Nico: The Wayward Beauty of Solitary Confinement

 

“I have been in the highest and the lowest and both places are empty.” - Nico

 

Why even ask—Who is Nico — she that was born Christa Päffgen in Cologne in 1938? Survives the Nazis... Then in Paris. She’s 16 and meets Coco Chanel. Models. Gets bored. Travels to New York City. Studies acting with Lee Strasberg. Talks to Marilyn Monroe.

1959. In Rome. Hello to Frederico Fellini. Gets bit part in La Dolce Vita. Really, who is she?

Back in New York City. 1963. Sings ‘My Funny Valentine’ at the Blue Angel Club. Can barely stay in key, but that makes it better. A determined contralto if you will. Rarely smiles.

Hey, she’s over in Paris. With Serge Gainsborough and then pregnant by Alan Delon. Has a son. Leaves him behind.

Hangs with Brian Jones. He plays, along with Jimmy Page, on her first EP.

Really, how does this happen to one person?

In London, meets Andy Warhol’s friend, then off to New York City again. Calls Andy. Her first line to him. “I only like the food that floats in the wine.” Warhol is thunderstruck.

Nico enters Warhol's Factory and dethrones Edie Sedgwick. Such is life.  Meets Bob Dylan. He gives her a song.

Stars in three Factory films. Andy becomes manager of The Velvet Underground. Says he wants Nico to sing. Member Lou Reed disagrees. Nico sings. She is what happens when the Weimar meets the Haight.

Parts from the Velvets. Makes music of her own. Now to Los Angeles. Beds Jim Morrison. Next morning, Morrison is found naked, dancing on a rooftop. Nico, also naked, is crying in a garden. Lots of drugs. Goes from Jim to Iggy Pop. Interesting progression.

Records music. Takes lovers. Wanders the world. Dies in Ibiza, 1988. Age 49. Today, revered as a Goth pioneer.

Some artists follow a muse; for others, the muse is themselves. It’s an involuntary reaction. Nico lived as she did to stay alive. A soul in solitaire. 

Look closely, her eyes are rimmed with frost, for her beauty comes from the pain you see when a face is frozen by tears.

 

#nico #andywarhol #loureed #jimmorrison #thedoors #iggypop #goth #music #blog #pop #1960s #ChristaPäffgen #leonardcohen #bobdylan #fellini #velvetunderground

Jim Morrison: Rage from the Stage but Think on the Page

 

Whether he lacked the talent or time to develop into a great poet remains unclear. Much of Jim Morrison’s brief life is obscured—perhaps strategically—with vague pronouncements, clumsy metaphors, spacey diatribes and art house pretension. But when he was great, he drifted far beyond expectations, completely original, yet always too smart for the job.

Importantly, Jim Morrison looked like a rock star. The image matched the music—perfectly. In 1967, he invented how a rock star must appear—the hair, the leather pants, the boots, even the attitude. So powerful is the image of Morrison that his influence remains undiminished.

With The Doors, he found a band to match his dark visions. Ray Manzarek’s brooding organ seemed wired to Morrison’s dread. When Morrison died, so did The Doors, though they struggled for a while, pushed on by the momentum of their silent singer.  

He grew uncomfortable with show business, more artist than magician, more preacher than singer, hungering for fame until aware too late his soul had stopped. You can rage from the stage but only think on the page.

Restless demons empowered his words. He battled bravely until no drug or drink could forestall The Big Sleep—which was his end game anyway. Or maybe not.  With months to live, he was trying to get better in Paris, get his lungs back, repair a heart damaged by rheumatic fever, but never made it. His girlfriend didn’t help. Or maybe it was all predestined, just as he had predicted.  Like his contemporary, George Harrison, much of Morrison’s life seems passed in preparation for death. And Death always obliges the eager.

At Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Jim Morrison appears nightly, courtesy of The 27 Club, alone in a dimly lit corner, forever searching for that single, indelible, timeless line that always tells the truth.

#jimmorrison #thedoors #lizardking #lawoman #lightmyfire #classicrock #perelachaise #georgeharrison #1960s #rock #music #27club #losangeles #whiskeyagogo

 

Eve Babitz: It’s All About Eve

 

Though labelled a 1960s ‘It Girl’ (but never ‘a West Coast Edie Sedgwick’), Eve Babitz, through force of personality, creativity, and a hard buzz of underlying craziness, made herself, and those around her, an enduring work of art. That’s a rare achievement that can’t be strategized or funded—thank God. (Corporations remained puzzled, restricted by an invisible blockade, unable to monetize whatever ‘It’ is.)

Consider ‘It’ as yet another definition of organic. Eve belongs more to a ‘sense’ of time & place than actual Los Angeles in the 1960s-70s... Faulkner is always the Deep South. Fitzgerald remains preserved in the sparking lapis lazuli of the Jazz Age. A time & place. That’s Eve.

So there she is seated, naked with pendulous breasts, playing chess with Marcel Duchamp (1963), in a moment definitely closer to Dadaism than Cubism. Or she’s dancing somewhere on the Sunset Strip, in a hot club with Warren Beatty or Steve Martin or Ahmet Ertegun or Stephen Stills or Jim Morrison or Edward Ruscha or Warren Zevon or Harrison Ford… or whomever. More explorer than groupie. 

Her appetite for Life was enormous, enabling true participatory journalism, involuntarily leap-frogging Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson and other practitioners of ‘new journalism’. Eve wrote about Eve, even though it’s never clear she totally understood her subject. Thankfully, it’s all about Eve.

Her books and articles have a wayward honesty that pull readers into tentative friendships: you want to travel with her, but remain firmly in the back seat.

Eve’s often outrageous behavior is somehow subsumed in the inevitability of her actions—as if ‘it had to happen this way. Can you describe a more interesting alternative?’

Anyway, it’s those restless, Peter Pan-eccentric spirits, garnishing dull days with pixie dust, then to dance beneath diamond skies, to bequeath us the prayer ‘There’s wild magic everywhere. You only have to move.’

#evebabitz #losangeles #warrenbeatty #jimmorrison #harrisonford #normanmailer #huntersthompson #marcelduchamp #fscottfitzgerald #williamfaulkner #edie sedgwick #andywarhol #1960s #1970s

Brian Jones: Born Under a Bad Sign

“Yes I want to be famous, and no, I don’t want to live till 30.”  - Brian Jones

Brian Jones, the founder – and the best musician – of ever-popular The Rolling Stones - didn’t know how to handle fame. He was destroyed by popularity. The more fame Brian gathered, the more drugs he ingested, until...

Jones: Leader of the Pack

He gave The Rolling Stones its name, booked its early gigs, made up set lists, led the way in its rebellious attitude and style – and was fired by the other members.

With his beautiful, angelic golden pageboy haircut, his dandy suits, his just-above-a-whisper voice, his obvious fragility, who would have known he sired and abandoned eight children and beat women?

He wanted The Rolling Stones to remain as a rhythm & blues band, not a rock n’ roll group, and battled the others to control the artistic vision. He was ignored. In a brief time, The Rolling Stones became known as the world’s greatest rock band.

Brian Jones was the first international pop star to embrace – what became known as – world music with his production of the record Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. Released in 1971, it failed to sell. World music went on to explode in the 1980s.

He met and lived with actress/model Anita Pallenberg. (It’s been said she was the only woman he ever loved). She left him for Keith Richards whom she left for Mick Jagger, kind of…

Two J's: soon gone

He was the only Stone to appear on a Beatles song, performing a great, meandering sax solo for You Know My Name (Look Up the Number). He also played on Baby You’re a Rich Man. He never received credit.

When he died, he owed debts amounting to over 200,000 pounds – which was finally cleared in 1982. Today, his sister receives about $21,000 annually in royalties. Sir Mick Jagger is worth about$360-million dollars.

Jones: The coolest Stone of all

It’s likely that he was drowned in his pool by a handyman whom he had just fired. Due to Brian’s lifestyle, the suspicion was never pursued.

He was the first big rock star to be admitted into the ’27 Club’, followed by the three J’s - Jimi, Janis and Jim.

Appropriately, the sad soundtrack of Brian Jones’ life is his beloved Blues:

Born under a bad sign

Been down since I could crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck

You know I wouldn't have no luck at all

-       - Albert King

Talitha Getty: Beautiful and Damned

 “Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly… and when I got it, it turned to dust in my hand.” 

-          F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Talitha: Through a grate darkly

I knew the youthfulness of the '60s: Talitha and Paul Getty lying on a starlit terrace in Marrakesh, beautiful and damned, and a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future.

-          Yves Saint Laurent

Last night Paul and Talitha Getty threw a New Year's Eve party at their palace in the medina. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were there, flat on their backs. They couldn't get off the floor let alone talk. I've never seen so many people out of control.

-          John Hopkins, 1968

[Talitha] arrived like a gust of wind, bringing a tornado with her when she married John Paul Getty Jr. She brought something new to that family and that whole world. She was a very beautiful woman who had never even thought about being dressed by a haute couture house, despite having the means to do so; she dressed a bit like a hippie. She was very touching, and she was very pretty. Yes, she was all of that. But, above all, she was a completely free character, and that, that was very important.

Party on...

-          Pierre Bergé, L’Officiel, 2016.

A ‘free character’? It didn’t work out that way…

In the late 1960s, the term ‘beautiful people’ came to be applied to a wealthy, indolent crowd of perpetual party-goers, most often found in exotic locations, who enjoyed a robust pursuit of alcohol, drugs and sexual liaisons. They differed from the ‘jet set’ in that they gravitated more toward counter-culture trends and fashions. And no one was more beautiful than Talitha Getty (1940-1971).

The photo on the Edge of Forever

Her wealth, her fame, her money, her films…all conspired to evoke a lifestyle that belonged more in celebrity fanzines than in a world of real-life consequences.

And why shouldn’t her boyfriend at one point be French aristocrat Count Jean De Breteuil, a dreadful man who seemed adept at using heroin to kill rock stars and other celebrities.

She held court in Morocco where a thin line etched in the cool sand of a midnight dune holds death at bay, but somehow the wind always breathes the lovely sweet-tang perfume of decay.

We leave Talitha Getty on that Marrakesh rooftop in blue moon aspic, her forever face both curious and fearful, with that thousand-yard stare that looks so intently at absolutely nothing.

All Yesterday's Parties: Anita Pallenberg and sweet milk of decadence

With Keef

She was a suitably dissolute member of the Royal Court of Rock. In through the backdoor with Fellini and Warhol. Then on the arm of ill-fated Brian Jones, and contiguously joined to junkie Keith Richards. Always stronger than the men, but without their discipline or guitars.

All yesterday's parties

And there were others. All through it she swayed like a wasted enchantress, leaves of the Black Forest commingled with trellises of blond hair all dusted with pixie powder.

Anita Pallenberg remains beautiful in a tableau of three-chord decadence, spun by late-night exhortations for flesh and sweat and blood, excesses amplified through Marshall stacks and road-house thunder beats.

(See the witch deep in the dark mountain’s den, dancing by a fire orgy, imprisoned and crazed, for she on honeydew hath fed and drunk sweet milk of decadence).

Jean de Breteuil: The Jet-Setting Angel of Death

“Jean wаѕ a horrible guy, ѕоmеоnе who had crawled out from under a stone. Sоmеhоw I ended uр with him…it wаѕ аll аbоut drugs аnd sex.” – Marianne Faithful

“The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.” - Shakespeare

Jean de Breteuil. As a drug dealer/addict, he was in the right business. He just wasn’t good at it. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Brian Jones. Janis Joplin. Talitha Getty. Pam Courson. Keith Richards. All clients, all dead – except for Keith Richards – for as we all know, what doesn’t destroy Keith only makes him

Jean de Breteuil: Jet-setting

stronger.

Maybe along the way, Jean’s self-loathing somehow metastasized into homicidal fantasies. Likely he didn’t care. Perhaps his spirit was cast at Altamont. He himself overdosed at the age of twenty-two. 1972.

Devil assumes a pleasing shape

The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.One could argue that taking out Morrison and Joplin changed the course of rock music, however subtly. His involvement with Hendrix and Jones was more tangential.

.

His family owned French-language newspapers in North Africa. On the death of his father, he inherited the title of 'Count de Breteuil'. A debauched aristocrat if ever there was. Became a Eurotrash, drug-addled playboy. A rock n’ roll celebrity  drug enabler.

A few of his customers

What to make of it? ‘Heroin Dealer to the Stars’ isn’t a typical career choice. Who knows his passions. But when so many of your customers become young corpses, one may question a professional aptitude.

Jean de Breteuil. The soundtrack of his life should include The Pusher, People Are Strange, and for this jet-setting junkie, Hank Williams’ Angel of Death. “The Angel of Death/ Will come from the sky/ And claim up your soul/ When the time comes to die.” RIP.

Gloria Stavers: Princess of Pop

U.N.C.L.E. - David McCallum?

16 magazine. 1957-2001. A ‘fan’ publication. Written —primarily—for teenage, American girls. The editorial focus was on television and teen male music celebrities.

How did an editor who extolled the talents of David Cassidy and Paul Revere & the Raiders ever gain such influence? Well, for a start, she gave us answers: What does the Dave Clark Five eat for breakfast? How tall, really, is the Monkees’ Davy Jones? What about Paul McCartney’s favorite color? Are Sonny and Cher dating or married?

Just considering the career of Gloria Stavers (1926-1983) causes one to hold, and balance, sets of opposed virtues, tastes and interpretations. She is evasive, on one page jabbering about Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the next, discussing the career of Lenny Bruce or getting physical with Jim Morrison.

Gloria glammed

How this former magazine subscription clerk and model helmed bubblegum pop promotion with such élan has as much to do with ambition and self-confidence than discernible talent.  It’s as if she willed herself into existence.

As editor-in-chief, she never accepted advertising and readership peaked at more than five million in 1964. Actually, her talent was quite discernible.

The magazine offered clean, sober intimacy, unpinned with grade-school photo collages and non-threatening confessions, trivializing real-world, contemporary concerns. There was little chest hair. Gloria knew who paid the bills.

Gloria editing

She focused on boys but occasionally let girls through the door—Connie Francis, Hayley Mills, Patty Duke, Susan Dey, Marie Osmond, Farrah Fawcett. But young male readers generally went elsewhere to look at pictures of pretty women.

When she died, Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone opined… “[we have] lost America’s original pop-music writer, the force behind what was at one time the most influential and widely circulated rock publication in America.”

Dave Marsh wrote that?

Gloria Stavers knew, intuitively, that pop culture is interchangeable with

Jim and G-L-O-R-I-A

commercial culture: therein lies its genius, its banality, its endurance, and its fragility.

16 magazine offered an ambiance unsullied by pregnancy, napalm, drugs and rebellion... It was a state of mind,  a place to go when you were a young girl, a gentle reprieve before the long slow you-can-never-turn-back stroll from the magic garden and across the field to Grownup Land.

A Tale of Two Jays: Sebring, Gatsby & the American Nightmare



F. Scott



Tom Krummer A.K.A. Jay Sebring

"The truth was that Jay Gatsby… sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

If we can hang out in English Lit 101 for a second—and why not—Jay Sebring (1933 – 1969) could only have happened in America. He was a stock character, right from the Smith-Corona of F. Scott Fitzgerald (his good friends just called him ‘F’), the man whose mind has left us with The Jazz Age, and its greatest poster boy, Jay Gatsby.

The U.S.A. No other country celebrates self-propagation, creativity and perseverance with such splendiferous rewards. And no other country is so agile at commercializing extreme violence. It’s a strange brew causing Messrs. Jekyll and Hyde to seamlessly mind-meld.

Like fictional Gatsby (born ‘James Gatz’ on a farm in North Dakota) with whom he shares an unsettling number of traits, Jay Sebring surely invented himself under the Beach Boy sun of optimism and good vibrations.

First he was Thomas J. Krummer, an Alabama-born Korean War vet. During his service in the Navy, he was found to possess tonsorial acumen.

After four years of buzz cuts, he split for L.A., epicenter of reinvention. It was there that the middle initial ‘J’ of his name became the hip ‘Jay’ and the bummer ‘Krummer’ was replaced by the name of a swingin’ Florida raceway (www.sebringraceway.com).

In Los Angeles, he was a big hit as a ‘hairstylist for men’, cropping the mops of such celebs as Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas, and Jim Morrison. In fact, Sebring virtually invented ‘the casual look’, a much-touted fashion of the mid-to-late 60s swingers.

Jay Gatsby was a successful bootlegger and became know for his fabulous, debauched parties. In fact, his parties we so dancing-naked-in-the-fountain-debauched that even today one feels a heavy heart that such gigs have followed the Dodo.

Sebring met the actress Sharon Tate at the Whisky a Go Go in October 1964. He was nothing if not a man of action, and within a year had dumped his wife, got a divorce, and became engaged to the beautiful Tate.

Tate and Sebring: Just before the end

Tate & Sebring: Just before the end

Then Tate went to London to shoot Roman Polanski’s film ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’. It didn’t take long for her to take up with Polanski. Sebring was wonderfully cordial about the whole thing—jealousy is for losers—and made a fast new friend in Polanski.

An aggressive entrepreneur, business boomed for Sebring, establishing salons in West Hollywood, Palm Springs, and Las Vegas. He also nabbed acting roles, including a cameo in a ‘Batman’ where he played the part of Mr. Oceanbring, a character based on himself. The hair care business is still going to this day: checkout Sebring International and watch a video of Jay explaining his theory of the Big Snip.

On August 8, 1969, Sebring was slaughtered in Polanski’s home, along with Tate and two others, by friends of Charles Manson. Jay was thirty-five.

“[Sebring] was short, about five feet six, and was lying on his right side, his hands bunched up near his head as if still warding off blows. His clothing--blue shirt, white pants with black vertical stripes, wide modish belt, black boots--was blood-drenched.”

- Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi

Gatsby was shot in his pool, a willing victim of mistaken identity. Ostensibly, he took a bullet for the woman he loved—but wise guys know that the Gatz saw his jig was up, and with exploding hubris, made the best of it.

So take from the Tale of the Two Jays what you will. Much has been written about the American Dream/Nightmare—a troubled vision that alternately has to do with freedom, wealth, sex, death, or combinations thereof. Certainly Sebring’s story shows us the fragility of success—the terrible randomness of wealth and life. Gatsby’s demise (like today’s sub-prime maestros) warns us that what we term ‘the moneyed class’ is in a constant death struggle with Darwin: you can’t always buy your way out of extinction.

Conclusion? The 1920s was a lot like the 1960s, but without acid, guitars, and possibly Peter Fonda.