Nico (9 page)

That interminable solo spot of Nico's was like being trapped nightly in some endless time tunnel. We only did seven songs but Spider Mike decided we should keep three for the end. It felt like a dog returning to its vomit.

We exhumed the Grave Raves: ‘Femme Fatale', ‘All Tomorrow's Parties', ‘I'm Waiting for the Man'. L.A. hadn't liked the Velvet Underground the first time around, let alone the cabaret version. It just wasn't their kind of beat. They were another tribe.

I was on their side. When they booed, I booed silently with them. When they heckled, I yearned to make some wisecrack in unison. I wanted to be out there, throwing vodka daiquiris as well. No matter how fast you shovel it, shit always stinks.

Echo cranked up his volume: Boom whoosh whoosh. There it was again – a tide of distortion that drowned out our puny cabaret angst. I prayed it might keep the punters from doing us in. At least it would remind them of the beach.

Inside Echo's suitcase: a satin shirt in deep red. A small mound of indeterminate black underwear. A Bible. A snowstorm of Milan Cathedral. A photograph of The Venus of the Fireplace. A belt with a broken buckle. A sketch book with
private
written on the cover. And six pairs of Italian shoes, all stolen.

‘Feel that inner sole … cushioned with a veneer of finest calf-skin.'

I felt it.

‘Yer won't get that on Oldham market, young Jim.' He held it up to the gaze like a buccaneer showing off a prize ruby. ‘A good-lookin' pair of'ow d'yerdo's – yer can go anywhere. No?'

Blue sky. Blue pool. Blue movie. Echo and I whine in our kennel … underdogs scratching each other's fleas.

Spider Mike, it seemed, harboured in his bosom a hidden yearning to meet Bob Dylan. It had been his secret motive for joining up in the first place. He kept asking Nico if she could arrange a meeting, but even Bob Dylan didn't know where Bob Dylan was, let alone Nico, who hadn't seen him in years.

‘Bawb encouraged me to sing, you know [
5 seconds
] he was sweet on me, and I on him [
10 seconds
]. The others didn't really like him – they were kind of snooooty [
2 minutes
]. I think they were jalous [
30 seconds
]. I mean, it took a whole group of them to come up with their little something, no? [
10 seconds
] Bawb did it all on his own [
5 minutes
]. He was so nervous and quick. Always in a hurry [
10 seconds
] everyone wanted something from him [
20 seconds
]. He wrote a song for me, “I'll Keep It With Mine”. Do you know it?'

Unfortunately Spider Mike did. He got out his guitar and accompanied her on the chorus, doing the Dylan nose-singing. ‘That's a pearl Nico … yet another amazing example of your multifaceted musical history.' He flattered her into including it in the set.

After the first rendition, Echo decided we had to act with ‘extreme prejudice' against the song. He bought a couple of waterpistols. As Spider Mike joined her on stage for the Bob'n Joan routine, we sprayed them from the wings. It seemed childish, but it was horrible to listen to. It insulted the past, and some of us were still in love with that girl on the cover of
Bringing It All Back Home
, even if ‘Bawb' wasn't.

I chaperoned Echo to the reception desk. Ding!

‘'as Mr Waits checked in recently?' Echo asked the desk manager.

‘Waits?' He ran through the book. ‘No. We don't seem to have anyone of that name with us at the moment.'

‘Are yer sure?' said Echo. ‘Tom Waits, the entertainer.'

‘Sorry … maybe he was a guest of the previous management. The chiefs changed hats a month ago – new staff, including myself.'

Saxophones were playing slow, sad lowlife serenades in Heartbreak Motel. Echo sloped off to ‘knock on Nico's door'. The shoes would remain unsung.

I knew it was a bad idea to remind the Tropicana management of our continued presence in their establishment. They kicked us out. Echo was relieved in a way to abandon the ghost of his absent hero and was consoled, to a degree, by a complimentary unedited copy of
Planet Pussy.
Nico was shunted off to another fan's sofabed. The rest of us spent the night at a friend of Axel's in East L.A., near Boyle Heights – a barrio shack with hungry dogs straining at the end of tethers, rabid jaws salivating for a taste of those gringo sweetbreads.

In the back they were having a barbecue, the top of an old oildrum converted into a brazier. It was hot, sticky, I took off my leather jacket. Immediately a Mexican guy picked it up and tried it on for size, I didn't dare argue. Luckily it didn't fit.

The place was owned by a girl called Rosa. She showed us around indoors. Everything was black – a black shack. Promptly and proudly, she revealed her bedroom, dominated by a black rubber waterbed. On the walls were various hooks and rings from which dangled an intricate assortment of whips and manacles. Rosa was about five foot ten with waist-length black hair and powerful tattooed arms. She looked as if she worked out regularly … on other people.

Later, after the nerve-wracking barbecue, in which the Hispanic guys refused to speak English, confining us to a corner huddle of English wimpishness, we found a patch of bare board to call our own in the living-room. In the half light of early dawn amid snores and farts and Bags's stinking feet, I heard Rosa's door open. I sneaked a look and saw her standing over Echo, staring intently at her sleeping prey. She was wearing a black leather corset encased in a breastplate of twisting metal rosebranches with fierce steel thorns. Echo awoke but remained where he was, paralysed. Rosa knelt down, slid her arms under his passive torso, lifted him up lifeless from the cross and carried him to her Chapel of Correction.

The last thing anyone heard of them for twelve hours was the locks on Rosa's bedroom door click shut … one by one by one.

‘'Ave yer ever'ad an enema?' Echo asked me. ‘It gives yer'ard-on the size of a baby's arm.'

We were driving along Big Sur. Strange sea-plants, mist, Kerouac, Ansel Adams, and a baby's arm.

‘Have you ever read
On the Road?'
Nico asked me.

‘No.'

‘Neither have I. I couldn't finish it … too many woords. She drifted back into the mist.

‘It stays up fer '
ours
,' Echo continued.

Bags wriggled in his seat to accommodate his emergent stiffy. He could whip up some cream right now.

‘Did you hear that, Axel?' Nico asked. ‘Up for hooours.'

Axel was beginning to get a little less self-confident. Two people in the car had serious designs upon his body, and they were making their intentions abundantly clear.

Nico was in one of her weird, slightly hysterical moods, just on the edge of withdrawal. ‘My father was Turkish … you know what that means, Axel, don't you? I like it the Turkish way … Axel … did you hear?'

He didn't respond.

‘'Ear that, Axel?' said Echo. ‘She prefers the tradesman's entrance.'

Axel turned up the Twisted Sister.

Echo fell back into reverie. Further down the road he nudged me. Through the window the sign read: Welcome to Santa Rosa.

Later Nico picked up some good clean heroin. She soon got Echo fixed up tight with his habit again. It wasn't an act of kindness, she just got sick of Public Enema No 1.

We pulled up for provisions in Redwood country. The truck-stop was a log cabin and there was a picnicky, jolly atmosphere to the place. We could hear children's voices. At the side of the log cabin was a play area.

‘Hi there!' said a voice. ‘I'm Ronnie, the Redwood Mouse.'

We turned round. There was a giant mouse talking down to us. It must have been ten feet high, the guy inside operating some sort of stilt device.

‘And what brings you to Giant Sequoia country?'

‘We're musicians, on tour,' said Smiler, teeth ablaze.

‘Oh, reeaally?' the voice was slightly camp. ‘Are you a group? Who are you?' The mouse was getting excited.

‘We're in the Nico band …'

Ronnie wouldn't let him finish. ‘Oooh – I don't belieeeeve you … not Nico of the Velvetth?' The mouse had a lisp. ‘But where is sheee? I thimply mutht thpeak to her.'

This could be an exchange of historical significance. Nico came out of the store carrying a carton of Chocomilk. Echo pointed her out to Ronnie.

‘That's 'er, in the pilot glasses.'

‘Hoooeeeee, Nico!'

She came over and stood before the mighty mouse in her boots and leathers, clutching her Chocomilk.

‘Thaaay, Nico, I'm your number one fan. I just luuve
Desert Shore
and
The Marble Index.
I wish I had them here with me now, tho you could thign them.'

‘Can you read and write as well?' asked Nico.

‘Heeey, Thweetie, I'm not a real mouse.'

‘I knooow,' she laughed.

We left them in complete accord. In rodent Ronnie, Nico had, at last, found someone who was genuinely interested in the future of her career.

Wrong Side of the Salt

By the Great Salt Lake was a vast grey mudflat, covered in fat black flies. God knows what they fed on in the alluvial slime – the lake itself was dead. They flew up into your face with each step. By the lake was a funfair … a kind of water-chute that looked like a tunnel of plastic dustbins, and a bouncy castle. Children were playing in the mud, making mudpies and mudcastles. The flies soon covered their work, a buzzing tide of disgusting little black bodies.

It was so flat, so lonely, so far away from anything beautiful. These were poor people and this was their beach, a thousand miles from the sea.

Salt Lake City had the best thrift stores in America, yet the most monotonously dressed people. It made no sense. ‘This is the place!' Brigham Young had declared, settling on a flyblown mudflat for his New Jerusalem.

We met a nice waitress in a diner on the outskirts of town. She begged us to let her come with us to New York. Perhaps we'd been putting on too much of the phony English charm. She was desperate, though. We explained what kind of vehicle we were in. Not really intended for individual comfort and privacy. It was a heck of a shame, but this was a rough, tough, man's kinda job.

‘Tougher'n Duke's saddle,' said Axel. She didn't mind, she'd still come.

We slipped out quietly, mustering the best tip we could for her. On the way back to the car, Spider excused himself. He needed a piss. I watched him walk past our table, scoop up the shrapnel of cents and dimes and disappear into the WC.

‘
the kingdom of heaven awaits the pure in heart
' said the scripture board on Highway 80 as we limped penitently back across the continent.

It's Up to Yooooo

Bags leapt out from under his parka, came out from his fetid shoebox and exposed to the world his most latent desire – to meet Andy Warhol. Bags was bugging Nico for an intro, but the Great Wigola was unavailable, out of town, not answering, reticent as ever. Art object or full-frontal lobotomy? Keep'em guessing. Bags wanted some business tips.

‘Say you want the address of his wig-maker,' I suggested.

‘Ask'im if'e'll sign me,' added Echo.

Nico told us she wanted to be dropped on the Lower East Side. She made it clear that we wouldn't be welcome tagging along. Echo believed she would probably try to pull in some of her old musopals and dump us. ‘Can't blame'er … anyone'ere's better than us, even them spotty kids tryin' out Strats in the music shops.'

Well, she didn't get rid of us. Maybe she was too preoccupied with getting high. However, she had, in the two days that preceded the gig at the Danceteria, been working on a demo of ‘New York, New York', Ol' Blue Eyes's eulogy to the Great Meritocracy, with which she would prelude the show.

The Danceteria pulled a good crowd for a sweltering August night. The freaks were in town. Backstage Axel had finally got himself well and truly greased. After six weeks on tour with Nico he'd got the taste and didn't mind the bad taste. He looked green and queasy.

‘You shouldn't swallow,' said Nico pitilessly.

The lights went down. On came the tape. Nico lugubriously intoned: ‘Start spreading the noos/I'm leaving toooday …'

We followed her ‘vagabond shoes' up the spiral staircase to our appointment with Destiny.

‘It's up to yoooooo/Nooooo York/Nooooo York.'

It was so hot up there, nerves just melted away in the effort to breathe. No matter where it is, if you're playing up close to people, there's always someone who tries to blow your cool. They're there to outface you – and why not? My tormentor stood just three feet away from me with pierced nipples, long blonde hair, lipstick, and was covered head to toe in gold body-paint. He fixed me with a relentless, empty, mannequin-like stare. Weirder still, he had on a Walkman. He looked like a transvestite cybernaut.

I could feel a smile cracking the expressionless mugshot I'd been perfecting. I tried to suppress it so hard I thought I was going to faint. But it was useless. I could blame it on the weeks of contained hysteria and enforced intimacy with people I'd normally pay to avoid. Whatever the reason, I was pissing my pants. I had to stop playing. I turned and saw the drummer beaming the inane grin of a man happy at his work. I was biting my hand in an effort to find a pain substitute for laughter. Echo saw me. He started laughing. Boom, woosh – woosh. Spider Mike took a look at us and had to turn the other way again to conceal the irrepressible smirk creeping across his sourpuss face. Then Nico caught it, in the middle of ‘I'm Waiting for the Man':

I'm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chugga chugga chugga chugga

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