Smoking Nico taken from a photograph by Julian Wasser. Newspaper Nico taken from an image by Lisa Law. Quotes from an article by Will Hodgkinson, Mojo, March 2004.
I like “drawing” more with a brush—it’s faster, much more fluid and I can coax more emotion out of it—but the lettering is all to hell. I’m trying to emulate my hero Paul Pope, but he’s an art genius, and I’m a legal genuis. Big difference.
The other day Jaxxie was over using the scanner to prep for a big design project. I was working on “Stormy Weather,” which I consider a partial success (accurately depicts real events, static objects, decent flow). I had the first and the third panels done, but not the second one.
“So you don’t do it in order?” she asked. Hmm. I didn’t even notice that. I knew where I wanted it to go, but I had no idea how it got there. Nico was the same way today. I knew I wanted to focus on her spectacular beauty—all angles and angel hair—and touch lightly on the incredible misogyny she dealt with (noting the Cale quote, that she still deals with).
We tend to identify with bands that we like. I like some of Lou Reed’s songs, I like Bobby Pollard’s songs, so I like them. The reality is, they might be scummy bastards we can’t morally stand. The VU, in terms of Nico, is like that.
Process on this cartoon: started with sketches of smoking Nico from a cool Mojo jp! gave me (it was going to be a Brian Wilson cartoon, which Friday may yet be). Sketched out my six panels, like normal, and then let smoking Nico eat up the left.
Next came newspaper Nico. That’s one of my favorite photos right now. Then I had a helluva lot of blank space. That’s where the dad of the comic book fan & Brian Jones come in (yes, that’s Nico’s ex-lover/ill-fated Stone saying it’s “bloody perfect”). I had to get across her amazing phoenetic singing (the Mojo article notes that English was her fourth language), and that was a good space for it.
Ehh. And then I fell apart with a huge written diatribe; sorry about that, but I wanted to say those things. I wanted to say “screw you” to all her detractors over the years. InThe Royal Tenenbaums , when Richie is sitting there watching Margot walk up, falling in love with her all over againn, realizing he never fell out of love with her—that’s a scene of wonder in a wondrous movie. It’s one of my favorites ever, and Nico was key to it (and the song’s author, Jackson Browne).
Thanks for reading yr gorjus-stijl!
xo
damn nice piece. i also liked the artist’s commentary. i like seeing or reading about how the art gets made.
reminds me of when i used to sit in on practice sessions for Men from Nantucket back in s’ville. damn, that was the best in-progress rock and roll i’ve ever been around. couldn’t go wrong with the little debbie storage unit next door, either.
I think the live version of “Dying On the Vine” by Cale is as good as anything by anybody. I also like the Academy In Peril.
I agree with gclark—the process always makes the product even more intriguing. I still have the cartoon you made for me in the Honors house and the cartoon of the menacing-robot-Fordice you created from the Doom Patrol paperback we found up in Norfolk, VA, the grayest city in the U.S. of A. The best thing is, after not seeing your work for years, but having some from the past, I can see a wonderful progression in your style that those who see it often may miss. Picture me in a beret, smokin’ cigs Russian-style, talking about highbrow stuff, as I say all this.
gorj, you are sensational. I am sending you something.
gorjus:
it’s creepy how we’re on the same wavelength sometimes. I’ve been completely immersed in both the Royal Tenenbaum film and soundtrack this week. Anderson’s creations of sad gentle beauty are appropriate viewing during a time of change and reminiscence (a.k.a. one’s graduation).
2 more cents:
I don’t know about John Cale but one of my favorite aching songs is Nina Simone’s cover of “I Got It Bad [and that ain’t good].” You can find that one on the Big Lebowski soundtrack.
Some people don’t like Simone’s voice either… but damn, talk about a heartbreaking performance! I cry every time.
damn chatty,
t.
Thanks for the Nico Memories. Rob’t Smith sez it’s
really dangerous to promote your own “genius”
self-reflexively, and he should know.
Oh, another thing about Cale…he wasn’t dissing her. He was pretty much telling the truth. He helped her throughout her career; hell, he slept with her on and off himself throughout the 60s. Well, who didn’t? I mean, she stalked Jim Morrison for a while, had Alain Delon’s baby…
Anyway, don’t take John Cale’s comments so defensively. The guy was her one major booster all along, probably a bigger one than Warhol, Jackson Browne, or Lou Reed ever were. He stayed with her all of the way through the Camera Obscura (cool record, btw) days.
I’ve gotta stand up and defend my boy. And let’s give a shout to Mr. Browne (wife-beater, though he may be), who wrote “These Days.” Why wasn’t he that good later on?
BG, that’s exactly the sort of perception of Nico I wanted this cartoon to combat. “Hell, Cale clearly thought she was okay, he was sleeping with her.” Cale’s quote—fact-based though it is—is extremely passive agressive and shows a completely unwillingness to admit she had ANY talent—she was just a gimmick, a joke. The music she left clearly shows she was not.
Nearly every account of Nico available does the same thing you just did—rattles off a list of the people she slept with as a way of defining her. That is absolutely not how we define males, especially not male rock and rollers. That’s the sort of bias we automatically overlay on women which dismisses their artistic ability and re-focuses on them as sexual subordinates to men.
When we focus on who she slept with, and not the songs she sang or the albums she worked on, we reduce her from the status of artist down to Us Weekly curiosity. Cale, et. al.—anyone willing to go on the record about her, save for Browne—always goes that route. That’s why I wanted to focus on her as an artist and declare, quite firmly, that “These Days” will stand as a beautiful statement long after we’ll all quit caring about Cale or, hell, any thing Lou Reed has ever done solo.
To bolster Gorjus’ argument, think Marianne Faithfull.
Gorj,
I love you and your want for equality… although I agree with you, that we define women by who they have slept with much more so than we do men, and I wish it wasn’t that way… i will take a different approach.
Who gives a shit how many people she slept with… it is interesting, talk about it, talk about how many people she was with and what a sexual creature she is. Talk about it, celebrate it. It’s great. But it should not be in the same sentence that addresses her art. Women should get to be with as many men as they want, but they shouldn’t feel bad, or be made to feel bad if people talk about it… I think that people do talk about who men sleep with, we just dont say how bad it is, what a slut he is, etc, etc.
I think women being and acting just a promiscuously as men and not being ashamed of it is similar to reclamation. how women can (and should) say cunt or twat, bitch (or other bad words) in order to take the power away from those who might say it out of disrespect. Im not sure that it is the best solution, but the confrontation, rather than the politically correct burial of all things distasteful, is liberating.
I agree, art should be the focus, not sex.
but sometimes the sex is more interesting
Well, how about this? “Hell, Cale thought she was okay…he produced all of her records except one!” Just because she got hired in the Velvets because she was Lou Reed’s girlfriend and was stunningly beautiful doesn’t mean she didn’t have talent. And have you ever thought that she defined herself (a la Marianne Faithfull) by the people she surrounded herself with. Let’s face it: she was a social climber and used famous people to get to the point where she could actually make music of her own. I don’t see anything wrong with that. But the fact of the matter is that she slept with Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, etc. and that was the only way she was able to get a chance. Sure, that’s a sucky statement about society et al., but she was pretty savvy, at the very least, and was probably genuinely involved with a lot of them. I didn’t mean for it to come out sexist, but I don’t think that John Cale was even doing her a disservice. It’s probably true that her looks got her a long way. How in the hell did Britney Spears get huge? Mandy Moore? They’re cute. And I think you do a grave disservice to Cale, Browne, and others when you suggest that Nico will be remembered long after John Cale…I hate to say it, but I don’t think she would have gotten anywhere without his support. Hell, she did every great record she ever recorded with him, and he really let her experiment. And I bet that These Days will be gone long before Transformer. Not because it’s bad, but because its greatest success came from a fairly successful indie-ish movie.
And remember that she was anti-Semitic and maybe a little racist (that weird shit with the black panthers and that Deutschland Uber Alles cover?)...it’s interesting that you brought in the Lou Reed story.
Anyway, I actually liked your cartoon despite the controversy.
by far one of my favorites. the bangs on the larger image very much remind me of Paul Pope, and that’s usually a pretty damn good thing.
The Will Eisner smoke is always appreciated by those who enjoy a fully functioning circulatory system on days that end in “Y”.
I like that the shaggy haired Mod is hanging out with the comic store customer in a past life.
As for Nico…i never really liked her until i had my own context for her songs. some people are hard to like until you have a reason…then, when you get that reason, you may just love them.
wow, i feel a little dorky commenting before realizing you made comments. i suppose i was just repeating you.
Yeah…I never thought of the smoke as Will Eisner, but it totally is.
i believe Paul Pope did the art for a billboard here in Jackson for the Bottleneck Blues Bar at the Casino in Vicksburg. what do you think gorj? is that him?
Nico was the real Mcoy A genuine Bohemian. She didnt care for money or fame.. just liked interesting people. I wrote a book on her, largely innacurate.But as you portray her is the myth.
Nico is my dreeam queen…I am sure she would appreciate the very cool homage Gorjus.
Nico rocks!
i get the feeling if i had to deal with my favorite singers on a personal basis, or even meet them only once, i would probably bulldoze my entire record collection in disgust. Nico included. in fact, probably Nico especially. nice homage, though…i like it.
Gorjus:
Regarding both your art and your defense of Nico: well done, well said.
Cheers.
Love your cartoon! I just want to help out Big Gray here because I think he was unfairly dumped on with all the finger wagging. Yes, Nico was great and Cale was /is one of the greatest. Cale may have made those glib remarks at any time during his career. A lot of that time was spent drinking himself into oblivion where he not only said a lot of crazy stuff but acted out pretty weirdly as well. I know that’s not an excuse; it’s just a possibility of why such utterances were made.
As far as where Nico would be without Cale; I’m not sure. Cale absolutely respected her though to the point of writing a terrific score for “Nico the Ballet ” available on CD. He felt that these liaisons with people like Jim Morrison, a wannabe by anyone who truly remembers the sixties, was beneficial to her only in that she became inspired. It was Morrison who told her that she should take her writing seriously and not care about what others thought. Nico was in Cale’s estimation “a true original” who had tapped into something very special and truly sublime. Nico always felt that her spectacular beauty was something that kept her from being taken seriously (dumb blonde, model,actress, etc…) It was a hindrance to what she knew she could achieve in the world of outside art and music. She hated the superficiality of all that crap.
She was at times a strong woman who was in a lot of pain. Her father died in a concentration camp and although I’m not sure if this has been ever verified in a book I have read that she was raped as a young teenager by an American sergeant in Berlin. The man was caught and executed. She carried a feeling of complicity in his death around with her all her life. Was she was a racsist towards Jews? Apparently so, if you believe the Factory story of her lashing out at Reed (who could dish it out and still does, btw). She was raised in Germany during a time when most Germans, Nazi or not, were raised hating Jews. It’s not right, it’s just the way people operate when they are too busy trying to survive in a crumbling society to sit back and think which is what led to Hitler’s rise and sudden trajectory to power in the thirties. What makes my blood boil is how people can take a quote made by someone when they were in their twenties (sorry, but if you are in that category you will discover this injustice when you are a bit older) and be made responsible for it as some sort of negative legacy that follows them around their entire career. I never , ever, heard that story when Nico was alive but hey…there you go.
Cale loved Nico and was quite perplexed at how he could approach the music from her harmonium (which by its very nature always goes in and out of tune). He was blown away by her songs and how quickly she wrote them. Chelsea Girls… I like. Its a good pop album with some good Velvets material there as well. Marble Index though is a work that should be spoken in the same breadth as Blonde On Blonde, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Sgt. Pepper and/or any any seminal album of the sixties that would make a list in Mojo not to mention all the lesser rags out there. This is owed in no small part to the classical background of John Cale who played all the instruments on that album as well as the next tour de force, Desert Shore. Those songs can raise the hair up on the back of my neck not only because of Nico’s brutal lyrics and vocal presence but primarily because of the music’s incredible interpretation via John Cale’s vivid instrumentation which blends the ugly with the beautiful ;the sacred and the profane; the truth and a lie. It is to Cale’s credit that he did not insist that these two albums be credited as Nico/Cale or Cale and Nico, or something other than just Nico.
I do not believe that Cale thought of her as some “dumb chick” entertainer or “another pretty face” . Her looks did get her a long way . Of course she was a top model who worked for Coco Channel in the fifties to early sixties. God she was gorgeous! Just check out those old issues of Jardin du Monde or Jour de France and you will see what I mean: she lights up the page! When I look at her picturess after that period and after her short time on Immediate Records, hanging around with industry types like Mickie Most, Andrew Oldham and Tony Caldwell, I can’t help but see that sad face that showed up at Monterey with Brian Jones flying high and then landed at the Factory only to be “frozen out” at least initially by the band she was supposedly going to front. What did Andy Warhol care? People to him at that time were just pieces to move around and observe. Anyway, I think Cale really respected her art and the fact that Cale stayed in touch with her son Ari after her death lends credence to that love and respect.
Now to James Young. I read your book many years ago when it was the only book on Nico to be found. Frankly, I was dissapointed by it at the time but it wasn’t all bad. I actually saw Nico in the early eighties play at venue called Jonathan Swift’s in Boston, MA. I went with three other friends and we were concerned after the show that she was going to end up real dead soon. She did not look good. I thought that we could have done a better job backing her too as I remember! I hope you were not playing that day! If you did, please forgive me. I’m sure we were stoned out of our minds too.
Now to Gorjus: Nice cartoon! You really can tell thats Nico without the text. The only thing I will comment on is the context of the two audience members. First, “the father of the future comic book store owner”: no one had T-shirts like that in 1965-66 . I’m assumming thats the year (it says 1967 but….) because you have Brian Jones in a suit. As well dressed as Brian like to be, he had shed the suits by the time Nico was singing “I’ll Be Your Mirror” unless he had a court date. Secondly, Brian had brought Nico to Andy in 1966. He had met her through Oldham, the Stones manager, in 1965. Thats okay though! You got the point across fine! Concise! Unlike me!
Thanks for your comments on Nico as an artist – not a “woman artist”. Its true that people like to focus on who women slept with. I think that this is a Hollywood thing because if people like Marilyn Monroe did not have the advantage of nepotism on thier side (think Jane Fonda, etc..). then they had to rely on sleeping with the right people to get ahead. Sad but true! That s just the way things worked. I’m not saying that Nico slept with anyone to land her part in La Dolce Vita but she may have had to do things like that back in those days. Once she got into the rock music world things were beginning to change. However , just before Cale produced Marble Index, he was floundering around after Reed had fired him from VU. He decided a careerr change was needed so he became an A&R man as well as an in -house producer for Warner Bros. (Warner/ Elektra). Her best albums were on Elektra and Warner Brothers after being dropped like a rock by MGM. Her relationship with at least this one man, John Cale , helped her define her path musically.
Big Gray was right on.
Thanks for reading all of this if you bothered! Sorry for all the bad grammmar and spelling!