Nico: The End [Hardcover]

James Young (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For those who relish stories of moral degradation and famous junkies, this witty and sordid biography provides ample entertainment. In 1982, piano player Young scrapped his Oxford studies and joined a touring band that backed the 42-year-old female singer known simply as Nico. Once a fabulous beauty, paraded before the camera in Fellini's La Dolce Vita and chosen by Andy Warhol to sing for his rock group the Velvet Underground, Nico had squandered all in pursuit of heroin, and performing was her only means left to support her addiction. By June 1988, when Nico died in a fall from her bicycle, Young brimmed with anecdotes gathered in the seedy underbellies of the U.S., Italy, Eastern Europe and Australia, including bizarre encounters with John Cale, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Young's claim to quote conversations verbatim suggests some embellishment, but otherwise his chronicle of Nico's final years rings pathetically true. The charm here lies in Young's ridiculous lack of hipness (when Nico obliquely requests something "sharp"--a hypodermic--he proffers a Swiss army knife), his acerbic humor and his ability to portray has-been and never-will-be antiheroes. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the late 1960s, Andy Warhol formed a rock band called the Velvet Underground, featuring the songs of Lou Reed and occasional vocals by German-born Christa Paffgen, who was dubbed with the alluring stage name Nico. After the Velvet's breakup, Nico recorded a few solo albums and drifted into a nasty heroin habit. The author entered her life in 1982, when he was recruited by a demented promoter (here referred to only as "Dr. Demetrius") to play in Nico's band during a tour of Italy. Predictably, the venture was a disaster. Over the next five years, Nico, Young, and company hopscotched the globe, wherever the flames of her fame still flickered. As good as Young's writing is, that's about all this sordid tale has going for it. A bigger star would have given the book broader appeal. For large music collections.
- Thomas Wiener, formerly with "American Film"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover; 1st edition (September 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087951504X
• ISBN-13: 978-0879515041
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,845,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Move over Celine, March 7, 2002

By 

Thomas Cramer (Ithaca, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nico: The End (Hardcover)

Having been a Velvets/Nico fan since 1968, I somehow ignored this book until recently, perhaps because of my annoyance with the status the Velvets have attained over the years. (They really were a better band when nobody else had heard of them....) Anyway, to complete my collection I suppose, I bought this book a few weeks ago with very low expectations. What I discovered was a beautifully written book, picaresque, dark, satirical, poignant...James Young writes like a Celine for the twilight of the 20th century. I would eagerly buy another book written by Mr. Young. In short, this book is a masterpiece.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revoltingly Bleak and Laughing-out-loud Funny, November 28, 2004

By 

miles@riverside (Indio, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nico: The End (Hardcover)

A lot of the entertainment in this book comes from the grisly descriptions of junky lifestyle (e.g., Nico removing the pus from an infected vein with a used syringe, etc.). Also, there's interesting cameo appearances by John Cale and Allen Ginsberg. But the real star is of course Nico. In the beginning, Young describes her as a depressing, hollowed-out drug addict, "... her hands and arms scabbed and scarred by needletracks, and her eyes like a broken mirror." (pg 12) But as I followed the characters from gig to gig, scraping just enough money together to support Nico's habit, followed by the recording of the CAMERA OBSCURA album, then more money and more gigs; through all this, Nico emerges somehow as a sympathetic character, far more interesting than the other eccentrics in her group. At the end, after she dies en route to meeting a drug dealer, I felt sad to see her go.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST READ, June 26, 2000

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Nico: The End (Paperback)

This biography, variously titled Nico: The End, Nico: The Last Bohemian or Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radio, is a masterpiece of style and content, one of the very best rock biographies in existence. It explores the life of Nico after the Velvet Underground, covering her life in London and tours of Europe, the USA and Japan in the 1980s.

I found myself devouring the text in utter fascination. It includes descriptions of bizarre performances, wild parties, weird tour experiences, eccentric characters like her one-time manager Dr Demetrius, encounters with luminaries like John Cale, a visit to the motel where Tom Waits used to stay and much much more.

The Preface covers Nico's family background, her career as model, the first move to New York, her role in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, involvement with The Rolling Stones and later Andy Warhol and the Factory crowd. Post Velvet Underground she went solo and made some great albums with the help of John Cale, eventually settling in Manchester in the UK.

The author met her in 1981 and thus this biography deals with the last seven years of her life. The first tour was that of Italy, the next of the USA that included shows in Detroit, Denver, and Chicago. In LA the band stayed at The Tropicana where Tom Waits made his residence at the time. One of the funniest parts is the narrative of Nico's first experience with angel dust in Los Angeles. The tour concluded in New York.

Then came the performances with Gregory Corso in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. A highlight of the narrative is Nico's show at the Free University in Berlin, where she made the mistake of singing Deutschland über Alles, causing a riot. Fortunately, her harmonium shielded her against the hailstorm of beer bottles.

Back in Manchester, there was an interesting encounter with the punk poet John Cooper Clarke and John Cale in a bad patch of his life. At a studio in Shoreditch he produced her album Camera Obscura which was launched with a powerful performance at Chelsea Town Hall. Allen Ginsberg appears in the chapter Suspicious Minds whilst other beats like Carolyn Cassady also make an appearance.

Eric Random joined the band just before the European tour that encompassed Germany, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland (where Nico managed to score opium behing the then Iron Curtain) and Spain. Australia and New Zealand came next and then Japan. The book concludes with an account of her death and funeral in 1988.

Underneath the humor there is a lot of sadness too but it is a strangely inspiring read. Songs They Never Play On The Radio is a gem on many levels and transcends the genre of rock writing. Only Marianne Faithfull's Memories, Dreams and Reflections comes close. You don't have to be a fan of Velvet Underground to enjoy this classic work, as it offers much humor, wit and arresting portraits of a colorful array of personalities.