Christa Päffgen was born in Cologne in 1938 to parents of Spanish and Yugoslavian descent and only became known as Nico in her late teens, when she had begun modelling and the fashion photographer Herbert Tobias suggested the name. She went on to find fame via a bit part in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and, later, in Andy Warhol’s Factory and as the frontwoman of the Velvet Underground – much to the chagrin of their existing singer Lou Reed – before becoming a solo artist. Her singing style was once described rather beautifully as sounding like “a body falling through a window”. And she has so often been viewed in relation to the men in her life: “Andy Warhol’s original factory girl” or “Lou Reed’s muse” are two examples. Her life ended at the age of forty-nine when she suffered a brain haemorrhage while in Ibiza with her only child, a son named Ari. Ari’s father was the film star Alain Delon, but the young man had grown up largely with his paternal grandparents, only bonding with Nico as an adult by taking heroin with her.
