old way ... it's you know fake ... with people that you like for good reasons but not the most important reasons."

One of Nico's favorite people she says, was Lenny Bruce. "I like him for that thing ... that nothing is wrong to do or to say or to take ... he really destroyed himself in the end."

Her voice is low but strong; sensuous but reserved. Sometimes she seems as if she is talking to herself.

Nico's speech is slow; she makes sudden leaps of thought jettisoning the bridging word. Like a movie camera her thoughts keep cutting, instead of panning, from one to another; if only feeling linking them up and leading her on. Her voice flies high as she talk putting her emphasis on the conjunctions instead of the adjectives or verbs.

The conversation changes to Andy and Chelsea Girls, three and a half hours long. "I like the last sequence with the Pope and Ondine and that quiet film beside it." Nico is also in his new film, all in color, which runs for twenty-four hours.

She says Andy likes other people to become Andy for him; that he doesn't want to be always in charge of everything.

"He would rather be me or someone else sometimes ... like the radio interview when I couldn't show up ... he went on and took my part — said the sings I would say."

"It's part of pop-art, I guess, that everybody can impersonate somebody else ... that you don't always be you.

If tomorrow I find somebody who is pretty much like me and I put her here to sing, she can be Nico while I go to do something else."

She is beautiful. And in a world where so much can easily be possessed on a whim or for a promise, she is unpossessable. She has a clear, pure ring, a trueness, like an arrow that has hit an inner mark and can't be wedged loose. Her voice and her manner, that stretch farther into the past than perhaps she realizes, may set the new style: and existential pop style that is as earthy as Mary Travers (Peter, Paul & Mary) yet more elegant, more isolated.

Her name is Nico. I don't know where she was born, how old she is or anything about her life as a model in Paris, an actress in Rome, a beat in Ibiza or a member of the Velvet Underground.

I could easily find out. But I'd rather not. All that was yesterday.

— reprinted from the magazine IN New York.

 

[Scott]

omg....tarnished youth...those images of she on top of the volkswagen(?)could be look-book photos of veronique branquinho.

 

[La bordélique]

Wow Scott, speaking of Veronique Branquinho... those pictures of the Marble Index remind me of these photos.

 

[Scott]

^it does! wow,indeed. and you know i've never seen,read or heard branquinho mention nico as part of her world.

 

[babydoll1125]

Just a random question I'd like to ask, does anyone know anything in regards to Nico's view of other races? I'm curious because of this comment someone posted on Youtube:

"I love this performance and I love(d) Nico. Funny story: I met Nico in CBGBs at the start of her early-80s "comeback" when she sat right next 2 me and told everyone w/in listening distance of having had her purse snatched by 2 "*******," embellishing her tale by remarking how much "blacks reminded her of apes." As an "ape" myself, I listened to this child of Der Fuhrer w irony. Go figure."

I've read about Nico's encounter with the Black Panther girls but that doesn't shed any light in regards to her feelings about black people in general.

I found this quote from the March 1981 issue of ZigZag:

"I wasn't happy with the way 'The End' was promoted. I said something against black people at the time and Island Records didn't like that. I wasn't sure of the fact that it was a Jamaican company. I didn't know Chris Blackwell was married to a Jamaican singer. If i would have known, i wouldn't have said that, plus i didn't really mean it. It was more like a private joke."

 

[PinkGoddess]

Thanks, Babydoll. I wonder if it was a long running inside joke that Nico had a thing against blacks because of her Nazi background? She was such a hard person to understand, I guess that's why we're all so fascinated by her...

 

[PinkGoddess]

John Cale talks about the racism allegations in this very interesting article:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4825770.ece

 

[tarnished youth]

Nico: The Tattoos

Thank you. This thread is wonderful; a great Nico resource. (All the photospreads & interviews I have consumed!)

• babydoll1125 you have provided so many great shots (the Artkraft Strauss billboard factory with her back turned!)
• PinkGoddess your interview links are riveting

One last correction to my previous re: "It's the Fashion Factory": Stéphanie Seymour portrays International Velvet, and not Ultra Violet as I first labeled her (I had these two Warhol regulars confused for a while, until I watched Chelsea Girls this past weekend with a friend who corrected me.)

Here's a Nico image from the Tattoos album cover:

(ijksales.com)

 

[babydoll1125]

I haven't seen the Tattoo's cover in HQ so thank you for posting it! And for the compliment

 

[anniehall]

Really beautiful

 

[babydoll1125]

Nico modeling in 1964

 

[babydoll1125]

This picture was posted before but it was removed. Can whoever posted it say where it came from so it doesn't get removed again?

 

[60swildchild]

Here is the link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/1964-September-...ViewItemQQptZUK_Magazines?hash=item3a55053c07