Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico (6 page)

The group often cites Andy’s advice just before the first sessions that “everything’s really great, just make sure you keep the dirty words in.”
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The phrase, which even appears in
Songs For Drella
, was understood by the band to mean “keep it rough … don’t let them tame it down so it doesn’t disturb anyone.”
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Thus bolstered, they had the courage to stick to the way they knew it should go: “Don’t make it slick. Don’t make it smooth and ruin it.”
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Lou Reed has recounted how, before they entered the recording studio:

Andy made a point of trying to make sure that on our first album the language remained intact…“don’t change the words just because it’s a record.” I think Andy was interested in shocking, in giving people a
jolt, and not letting them talk us into us into taking that stuff out in the interest of popularity or easy airplay. The best things never get on record … he was adamant about that. He didn’t want it to be cleaned up, and because he was there it wasn’t.
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The band had everyone in their corner on this, the point where their goals dovetailed with those of Warhol and Dolph. When we spoke, Norman downplayed his role in the sessions in all but one respect, and that was his effort to keep the sessions moving at a pace that would allow the group to achieve a goal so simple it was nearly impossible in 1966:

They knew what they wanted, and nobody got off the path of that. They wanted it to sound like it had the night before, at the Dom, and … the money supply was finite and predetermined … I kept it on the rails, doing what had to be done under the constraints of time and money… beyond that I don’t want to try and take any more credit.
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For once, Danny Fields may have got it wrong when he says, “Andy had no influence on the sound of the band whatsoever.”
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It’s true that the band had their
sound together before they met Warhol, but Warhol’s creative input was felt outside of the recording studio, conceptually and creatively. It was Warhol’s comment that the band should just rehearse onstage that helped push them toward their flights of improvised daring. He suggested that Reed write or make (sometimes small but significant) changes to “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Femme Fatale,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “Sunday Morning.” Sometimes it was just a simple statement to Lou that triggered the change, or inspired a part. At other times it was a more direct involvement, as with “Femme Fatale.” Were it not for Warhol, of course, Nico would never have joined the group, and that in and of itself gives him a colossal role in the sound on the first album, and by extension the band.

Joe Harvard:
Cale said after she died that Nico was the only one who’d carried on the Velvets’ tradition—I believe he said “she was the one carrying the flag for the VU all those years …”

Norman Dolph:
I think that’s a fair statement … the one Cale produced,
Desertsbore …
sounds like right where “I’ll Be You’re Mirror” left off.
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Christa Paffgen was born in 1938 in Cologne; her earliest memories were of the war in Germany, and her father’s death in battle when she was six. She learned early to fend for herself and developed an independent streak that she would keep for life. As a teenager she capitalized on her wholesome Nordic beauty by modeling, and followed that calling on an odyssey with stops in Berlin, Paris and New York, culminating in her arrival as an international model for the Ford Modeling Agency. Christa became Nico, and soon added “actress” to her resume when she landed herself a walk-on role in Fellini’s
La Dolce Vita
.

Modeling and acting would turn out to be mere preambles to the musical career that Nico would turn to next, and stick with for the rest of her life. Her bohemian lifestyle turned out to be incompatible with pesky little details like early morning set calls, and Rome’s loss was soon New York’s gain. But first she was off to London, where she recorded a single, “The Last Mile” b/w “I’m Not Saying,” produced by crack session player and future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. The folk bandwagon was traveling at high speed then, and for Nico’s benefit Page put together a single that made a convincing attempt to jump on it. Rolling Stones manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham released the Nico single on his Immediate label, so she
had a very hip calling card to bring along to New York. There she met and was briefly involved with Bob Dylan.

It was in Paris that she first encountered Andy Warhol—which guaranteed that her path would soon cross that of the Velvets. Gerard Malanga, one of the EPI’s main dancers in ‘66, nicely sums up Nico’s professional life prior to joining the Velvet Underground:

Nico latched onto Andy and myself when we went to Paris. I just put two and two together that Nico had slept with Dylan … she got a song out of Bob, “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” so he probably got something in return, quid pro quo. But Nico was of an independent mind. She had her own personal history going for her—Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, she had been in Fellini’s
La Dolce Vita
and she was the mother of Ari, Alain Delon’s illegitimate son. Yeah, Nico already had a lifestyle when we met up with her.
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Nico accepted Warhol’s invitation to visit him in New York; when she got there she also met and impressed Paul Morrissey, by then co-manager of the Velvets. Morrissey had developed strong doubts as to Lou Reed’s ability as a front man. Not exactly a fan of Reed’s
capabilities or personality (onstage or off), Morrissey made a fateful suggestion to Warhol:

“She’s wonderful and she’s looking for work,” I said. “We’ll put her in the band because the Velvets need someone who can sing or who can command attention … she can be the lead singer” … of course Lou Reed almost gagged when I said we need a girl singing with the group … I didn’t want to say that they needed somebody who had some sort of talent, but that’s what I meant. Lou was very reluctant to go with Nico … he gave her two or three little songs and didn’t let her do anything else.
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Having spent hundreds of hours in rehearsal, working and reworking their songs, the Velvets were eager to get out and play, and the last thing they were looking for was a new lead singer—especially a female one. When percussionist Angus MacLise had departed just before their first show, and Sterling suggested Moe Tucker as his replacement, Cale had balked, railing against “chicks” in the band. It may be assumed that this argument applied as much to singers as drummers. Two facts may have helped change Cale’s mind about Moe: Sterling had initially suggested Moe, and Lou
had approved her enlistment after conducting a mini-audition at her Long Island home. But the probable truth is he abandoned his objection because they needed a drummer immediately for upcoming shows. No such urgency existed regarding a new vocalist, so it was left to Warhol to persuade a reluctant band to take Nico on board. That he was able to do so is an indication of how deep his influence ran within the band.

Aside from a few free-form vocals performed live, such as her atmospheric droning on “It Was a Pleasure Then” (later recorded for her debut LP
Chelsea Girls)
, Nico was only given the three songs she sings on
The Velvet Underground and Nico
, plus “Sunday Morning,” to sing live. The rest of the time she either played tambourine, or merely stood stock-still on stage, prompting Morrison to comment, “we’ve got a statue in the band.” Not surprisingly, Nico soon lobbied for more songs to sing, but the idea of her interpreting material like “Heroin” or “I’m Waiting for the Man” was almost enough to give Lou Reed hives; luckily for his complexion, Nico’s campaign to sing everything was collectively rejected by the band.

Perhaps this earlier rejection explains why Nico kept a low profile in the studio. According to Norman Dolph, she stood somewhat apart: “When she was there Nico would be singing; when she wasn’t singing she sat quietly
in the background, by herself usually … but generally if she wasn’t singing she wouldn’t be there …”
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Nico was forced out of the group soon after the album’s release in 1967; it had probably been inevitable since the previous year, when the Velvets received their first major press and it turned out to be a feature on Nico (on the Women’s page of the
New York Times)
. She enjoyed a brief period when her career eclipsed that of her former band, after Warhol gave her a plumb role in the film
Chelsea Girls
. John Cale maintained a collaborative relationship with her, beginning with
Chelsea Girls
, the film’s companion album, and they teamed up for four records with Cale as her producer (Tom Wilson also produced one Nico album). Both Cale and Reed had had brief affairs with Nico during her tenure with the group and, after Nico’s career flagged, Cale often berated Reed for not writing her a few songs to help revive it, but Reed never seems to have stopped begrudging her the few songs he’d already let her sing on the first album.

A long time heroin addict, Nico died in 1988 when she was only 49. Riding her bicycle on the island of Ibiza, overdressed in the long, flowing robes she favored later in life, she was found by the road, unconscious,
the victim of a brain hemorrhage. It was as if a circle was closing, for it was on this same island, which she adored and made her home, that she had taken the name Nico three decades earlier.

But in 1966, the year she was chosen as Factory Girl of the Year, the ravages of heroin and time seemed a world away. She had intrigued Warhol, she seemed the perfect front person Paul Morrissey felt the Velvets needed, and her star was rising with such momentum that, despite their objections, even the band members themselves could not refuse her.

John Cale:
What we were doing (was) trying to figure ways to integrate some of LaMonte Young’s or Andy Warhol’s concepts into rock and roll.
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Lou Reed:
If I hadn’t heard rock ‘n’ roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet.
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Sterling Morrison:
Lou and I had some of the shit-tiest bands that ever were. They were shitty because we were playing authentic rock ‘n’ roll.
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Andy Warhol:
The whole time the album was being made, nobody seemed happy with it, especially Nico. “I want to sound like Bawwwhhhb Deee-lahhhn!” she wailed, so upset because she didn’t.
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Discussing the two enormously important rock albums released within months of one another in 1967, Robert Palmer had this to say:

… the two albums sound like products of different eras as well as different sensibilities.
Sgt. Pepper
remains tied to its time, as quaint and dated as a pair of granny glasses; the era
The Velvet Underground and Nico
calls up is our present one. This is partly a function of its unflinching song lyrics … mostly it is a tribute to music so radical it scarcely seems to have aged at all.
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Many years after he rode a bus from Boston to show up at the Velvets’ doorsteps in New York City, Jonathan Richman posed the musical question “How in the world did they get that sound—the Velvet Underground?” The band drew astounding complexity out of three or four chords, to begin with, through a commitment to playing interlocking parts, juxtaposed with an aversion to playing any song the same way twice. These elements
combined made the whole band an organic machine, like a Rube Goldberg device where a change in one component has a rippling effect on all the others.

Who influenced this band that would go on to influence so many others? One answer is Booker T. and the MGs—and their guitarist Steve Cropper in particular. His work with Booker, and as session player behind such soul greats as William Bell, Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, is definitive of the soul guitar. A clear influence on both the tone and style of the Velvets guitar team, Cropper was absolutely rhythmic, a Telecaster master who defined the player willing to sacrifice showboating in favor of a supporting role. Cropper’s enormous legacy includes providing the Velvets with a template of how guitars should work with a rhythm section. The band even had a song called “The Booker T.”—later used as the instrumental backing for “The Gift.”

Besides Cropper, Morrison and Reed were both fans of Mickey and Sylvia, whose hit “Love is Strange” is aptly titled considering the romantic excesses the Velvets explored. Guitarist/heavyweight session man Mickey Baker offered the model of the liquid, sensuous guitar tone later heard on Velvets tracks. Reed and Morrison also admired Jimmy Reed, covering his “Bright Lights, Big City” during their early club gigs. Jimmy Reed’s earthier tunes showcased a guitar style
and tone that was both sweetly polished yet unaffected, a harbinger of the Velvets’ own combination of primal rawness with pristine tones.

Early VU shows also featured Chuck Berry covers like “Little Queenie.” Berry’s witty and often slyly subversive wordplay provided early rock and roll’s most literary and poetic lyricism, so it’s no surprise that Morrison has said their interest in Berry was more as a lyricist than as a guitar player. Still, Berry’s use of repeating guitar figures surfaces in the band’s work. Even more so, Reed in particular shared Berry’s ability to draw endless parts from one chord through picking patterns and vibrato. His addition of grace notes to simple chord patterns evokes Chuck Berry’s use of a strong right-hand technique, drawing maximum melodic output from minimal left-hand movement. From the Stones, Reed and Morrison absorbed the Jones-Richards lesson of how two guitars should work as one, and from Cale’s LaMonte Young experience they applied the repetitive rules that upped the ante on the Berry/Cropper returning guitar figures, transforming them into a churning cycle where parts became any number of burning batons handed off in a relay race run by Satyrs.