Patti Smith’s New Haunting Tribute to Nico: Hear Three Tracks

Like Lou Reed, her reluc­tant co-leader in the Vel­vet Under­ground, Ger­man-born mod­el-cum-singer Nico had a pro­nounced mean streak. Or, as Simon Reynolds writes in The Guardian, “talk of her dark side is accu­rate.” At a 1974 con­cert, Nico caused an audi­ence riot by per­form­ing the Ger­man nation­al anthem “com­plete with vers­es that had been banned after 1945 on account of their Nazi asso­ci­a­tions.” A 15-year-long addic­tion to hero­in—“over­whelm­ing,” as key­boardist James Young described it—did not help mat­ters. “Being around Nico was kin­da depress­ing,” recalls pro­duc­er Joe Boyd, “She was a very tor­tured char­ac­ter.” When it comes to rock stars and artists, we typ­i­cal­ly gloss over social fail­ings that would doom oth­er pro­fes­sion­als. That isn’t always easy to do in Nico’s case.

But it also isn’t easy to gloss over Nico’s musi­cal lega­cy. Her flat, dron­ing vocals on the Velvet’s debut album remain cen­tral to that band’s last­ing influ­ence. Songs like “All Tomorrow’s Par­ties” and “I’ll be Your Mir­ror” defined the emerg­ing under­ground sound of the late six­ties that grew into punk and new wave in the sev­en­ties. Nico’s Chelsea Girl stands alone as an artis­tic achieve­ment. Her and pro­duc­er John Cale’s inter­pre­ta­tions of songs like Jack­son Browne’s “These Days” (mem­o­rably used in Wes Anderson’s The Roy­al Tenen­baums) served as neo-folk tem­plates for decades to come.

When she began writ­ing her own songs, inspired by one­time boyfriend Jim Mor­ri­son, Nico “eclipsed the Doors’ dark­ness” with her album The Mar­ble Index, replac­ing “the sum­mer of love with the win­ter of despair,” and deliv­er­ing an album of pro­found­ly beau­ti­ful bleakness—the songs, writes Reynolds, “glit­ter­ing in their immac­u­late, life­less majesty of some­one cut off from the thaw­ing warmth of human con­tact and fel­low­ship.” A favorite of goths every­where, The Mar­ble Index fre­quent­ly appears on lists of the most depress­ing albums of all time. Asked about the record’s dis­mal sales, Cale remarked, “you can’t sell sui­cide.”

Nico’s songs and Cale’s pro­duc­tion gave us a com­plete­ly Euro­pean sound, “sev­ered from rhythm-and-blues… hark­ing back to some­thing pre-Chris­t­ian and atavis­tic.” That first album of orig­i­nal songs led to five more, cul­mi­nat­ing in 1985’s Cam­era Obscu­ra. At what would fate­ful­ly be her final con­cert in 1988, Nico per­formed songs from that album, includ­ing the hyp­not­ic, swirling “I Will Be Sev­en,” below. She died just a few months lat­er while vaca­tion­ing in Ibiza. Now, her final album forms the cen­ter­piece of a trib­ute from anoth­er pio­neer­ing woman in path­break­ing­ly orig­i­nal under­ground music, Pat­ti Smith.

Smith’s album, Killer Road—A Trib­ute to Nico, made with her daugh­ter Jesse Paris Smith and the ambi­ent trio Sound­walk Col­lec­tive, includes the song “Fear­ful­ly in Dan­ger,” which you can see live in Ger­many in the video at the top of the post. Below it, hear the title track, a chill­ing, atmos­pher­ic song meant to “approx­i­mate what the for­mer Vel­vet Under­ground col­lab­o­ra­tor might have heard when she col­lapsed while bicy­cling in Ibiza in 1988,” writes Rolling Stone. Over the sounds of chirp­ing insects and oscil­lat­ing synths, Smith intones lyrics from Nico’s last album: “The Killer Road is wait­ing for you… I have come to die with you.”

As in her trib­utes to oth­er artis­tic heroes like Vir­ginia Woolf, Smith makes col­lage art from Nico’s words, weav­ing in strains of her own verse. In this case, she ties her frag­ment­ed phras­es and Nico’s haunt­ed lyri­cism to the spe­cif­ic moment of the singer’s death, giv­ing lyrics like “I will be sev­en when I meet you in heav­en” a res­o­nance both mor­dant and vivid, made all the more so when we know that the birds, insects, break­ing waves, and breezes that weave through Smith’s songs come from field record­ings tak­en in sun­ny Ibiza at the site of Nico’s death. Hear Smith’s “cov­er” of “I Will Be Sev­en” below.

It’s a macabre con­cept album, to be sure, but Smith’s con­nec­tion with Nico goes beyond mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion. The two were mutu­al admirers—Nico called Smith “a female Leonard Cohen” for her suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of poet­ry and music, and Smith “lat­er played an impor­tant role in Nico’s life,” buy­ing back the singer’s prized har­mo­ni­um at “‘an obscure shop’ in Paris, as Nico put it, after it had gone miss­ing.” Nico remem­bered that Smith refused pay­ment for the recov­ered instru­ment and “insist­ed the organ was a present.” The icy, depres­sive Ger­man singer was moved to tears. She would play the har­mo­ni­um on her final album, and at her final concert—the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to her strange, haunt­ing voice and dis­turb­ing, dark lyri­cism.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith on Vir­ginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dick­ens’ Pen & Oth­er Cher­ished Lit­er­ary Tal­is­mans

The Crazy, Icon­ic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Vel­vet Under­ground Vocal­ist, Enig­ma in Amber

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness