Frontispiece: David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed (with MainMan boss Tony Defries laughing in the background) at the Dorchester Hotel, 1972.
Copyright 2009 by Dave Thompson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.
Published in 2009 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
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Printed in the United States of America
Book design by David Ursone
Typography by UB Communications
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thompson, Dave, 1960 Jan. 3-
Your pretty face is going to hell : the dangerous glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed / Dave Thompson.1st paperback ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and discography.
9781617134098
1. Bowie, David. 2. Pop, Iggy, 1947-3. Reed, Lou. 4. Rock musiciansEnglandBiography. 5. Punk rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography.
I. Title.
ML400.T47 2009
782.421660922dc22
2009036966
www.backbeatbooks.com
PROLOGUE
Nico was in Paris, France, when she first met Andy Warhol.
It was May 1965, and Warholspindly, blotchy, awkward, and shywas visiting the city for the second time in little more than a year, triumphantly returning to the gallery where his electric chair portraits had introduced him to Europe.
Under the banner of Pop Art Amricaine, a series of screen prints depicting the establishments preferred method of execution had excited nothing but controversy back home, where Warhol was still best regarded as the weirdo pop artist who painted Campbells soup cans. France, too, was uncertain, but American poet John Ashbery and French writer Jean-Jacques Lebel praised his work in the exhibition brochure, and gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend (who had once been married to Warhols agent, Leo Castelli) knew that her countrymen were fascinated despite themselves. She had barely waved the artist off one chilly morning in February 1964 before she was scheming his return.
This time Warhol was exhibiting his screen-printed poppies, gaudy and vivid, primary colors pregnant with childish exuberance, and alive with the promise of the spring that was just breaking over Paris. May 1965 was as warm as the season could ever be: the sidewalk cafs were alive with the sound of the city breaking its hibernation, and the nightclubs were bubbling their own intoxicating brew.
Nico was there with Willy Maywald, the German-born photographer who was her constant escort during her visits to France. Old enough to be her father, a role that she gratefully placed upon him, Maywald had tirelessly pushed Nico forward in her first role as a fashion model, sat back somewhat when she moved into movies, and watched indulgently as a brief fling with Bob Dylan pinballed her toward a musical career. The pair holidayed in Greece together, Nico and Dylan; it was there that he wrote a song for her, the timelessly charming Ill Keep It with Mine, but she frowned when she was asked if they ever sang it together. He didnt like it when I tried to sing along with him, she told her biographer, Richard Witts. I thought he was... a little annoyed that I could sing properly, at least in tune, so he made me more determined to sing to other people.
Since that time, she had visited New York and performed at the Blue Angel; flown to England and seduced Brian Jones; encountered Andrew Loog Oldham, and hatched plans to make a record with him. Now she was in Paris, and she met Andy Warhol. As Maywald understated in his memoir, She had the gift of ferreting out interesting people.
Warhols table at the Chez Castel nightclub, on rue Princesse, glittered as only his inner sanctum could. The movie Whats New Pussycat had just wrapped shooting at the club, and the place, Warhol told his diary, was popping with starsTerence Stamp, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Romy Schneider.
Warhol was a star too, and he caught peoples eye, if only because it was so hard not to stare at him. But it was his companion Edie Sedgwick who conquered their hearts, elfin and boyish, wide-eyed but not yet the legless tragedy of future legend, bubbling with charm and the innocent beauty that so enraptured Warhol that he wound up destroying it. The previous evening, dining with Salvador Dal at the Crazy Horse Saloon, it was Edie who broke the ice between the artists when she leaned over to the grandfather of surrealism and asked, How does it feel to be such a famous writer?
Edie was irresistible. Twenty-two, white-haired with anthracite-black eyes and legs to swoon over, mooned Vogue magazine, and that was when she was in New York. In Paris, the article continued, Warhols gang startled the dancers at Chez Castel by appearing with fifteen rabbits and Edie Sedgwick in a black leotard and a white mink coat.
Its all I have to wear, she sighed softly.
Nico watched her like a hawk. She was so lovely, she recalled twenty years later. Like a little bird that you wanted to hold in your hand. She barely noticed the rest of the entourage, Warhols assistant Gerard Malanga, all whiplash grace and tousled hair; Edies friend Chuck Wein, bearded and bulky, and so eager to please (but please whom? That was the sting in his tail); but then her gaze fell on a familiar face and an old friend, Denis Deegan, an American in Paris in true Gene Kelly style.
Nico caught Deegans eye, joined the group and, when Warhols curiosity could stand no more tension (but only thenlike Edie, Nico not only knew how but when to make an entrance), introduced herself by discussing her friends. Some were real, some were assumed, a few were probably imaginaryNico never allowed reality to stand on the toes of her self-mythology. But the names William Burroughs, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, Federico Fellini, Coco Chanel, Bob Dylan, and Brian Jones fell from her lips, and she knew she had her audiences attention.
Edie, she recalled, was too preoccupied with her lipstick to pay the newcomer much mind, except to ask Nico how she kept her hair so blonde. But Malanga told her about the silver-enshrined studio where the master did his work, and suggested that she visit someday; Warhols mind worked more methodically, and he quietly grilled her about her movie career, second-guessing her interest in the Rolling Stones.
Is it true that Mick Jagger has a huge cock?
He never let on that pasted in his scrapbook was one of the advertisements Nico had shot for London Fog raincoats. They parted that evening with promises to meet again.
Nico returned to London and her assignation with Andrew Oldham, as he kick-started his Immediate record label. They toyed with recording her Dylan song and, because its author was in town as well, the pair of them wound up in a little demo studio in central London, Dylan pounding drunken piano while Nico sang Ill Keep It with Mine.
