Nico -Morrison

Tammy Faye Starlite Channels Nico From the Velvet Underground, and Tells Us About Sex With Jim Morrison

You may have thought that Nico -- the eyelinered, somewhat racist Velvet Underground singer, Warhol superstar and film actress -- died in 1988...but you''d be wrong. She''s been reincarnated by Tammy Faye Starlite, a New York singer/comedian/performance artist who''s also known for sending up two other Tammys -- Wynette and Baker -- with country gems like "Did I Shave My Vagina for This?"

Here''s our Q&A with Starlite channeling Nico, which she also does in a new theater piece at the Bootleg Theatre


Tell us about your new show

Well, first of all, it''s about me, which should be enough reason to go to see it, because there are not many shows about me. And also, I appear in it as myself -- another reason to see it, because such occurrences are rare. And also, I have a whole band of really good musicians, with only one Jew, as far as I know. We do the songs I sang with the Velvet Underground -- the few that Lou let me sing (he is quite avaricious) -- and we do a lot of other people''s songs, like Jim Morrison''s "The End."

Jim and I had a very torrid fornication in Los Angeles, you know. Did you hear us? We were so loud. Jim was my soul brother, and he wasn''t even an African. My friend Danny Fields introduced us. Danny sprinkled the dust into our eyes, you know -- he is always making mischief.

And also in the show we do David Bowie''s "Heroes," which he wrote for me when he was in Berlin, having sexual climaxes with Iggy, after he tired of Angela. She can be very distressing, like a fishwife. And songs by Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne, both of whom were in love with me. I think they both still carry torches for me, like tiny little Olympic runners. And also in the show I am interviewed by an Australian who asks me very superficial questions. I am not a superficial person.

When was the last time you talked to Lou Reed?

Oh...Lou...I don''t quite remember...maybe it was before he married that boy, what is his name? Laurie Anderson. What a small boy he is. But Lou likes them to be little, so he can feel bigger. Lou is often very contrary. Part of his Semitic heritage, I suppose.

Tell us something we don''t know about Andy Warhol?

Andy didn''t come to my funeral, probably because I didn''t go to his. He can be very vindictive.

You were discovered by Fellini, who cast you in La Dolce Vita. What do you remember about that experience?

Well, first of all, Fellini wanted James Dean to play the lead role, but he settled for Marcello, because of availability. And I had to portray myself, even though I was already playing the part of myself in my own life -- but such dialectics confound reality, which is the closest one can get to nihilism, yes?

What current music do you like?

I like new composers like Franz Liszt, Philip Glass, Stockhausen and Arab music -- I love Arab music. I love to hear the drumming around the Amazon river, like in Fitzcarraldo. ... I also like Flo Rida and Daughtry.

What singer do you not like?

That Adam Levine, his whistling is very grating. I don''t care for it at all.

What are you the most proud of?

I think, my motor functions being able to work properly. And I am also very proud of Rob Lowe. He is doing very well right now.

Everyone from Bjork to Patti Smith to Siouxsie to Elliott Smith cites you as an influence -- but do you feel like you''re properly appreciated?

No, I think they are all trying to grab pieces of me, as if I am Black Friday. What do I have left for myself? No one thinks of that.

What do you think of L.A.?

I like it very much -- I mentioned earlier that Jim Morrison and I had consensual clothes-less relations here, at the Castle, rolling and copulating upon the parapet. That was perhaps in 1967. In the current Los Angeles I like that matriarchal family with the long dark-haired girls with the eyelashes and the undulating voices and the weddings with the giant husbands that they discard with impunity -- they are a new breed of Valkyrie.

What would you like to see while you are here?

I would love to see the head they found by the Hollywood Sign -- maybe I know him? I hope someone can show it to me.

Tammy Faye Starlite: Channeling Nico
The Velvet Underground''s resident femme fatale, reincarnated onstage

In the 44 years since it crawled to 171 on Billboard, the The Velvet Underground and Nico has become a fetish object--the dark, spare, low-affect, banana-bedizened precursor of punk and all that followed. Yet the Velvets were forced by Andy Warhol to share billing on their historic debut with--who? Fetishists know: a deep-voiced German blonde who was detached on "Femme Fatale," doleful on "All Tomorrow''s Parties," and either kind or manipulative on "I''ll Be Your Mirror."

Ms. Tammy Faye Starlite was a nice Jewish girl named Heller until a decade ago, when she donned a wig to honor the Tammys Wynette and Baker with new-country classics like "Did I Shave My Vagina for This?" In "Chelsea M�dchen," which I caught in the first of its four June Saturdays at the Duplex Cabaret Theater in Greenwich Village, Ms. Starlite turns her blond ambition to Nico, the model turned actress turned singer who was born Christa P�ffgen in 1938 and died in a bicycle accident, supposedly while finally kicking heroin, in 1988. Nico was charismatic if you''ll make allowances for the occasional racist egomaniac, but nobody''s idea of a good person. Starlite has said she''s in awe of her, but she''s said similar stuff about Tammy Faye Baker--a performance artist has to feel a certain fascination to slip into someone else''s skin. Anyone who knows The Velvet Underground and Nico knows enough about Nico to drop in at the Duplex and learn some more.

Having seen Starlite in Tammy Faye Baker guise say "The Jews are a sad people who mask their sadness in humor but they sing in minor chords," I was half-hoping she''d eviscerate the German chanteuse. But she''s subtler, respecting Nico''s outspokenness even if she''s appalled by what Nico says. Backed by a six-piece band, Starlite performed 11 songs over 90 minutes, including only one of the self-composed harmonium-rock threnodies on the John Cale-produced The Marble Index, Desertshore, and The End (whose Jim Morrison title epic was as stupid as ever). With shtick limited to an admonitory widening of the eyes and selected Germanic pronunciations, Starlite nailed Nico''s imperious mien despite her much smaller voice and stature. She improved "I''ll Be Your Mirror" by putting some care into its reassurances and did fine by Bob Dylan''s "I''ll Keep It With Mine" ("He was in love with me," she reported) and Jackson Browne''s "These Days" ("He was only 16," she purred with a fondly lascivious smile).

Starlite does her research, and many of the lines she tossed to her straight man, a historically verifiable Australian radio interviewer, may well be on record: "Like a little black boy who sings and then he is no longer black," "I am really an ope-ra [pronounced Oprah] singer," "He was a usurper of souls, like a cat." That would be Lou Reed, who "never really liked me because of what my people did to his people. I can''t make love to Jews anymore." But Joan Baez''s "morose, equine face"? I know that was Starlite''s interpolation because I asked her. "Dylan is too prolific. Goebbels was the same way"? That one I chose to leave a tantalizing mystery.

MSN Music, June 9, 2011

Nico''s solo career began with the 1967 album �Chelsea Girl� (also the name of a Warhol film), followed by �The Marble Index� (1969) and �Desertshore� (1970).

But although her famous lovers included Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jackson Browne and Iggy Pop, she never achieved the same level of fame in her own career.

In Starlite''s tribute show, the former soap actress offers a near perfect take on Nico''s exaggerated German accent in songs like �I''ll Keep It With Mine� (written by Bob Dylan) and �These Days� (Browne).

Starlite based her show on an interview given by the German- born singer a few years prior to her death in 1988 from a brain hemorrhage suffered after a bicycle accident.

�I remember being fascinated by her the first time I heard her voice,� Starlite told The Desert Sun from her home in Hoboken, N.J. �It was so low it sounded unreal.�

Nico, who was born Christa Päffgen in 1938, was a model- turned-actress-turned singer, with a voice like Marlene Dietrich and an approach to life like Greta Garbo.

In the mid-''60s, she performed with New York''s Velvet Underground (featuring Lou Reed and John Cale) at the behest of manager Andy Warhol