Three Rarities from the Nico Archives
Nico- Good cheekbones are a girl's best friend
I recently came across a couple of rare video tapes of Nico that predate her days in the Velvet Underground.
From about 1960 until 1966 Nico was first tier fashion model in Europe and was beginning a promising career as a movie actress. The first video
Striptease is from a 1963 movie soundtrack composed by Serge Gainsbourg. The song is accompanied by a slide show of photographs of Nico in her early days as a fashion model. It's a side of Nico that few people have ever seen:
Striptease - Nico with Serge Gainsbourg (1963)
The second video is
I'm Not Saying, was made in 1965 roughly a year prior to Nico's involvement in the Velvet Underground. Nico was midway between her career as a European actress and model, when she burst upon the scene at Andy Warhol's Factory in New York. Nico was introduced to producer Andrew Loog Oldham by Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones. It was Oldham who cast her as a folksinger and chose Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's "I'm Not Sayin'" as her debut release. Jones played acoustic guitar on the session.
I'm Not Saying- Nico (1965)
This final video I wanted to post was a performance of
Femme Fatale by the Velvet Underground.
Femme Fatale is a song about the self destructive Warhol factory girl Edie Sedgwick written by Lou Reed at the request of Andy Warhol. Edie was also the subject of the Bob Dylan song
Just Like A Woman.
This performance is one of the few videos of a VU live performance in which both the sound and video are of good quality.
The performance is also notable because of the chemistry between Lou Reed and Nico. Nico's battles with stage fright were legendary and drugs were a way for her to cope with her severe performance anxiety. At the beginning of the video, you'll see a reassuring nod and smile passed by Lou Reed to Nico as he plays the guitar intro. A similar nonverbal exchange between Reed and Nico happens at the end of the song. It's a very tender moment of intimacy between two key members of a band that is most often celebrated for it's dark and decadent music. Nico is often remembered as a world weary diva and cruel social dominatrix but the video shows the vunerable and insecure soul of Nico that coexisted with her many demons .
It goes without saying that the greedy chuckleheads at BMI wouldn't allow me to embed such a remarkable historical document without getting their $250 performance fee for embeds of the song. To view this video you have to hit my link to at the
YouTube page where it's posted.