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Jim Morrison of The Doors photographed at Gloria Stavers apartment, New York City, September 17th, 1967 ⋆ ౨ৎ ˚ ˖ ࣪ Photographed by Gloria Stavers

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@earthtravell oii clarao

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“Listening to Nico is always an unforgettable experience: turbulent, enigmatic, haunting, nihilistic and timeless. Now it seems that time is finally catching up with Nico in that more and more people are coming to appreciate her profoundly disturbing and visionary recordings. With The End she is at her best, forcing you to totally rethink what a rock album should sound like.”

/ From Andrew Batt’s liner notes to the 2012 CD reissue of The End /

Released on this day fifty years ago (11 November 1974): The End, the fourth studio album by heroin-ravaged German chanteuse, Moon Goddess and the countercultural Marlene Dietrich, Nico (Christa Paffgen, 1938 – 1988). The final (and bleakest) part of Nico’s essential trilogy of records encompassing The Marble Index (1968) and Desertshore (1970), its “terrorist songs” of violence and resistance were inspired by the activities of Germany's Baader-Meinhof Group. Hence the brutal imagery of warriors, gladiators, prisoners, hunters and knives in “It Has Not Taken Long” (“It has not taken long / To feast our naked eye upon / The open blade / The hungry beast / Have found her calling, calling / Help me, please”), “Secret Side” (“Without a guide, without a hand / Unwed virgins in the land  / Tied up on the sand …”) and Innocent and Vain (“I am a savage violator”). The End also represents a tribute to Nico’s “soul brother” and former lover Jim Morrison (it was her first album since his death): the title track is her interpretation of the Doors song and “You Forget to Answer” (one of the best things Nico ever did) is her eerie eulogy to him. Melody Maker maligned The End at the time as “recommended only to those who get satisfaction out of knowing that somebody else is more incoherent and screwed up than they are.” Pictured: Nico in London by Simon Bedford, 1974 from an abandoned photo-shoot for The End’s front cover.