I’ve wondered ever since I saw Oliver Stone’s Doors movie–was Nico really lovers with Jim Morrison?
Nico and Morrison did have a brief, intense romance circa 1967. Their courtship involved lots of arguing and hair-pulling; Stone focussed on blowjobs. (Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek lauded Nico’s oral technique on Morrison at (creepy) length in his autobiography, saying she understood “the proper use of the tongue on the underside of the penis.”) Nico (1938-1988), a German-born model and chanteuse, had a long list of liaisons with other rock stars–including Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground (she sang on the group’s first record). She said she liked to make pancakes for Reed; John Cale described their affair as “consummated and constipated.” After Nico left the Velvets, she had an affair with a teenaged Jackson Browne, who played in her band and wrote “These Days” for her. Her other lovers included Iggy Pop; when the Stooges were getting started, she moved to Ann Arbor and spent three months living with him. (“Nico would try to cook for us,” Pop later said, “but she would cook a pot of brown rice and pour half a container of Tabasco sauce in it.”) She gave Pop expensive bottles of wine, lessons on how to deal with record-company executives, and as a bonus, his first case of VD.
(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)