Performance artist Tammy Faye Starlite portrays and celebrates the Warhol/Velvet Underground chanteuse in a brilliant stage production “Nico: An Evening of Light”
By PKM editors
Andy Warhol carried Nico into the spotlight as the face of the Velvet Underground. Bob Dylan brought her one of his finest songs (“I’ll Keep It With Mine”). Lou Reed brought her “Chelsea Girls,” and an equally smitten Jackson Browne let her record “These Days” long before he did. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop and many other men fell at the feet of Christa Paffgen (1938-1988) as she mournfully sang her dirge-like songs in a chilling, hypnotic Teutonic voice. Few people, male or female, could crack the cool facade of her distant, wide-eyed stare.
And yet, thirty years after Nico’s death, Tammy Faye Starlite has pulled off the remarkable feat of reanimating her on stage. Accompanied by Jon Spurney, Tammy has created a show called “Nico: An Evening of Light.” Along with her music, sung in the same throaty drone, Tammy channels Nico’s warped sense of humor and blunt, biting observations about the pop cultural landscape through which she traveled.
Tammy returns to New York for another staging of “Nico: An Evening of Light,” on March 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Pangea, 178 Second Avenue. After an earlier series of performances off-Broadway, New York Times critic Charles Isherwood wrote, “In her remarkable — and howlingly funny — portrayal of Nico, the 1960s chanteuse and muse to musical greats of the time, the singer and performance artist Tammy Faye Starlite is both vividly present and somehow barely there. Although its creators’ affection for the woman is never in question, the show also gently parodies her disaffected persona.”
PKM favorite Danny Fields said of Tammy Faye Starlite’s performance, “[It’s] not an imitation but a rediscovery of Nico.”
Here’s a video of Tammy performing “Chelsea Girls,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties” at Lincoln Center in 2016. Please ignore the crowd noise.
The following poem is a sort of free-form biographical and psychological riff on Nico as imagined by someone who has been transformed into the Ice Queen from Cologne.
By Tammy Faye Starlite
1.
She told Jackson Browne to
write a song like Jim McGuinn.
He was not yet Roger but she
was no longer Christa. Christa
was buried beneath the Schwarz-
markt swathed in strewn
chocolate wrappers when she
became a catwalking model of
another girl and could leave
herself, alone.
2.
She met Bob in Paris.
He encouraged her to sing and
gave her his best song, “I’ll
Keep It With Mine.” She loved
trains.
3.
Lou was a usurper of souls. But
he was very beautiful for a time
and he wrote for her because
he knew she wanted to destroy
him and she had traversed the
Via Veneto with Marcello in
chiaroscuro. Lou wanted to be
the center and she wouldn’t
succumb to Leonard because he
pressed his desire and she
thought desire was weak.
4.
Delon pretended to be strong
with his craft but she
discovered him to be a replica of
her own nonexistence.
5.
They thought she was Anita
with Brian at Monterey Pop
because of her Germanity. But
she was taller than Anita and
Brian punished them both with
his heavy anger, the rage of a
spectral stalk of fat wheat.
6.
But Jim, he was her soul
brother. Danny made the match
like the matchmaker in the
Jewish musical. He knew they
were the same. Jim named his
band after Huxley and told her
to write her own songs. He
confused himself with herself
because they were the same
person. She changed her hair
from yellow to strawberry
because he loved his own blood,
but it was Lethean blood and he
baptized himself to Orpheus.
7.
She found some solace with a
beautiful dervish who was an
inner Sufi like her father, and he
lived shirtless in a Michigan
farmhouse. But he was raw and
powerful and she left him clues
as blue as his eyes in a cerulean
prism overlooking the Lake that
refracted onto his reflexive
spine.
8.
She was given an Indian pump
organ maybe from Leonard that
sounded like an orchestra and a
storm outside and wrote an
album
that John Cale said sounded like
suicide. Her voice roared like
the bellows from the fathoms of
the Amazon River, she browned
her hair and
wore Trappist vestments and
she found her god, a precept she
found laughable, but as she
regarded irony as a worthwhile
conceit, she appreciated the
dialectic.
9.
She made films in France with
Philippe Garrel which are more
or less art wrapped in cotton
and filmed through a syringe.
10.
She forgot about Andy. She
couldn’t even remember his
name. He never called her. She
couldn’t remember how they
didn’t talk with such intimacy,
the intimacy of exhaustion and
beauty. She hated it all
afterwards. Beauty was not the
skin or the sky. Beauty was in
Wagner’s Ring, beauty was son
fils par Delon. She named him
Ari, little lion and she nursed
him with the elixir of sleep, so
he could dismiss his lineage and
embrace her without the weight
of convenience.
11.
She gave her mother a home in
Ibiza until it melted into a crypt.
Spain is a sanctum for dance
and delusion. She was an
illusion masquerading as a
nihilist who lived in
Manchester. It reminded
her of Berlin. She
performed on stages in Milan, in
Brno, in Rotterdam with
Gregory, in New York
at Danceteria and the Squat
Theater where she sang, “New
York, New York” while she slept.
Still Andy would not see her.
12.
So many vacuums. She knew
her audience at Max’s had gone
to see her friend Nina. Nina was
only doing one show. Cheetah
would steal her cops but she
would wail like the Niebelungen
and soon she could shoot
herself again. She was full of
holes and she prayed to the
abscesses, sarcophagi of the
former lives that she did not
revive or revise.
13.
“A sailor’s suit and cap.” She
remembered that. She
remembered the cathedral in
Reims and the Dom on St.
Mark’s Place and the days of
Dr. Owsley’s Purple Haze and
she remembered the nights
with Jimi Hendrix and their
exquisite chimerical children
and she remembered the velvet,
always the velvet, tasteless,
really. People like cliches and
the audience wants to hear the
old songs, light entertainment
which she didn’t care for.
14.
She didn’t think much about the
inevitable until July in Ibiza
when she rode her bicycle in the
heat of the Iberian sun, and she
remembered the velvet as she
awoke next to Andy, blinded by
silver, and she told him I didn’t
go to your funeral because you
didn’t go to mine.
##
Evening of Light
Writer: Christa Paffgen
Vocals: Tammy Faye Starlite
Music and production: Jon Spurney
More from PKM:
WARHOL, BURROUGHS, AND NICO AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL!
LEONARD COHEN INTERVIEWED BY DANNY FIELDS AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL, 1974