The Marble Index: How Nico captured the true heart of sorrow
Sorrow is rarely straightforward, nor is it pretty. Often, it is laced with layers of complexities that have no quick or easy answer. It’s a desert island sort of destination that we crash onto after life has pummelled us and turbulence gets the better of our flight. We don’t just wake up one day sorrowful. When we try to get back on course again, there’s an awful lot to unpack. Nico’s Marble Index, chaotic in its avant-garde approach, is surely closer to the truth of sorrow than anything linear.
It’s an album often dismissed as “weird”, but perhaps “honest” is a more fitting description. The word sorrow sounds as heavy as it feels, so why would—or should—any song or album grappling with sadness, despair, or loneliness sound pleasant or sweet? Sorrow is cacophonic; it’s not easy, and it shouldn’t be easy to listen to. True art doesn’t—and shouldn’t—shy away from the uncomfortable and unpleasant facets of the human condition.
To her credit, Nico was unapologetically relentless with her depiction. Her second solo album, released in 1968, The Marble Index was never, ever meant to be an easy listen. She poured her erratic and troubled life into this ten-track collection—a vignette of break-ups with Jim Morrison, the tough side of Andy Warhol’s Factory lifestyle and everything else that plagued her.
Following her collaboration with The Velvet Underground by way of 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, the German singer, songwriter, actor, and model released her debut album titled Chelsea Girl. It was an album that primarily featured tracks written by other songwriters, namely Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne and Tim Hardin. For most of her old friends from the Warhol scene, the album was Nico’s only real solo record because it saw her successfully playing the role in which they’d always known her.
But on The Marble Index, Nico became herself for the first time, declaring to her former manager (and manager of The Factory) Paul Morrissey: “I don’t want to be beautiful anymore.” It was Jim Morrison who encouraged her to pen her own original compositions. And she certainly heeded his call for originality.
With Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale by her side, this motivation, teamed with Nico’s new beloved instrument—a harmonium chosen in part because of its portability and religious-sounding drones—paved the way for The Marble Index.
From the first moment of ‘Prelude’, with its bells, celeste and jazzy belltone guitars, we’re soon plunged into a mix of the atonal, the traditional, the folksong, the hymnal, and the classical. On the album’s third track, ‘Ari’s Song’, Nico sings: “Now you see that only dreams can send you where you want to be”. Having turned to heroin – “it made my good thoughts run slower and my bad thoughts go away” – we are perhaps offered a glimpse into her state of altered mind.
Desperate as it is, there’s an argument to be had in reflecting that no transcendental art can be made without those willing to walk at the edges. On ‘Facing Th Wind’, over a recurring harmonium drone, Cale’s piano plays as Nico, apparently chained to some unknown sacrificial altar, calls out: “It’s holding me against my will and doesn’t leave me still”.
With the album’s title derived from a William Wordsworth – “The marble index of a mind forever, Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone” – Nico’s album carries sorrow at every corner, from sound to artwork, and title, each as tenebrous as the music it holds.
