Nico

Nico was born Christa Päffgen in Cologne to Wilhelm and Margarete "Grete" Päffgen (née Schulz, 1910–1970).

Wilhelm was born into the wealthy Päffgen Kölsch master brewer family dynasty in Cologne and was Catholic, while Grete came from a lower-class background and was Protestant.

When Nico was two years old, she moved with her mother and grandfather to the Spreewald forest outside Berlin to escape the World War II bombardments of Cologne.

Her father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht at the onset of the war, but there are several conflicting accounts as to when and how he died.

Christa Päffgen (16 October 1938 – 18 July 1988), known by her stage name Nico, was a German singer, songwriter, actress, and model.

In 1946, Nico and her mother relocated to downtown Berlin, where Grete worked as a seamstress.

Nico attended school until the age of 13, and began selling lingerie in the exclusive department store KaDeWe, eventually getting modelling jobs in Berlin.

At 5 ft, and with chiseled features and pale skin, Nico rose to prominence as a fashion model when still a teenager.

At the age of 15 while working as a temp for the US Air Force, she was allegedly raped by an American sergeant and she gave evidence at the trial which led to the perpetrator being court-martialed.

The incident was referenced in her song "Secret Side". However, biographers such as Richard Witts have debated the validity of the story as no public records of the case have been documented.

Nico was discovered at 16 by photographer Herbert Tobias while both were working at a KaDeWe fashion show in Berlin.

He gave her the name "Nico" after a man he had fallen in love with, filmmaker Nikos Papatakis, and she used it for the rest of her life.

She moved to Paris and began working for Vogue, Tempo, Vie Nuove, Mascotte Spettacolo, Camera, Elle, and other fashion magazines.

Around this time, she dyed her brown hair blonde, later claiming she was inspired to do so by Ernest Hemingway.

At age 17, she was contracted by Coco Chanel to promote their products, but she fled to New York City and abandoned the job.

Through her travels, she learned to speak English, Spanish, and French.

In 1959, she was invited to the set of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, where she attracted the attention of the acclaimed director, who gave her a minor role in the film as herself.

By that time, she was living in New York and taking acting classes with Lee Strasberg.

The two lived together between 1959 and 1961.

After noticing her singing around the apartment, Papatakis asked her if she had ever considered a career in music and ended up enrolling her in her first singing lessons.

She had roles in several films, including Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966).

Reviewer Richard Goldstein describes Nico as "half goddess, half icicle" and writes that her distinctive voice "sounds something like a cello getting up in the morning."

After a role in the 1961 Jean Paul Belmondo film A Man Named Rocca, she appeared as the cover model on jazz pianist Bill Evans' 1962 album, Moon Beams.

After splitting her time between New York and Paris, she got the lead role in Jacques Poitrenaud's Strip-Tease (1963).

In 1965, Nico met the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and recorded her first single, "I'm Not Sayin'", with the B-side "The Last Mile", produced by Jimmy Page for Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label.

Actor Ben Carruthers introduced her to Bob Dylan in Paris that summer.

At the insistence of Warhol, Nico sang on three songs of the Velvet Underground's debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967).

At the same time, she started a solo career and released Chelsea Girl (1967).

Nico's friend, Jim Morrison, suggested that she start writing her own material.

She then composed songs on a harmonium, not traditionally a rock instrument.

In 1967, Nico recorded his song "I'll Keep It with Mine" for her first album, Chelsea Girl.

John Cale of the Velvet Underground became her musical arranger and produced The Marble Index (1968), Desertshore (1970), The End... (1974) and other subsequent albums.

In the 1980s, Nico toured extensively in Europe, United States, Australia and Japan.

After a concert in Berlin in June 1988, she went on holiday in Ibiza to rest and died as the result of a cerebral haemorrhage while cycling in extremely hot weather.

According to biographer Richard Witts in his 1995 book Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon, Wilhelm Päffgen was gravely wounded in 1942 after having been shot in the head by a French sniper.

With no certainty that he would survive, his commanding officer, following standing orders, ended Päffgen's life by gunshot.

Another story is that he sustained head injuries that caused severe brain damage, and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution.

According to unproven rumours, he was variously said to have died in a concentration camp, or to have faded away as a result of shell shock.

She recorded the title track, which was written by Serge Gainsbourg but not released until 2001, when it was included in the compilation Le Cinéma de Serge Gainsbourg.

In New York, Nico first met Greek filmmaker Nico Papatakis, whose name she had adopted as her stage name several years earlier.