#the velvet underground and nico

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

march 12, 1967

The Velvet Underground releases The Velvet Underground And Nico.

[ludmilachaibemachado]

🎸

[reprisearchive]

Velvet Underground and Nico.

[bitter69uk]

Adieu to Christian Aaron “Ari” Boulogne (11 August 1962 – May 2023), whose body was discovered yesterday in his Parisian apartment. He’d seemingly been dead for some time. His girlfriend and her 21-year-old son are now being questioned by French authorities. It’s a gruesome and tragic end for the troubled 60-year-old Boulogne, who’d long struggled with mental health problems, drug addiction and poverty. His parents were German fashion model-turned Warhol Superstar-turned gloomy heroin-ravaged chanteuse Nico (1938 – 1988) and European art cinema heartthrob Alain Delon (who’s consistently denied paternity). Boulogne’s story is vividly captured in the 1995 documentary Nico: Icon and his mother’s definitive biography, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon (1993) by Richard Witts. As a toddler (while Nico was singing with the Velvet Underground), Boulogne was the indulged mascot in Andy Warhol’s Factory. I know it’s impossible to watch (I caught it years ago when the British Film Institute held a Warhol retrospective), but a nice way to remember him is via Warhol’s 1966 movie Ari and Mario. In it, busy single mom Nico calls on Puerto Rican drag queen / underground film starlet Mario Montez (pictured) to baby-sit her young son at her cramped room in New York's louche Chelsea Hotel. High jinks ensue. Cherub-faced Ari is adorable but so hyperactive he is virtually feral. Montez offers to read to him, sing to him and dance for him, but Ari is oblivious to her charms and more interested in alternately pretending to be a crocodile and a cowboy and shooting her with his toy gun (towards the end Montez finally snaps, "Can't you find something else to shoot at?"). Off-screen from behind the camera Warhol himself audibly encourages Ari to misbehave. Devoid of his usual cocktail of sadomasochism and amphetamines, Ari and Mario's emphasis on innocence and domesticity is a sweet exception in the Warhol canon.

[str1xaluco]

The Velvet Underground and Nico

1967

[fentanyl-rabbits]

French press from the "The Velvet Underground and Nico" Album

[cavalier-consciousness]

The Velvet Underground playing for the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists, New York City, 1966

[ohhellno]

Nico - At The Live Inn Tokyo ‘86

(2024 RSD Release Vinyl)

Another great Record Store Day release

[anamelessfool]

I did a post previously about what songs I associate with each Papa. This is the one I think of when I created Mater Emerita Jocasta, Primo's first love.

This is such a good performance, I based her appearance on Nico. Nico just does not give a fuck. (She's high as hell here butttttttt eyyy it was the early 80s!)

[spilladabalia]

The Velvet Underground - Venus In Furs

[rolloroberson]

Nico on Carnaby Street, 1960 ©Fiona Adams/Redferns

[platanarium]

[theditchlillies]

I had a lover

I don't think I'd risk another these days

These days

And if I seem to be afraid

To live the life that I have made in song

It's just that I've been losing

So long

Please don't confront me with my failures //I had not forgotten them

Although you wouldn’t expect it, the world-weary “These Days” was written by Jackson Browne when he was a 16 year old kid. By 1967, the track originally known as “I’ve Been Out Walking” was lent to Nico to record for her debut solo album, Chelsea Girl.

Browne contributed two additional songs to the record and plays the iconic fingerpicking guitar part here.

The song became a classic, being most recently re-popularized on the acclaimed Royal Tennenbaums soundtrack.

Source: Genius.com @TheRaconteur

[sofakingmanyrecords]

"Master Tapes for the Velvet Underground at Scepter Studios", 1966, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

[marthamydearposts]

NICO