While The Velvet Underground remain one of the most influential of cult rock bands, its one-time member, Nico, has long been an item for discussion among those whose "Colour Me Beautiful" dress sense lends itself to no-nonsense black and grey.
Born Christa Paffgen, in Cologne, in 1939 - a baby whose father was killed during the second World War - Nico was evacuated from Berlin when it was bombarded and raised by an aunt who described her as quiet, shy, and "always smartly dressed like a princess."
She made inroads into modelling and acting in the late 1950s when she moved to Paris. Her striking good looks and statuesque build landed her modelling contracts with Vogue and stints in commercials. From 1959, she lived with a filmmaker/nightclub owner, breaking up the relationship when she met actor Alain Delon, with whom she had a son, Ari, who was subsequently raised by Delon's mother.
Her tentative entry into the European art scene was consolidated by her appearance in Frederico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita (even though her legendary beauty was obscured by a knight's metal helmet). She moved from Paris to London in 1964, hooking up briefly with The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones.
She then moved to New York, where she met Bob Dylan and, more crucially in the context of her myth and enigma, Andy Warhol. Described by Warhol as someone who looked like she arrived in America "at the front of a Viking ship", Nico was drafted in as the hypnotic-drone singer of The Velvet Underground. Yet she felt underused in the band, and left shortly after when her request to sing all the songs was dismissed.
Enter her solo years, a miss and hit period where her debatable musical talent - she could barely hold a note and her Gothic/Teutonic delivery strictly divided the critics - was all but subsumed by heroin.
Although noted as a major influence on the rise of female singers throughout the late 1970s punk and post-punk years, Nico's own success was plagued by inconsistencies and out-of-control heroin use. "Life was a bore to her," recalled Alan Wise, one of her managers in the 1980s. "She used to say she was only two minutes from death."
Throughout that decade, heroin also ensnared her son, who lapsed into a drug-induced coma and was put on a life-support machine. Nico, who rarely kept in contact with him, showed up at the hospital to tape the beeping sounds of the machine for an album. Her final concert was on June 6th, 1988; about four weeks later she would be dead, having suffered a cerebral haemorrhage on her island home of Ibiza, while cycling in intense heat.
True to form, Warhol's "compelling image of exquisite indifference" was dressed from head to toe in black.
Tony Clayton-Lea