5. NicoThe Marble Index
Another resident of Higher Broughton, Salford and Prestwich was Nico. I bought The Velvet Underground & Nico LP on cassette when I was 13 from Woolworth’s. Most of my mates at the time were older lads but by the age of 13/14 I was already six foot tall, so often we’d go underage drinking around Broughton and Prestwich. I use to see Nico about loads, it will have been around the last year of her life probably, on her push bike, it had a little basket on the front. There was a time when me and my mates were playing pool in the vault of a pub and Nico came in, popped her bike against the coat stand, bought a pint of Guinness and sat down right next to me and said to me in her deep Germanic voice, "I am no longer a heroin addict!!" Which was a little odd as I hadn’t asked if she was, I’d not said a word [laughs]. It was a bit bonkers living around our way when I was a kid [laughs].
I like how Nico’s The Marble Index, the darkest, gloomiest, gothic folk record ever and produced by the mighty John Cale, was recorded in the sunshine of L.A. I live for these kind of juxtapositions. Nico was a one-off, a poet, a glamourous gypsy who was always at odds with her beauty. Like a black-hearted crow that would tear out the eyeballs of those who would suggest to take to the catwalk. Like all good people, a walking contradiction.
