You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone

The Biography of Nico

By: Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

Narrated by: Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, Christa Lewis

A new, definitive biography of the iconic and mysterious singer, Warhol superstar, Velvet Underground collaborator: influential solo artist Nico.

You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone is a new biography of Nico, the mysterious singer best known for her work with the Velvet Underground and her solo album Chelsea Girl. Her life is tangled in myth - much of it of her own invention. Rock and roll cultural historian Jennifer Bickerdike delivers a definitive book that unravels the story while making a convincing case for Nico's enduring importance.

Over the course of her career, Nico was an ever-evolving myth: art film house actress, highly coveted fashion model, Dietrich of Punk, femme fatale, Chelsea girl, Garbo of Goth, the Last Bohemian, heroin junkie. Lester Bangs described her as "a true enigma". At age 27, Nico became Andy Warhol's newest superstar, featuring in his one commercial breakout hit film, Chelsea Girls, and garnering the position of chanteuse for the Velvet Underground. It wasn't Nico's musical chops that got her the gig; it was her striking beauty. Her seeming otherworldly and unattainable presence was further amplified by her reputation for dating rock stars (Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, among others). She became famous for being Nico.

Yet Nico's talent and her contribution to rock culture are often overlooked. She spent most of her career as a solo artist on the road, determined to make music, seemingly against all the odds, enduring empty concert halls, abusive fans, and the often perilous reality of being an aging artist and drug addict. She created mesmerizing and unique projects that inspired a generation of artists, including Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, and Iggy Pop.

Drawing on the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico's record labels, various private collections, and rarely seen footage, and featuring exclusive new interviews from those who knew her best, including Iggy Pop and Danny Fields, and those inspired by her legacy, You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone reveals the complicated, often compromised, self-destructive, and always headstrong woman behind the one-dimensional myths.

©2021 Jennifer Otter Bickerdike (P)2021 Da Capo Press

The beauty of honesty and what you learn alone.

The mysterious fable of Nico I imagined, was not what I got. She was born in ruins but arose to breathe as the hyper prestige model who could capture the eyes of which are bedazzled, then silence the moment with vast intrigue. The journey truly begins when she takes her persona onto the frontlines of what would be some of the most influential rock of the late 60's.

You are beautiful and You are alone is not just a story of the music or the tales of a woman who would be an icon in the decades to follow. This is how the entity of creation brings an artist onto a pilgrimage that takes a lifetime, or could this be said the other way around.

Icon

Very interesting, well rounded biography of Nico that acknowledges her as a true artist, not the way she is usually portrayed.

reset your view, parallax the age from this perspective

nico was amazing and a perfect model of what happens when all the backing is geared toward a privileged group over someone else. she was a beautiful woman and she was treated as nothing more than an object to be looked at and appreciated for her secured possibility. very rarely was she appreciated for her talent, nor was she coached to bring her talent and skill to the forefront. this is a great book to review about an age you lived through and thought you understood already.

Beauty-Obsessed Biography

The writer perpetuates over and over again the misogynistic treatment Nico received all her life. I don’t think it’s intentional misogyny—the writing is just bad. JOB wants to make the point that Nico was beautiful and she keeps making that point and she keeps quoting people commenting on Nico’s appearance. I think Nico would have been appalled by this constant commentary in the biography on her beauty and how it was fading. And there were gratuitous sexual details that seemed so gossipy. Even if everyone interviewed discussed Nico’s appearance, did JOB need to quote them on it all the time? Isn’t that in a way supporting those superficial and sexist behaviors because it forces readers to think of the one thing that Nico didn’t want us to focus on!?! It made me very sad for the talented and strong artist. I’m sorry, Nico.