“It’s so beautiful”: the moment John Cale made Nico cry
One of the most unique and recognisable voices of the 1960s and 1970s, Nico was a true original. After cutting her teeth in the mid-1960s with the likes of Immediate Records, the German-born vocalist became a titan of New York’s underground music scene thanks to her seminal collaboration with The Velvet Underground in 1967. Introduced to the pioneering Lou Reed-John Cale-led outfit by pop art master Andy Warhol, Nico’s time with the band was rarely harmonious, but she remained a close collaborator with the pair even after her time in The Underground.
Reportedly, Lou Reed was not overly thrilled when Andy Warhol first introduced Nico to the band as a potential singer. In the eyes of the New Yorker, The Velvet Underground was his band, and Nico’s influence only seemed to get in the way of his artistic manifesto.
Arguably, though, this internal conflict within the band helped The Velvet Underground and Nico to become such a unique and diverse record. It might have been ignored upon its initial release, but the 1967 album went on to become one of the most lauded and influential records ever released.
Reed’s initial animosity towards Nico continued into the recording of the album, becoming particularly prevalent while recording the song ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’. According to Reed, the song was written specifically for Nico, “Every single word was meant for her… to make her feel better about herself,” he once revealed in an interview. However, the songwriter demanded an extensive amount of takes from Nico when it came to recording her vocals, so much so that the singer eventually broke down in tears as a result.
Even when Nico embarked upon a solo career, often collaborating with her former Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale, the situation rarely became more relaxed. Her second solo album, 1968’s The Marble Index, is a bonafide masterpiece which established Nico as a star in her own right, in addition to espousing her unnerving experimentalism and paving the way for the later development of styles like goth. Nevertheless, the recording process was familiarly tumultuous.
Recalling the recording process while talking to Uncut in 2016, Cale shared, “It was all done in five days. When [Elektra’s] Jac Holzman heard it and said, ‘I really like your record,’ I couldn’t believe it. To have a record company president say that he liked The Marble Index… But Jac was that kind of guy.” The album was never designed to please executives or shareholders. “We were doing some interesting stuff – on ‘Evening Of Light’, I was playing an eight-string bass, a Hagstrom,” Cale remembered.
Much of the album’s instrumentation came from Cale’s enigmatic mind. “I thought of it as a tuba part and played it as one. It was mostly instinct,” he said. Cale’s approach to the album often alienated Nico, who couldn’t understand what was going on inside his weird and wonderful mind. “Nico was confused and put out by the fact she didn’t quite understand what was going on when we were recording. Which is understandable,” he recalled.
By the end of The Marble Index, Nico was once again reduced to tears. In contrast to ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, however, these were seemingly tears of joy. “At the end, she was crying, and everybody went, ‘Oh no, what’s wrong now?’ And she said, ‘It’s so beautiful.’”
