The career of Nico, née Christa Päffgen, and what happened to her after she crossed paths with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, has certainly been well-documented (see at the bottom, Nico: Icon).  Less well-documented, though, are Nico’s “model” years, starting out in Berlin when she was all of 14.  The accompanying photos are just a few selected from the fine—and generous—set found here.
 

 
Ranging in date from ‘52-‘67, these shots certainly capture a more innocent time in Nico’s life.  I particularly like the ones below where Nico looks like she just stepped into a Godard film.  It’s somewhat incredible to think that the face in the above black-and-whites would later go on to sing this, and this, and especially this!
 

 

P.P. Arnold was one of the Ikettes, the backing singers for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue in the 60s, but after a visit to London, Mick Jagger, impressed by her powerful voice and stunning beauty—who wouldn’t be???—connected her with Andrew Loog Oldham, who signed her to his Immediate Records label, alongside acts like the Small Faces, Chris Farlowe (recognize that one?) and pre-Velvet Underground Nico (who was then recording songs Dylan had written for her with session musicians like Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones). The Small Faces backed Arnold on several of her hits, including this one, If You Think You’re Groovy, which was written by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane:

P.P. Arnold appears alongside the Small Faces for an absolutely ass-kicking version of Tin Soldier on Flemish television from 1968:

P.P. Arnold has been firmly entrenched in my “rock goddess” pantheon for years and years. It was super annoying to see Roger Waters right up front at Madison Square Garden a few years ago, only to find out that PP Arnold was one of the back-up singers—she even had a featured number—and I didn’t even know it for a couple of days after the fact!

P.P. Arnold: The First Cut is the Deepest—amazing Cat Stevens cover on Germany’s Beat Club TV show (1967)

Something Beautiful Happened (my top favorite P.P. Arnold track, audio only)

P.P. Arnold: I Go To Pieces Everytime (2007 music video)

P.P. Arnold: Life is But Nothing (60s music video)

Another amazing version of If You Think You’re Groovy (in color)

P.P. Arnold: To Love Somebody—Bee Gees cover on French TV (1968)

It used to pain me to think that the only footage in existence of the Velvet Underground performing was silent. Think about it: Have you ever seen any sync-sound film of the Velvets in any of the various documentaries made about them, Lou Reed, Nico, John Cale or Andy Warhol for that matter? I didn’t think so, but thanks to the rather enterprising employee of either the Museum of Modern Art or else the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh who liberated Symphony in Sound you can now see the Velvets in action and actually hear them too! That’s the good part.

The bad part is that this film, made to be screened behind the band onstage during The Exploding Plastic Inevitable “happenings” is pretty boring. It goes on for a LONG time with not much happening besides a drony primitive jam and a frenetic camera zooming in and out. Nico is there (with her young son Ari) but she’s not singing, just hitting a tambourine. Lou doesn’t sing either. At one point the camera droops on its tripod and no one readjusts it for a while. So it’s boring, most Warhol films were boring—Warhol himself always said his movies were better discussed than actually seen—but it is the freaking Velvet Underground playing live on camera for what is probably the ONLY time during their original incarnation, so it’s worth looking at for that reason alone. If you can get over how dull it is, it’s actually pretty cool. There are several versions of this online, this one, from Google Video is merely the longest. I don’t know if this is the whole thing but in the later moments of the bootleg DVD I have, it gets better when the cops show up due to a noise complaint and Warhol has to deal with them himself.