FROM WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT: THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND DAY BY DAY
Early November 1967
The Velvet Underground are the only rock group with whom Nico is known
to have performed and recorded more or less as a regular member. But as
late as November 1967 she seems still to be thinking about singing in a
rock band, rather than going all-out as a solo act. It’s around now
that she meets The United States Of America, a psychedelic-rock group
recently formed in Los Angeles. The group is exploring a mixture of
avant-garde/electronic music and rock that bears some rough resemblance
to some of The Velvet Underground’s own ventures in that direction;
leader Joseph Byrd and vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz have in fact
performed at least once with original VU drummer Angus MacLise, back on
May 19 1963, as part of an octet led by La Monte Young.
“Our manager or someone told me that Nico had asked
to be in the band, and that they were going to ask me first as to what
I thought,” Moskowitz recalls. “I said, ‘No, I don’t think that’s a
good idea,’ and the band really didn’t argue with me. I don’t think
they wanted her in. She was stunningly gorgeous, but I don’t think they
wanted that kind of a singer. I think they wanted a singer with maybe
more range, more presence in the voice. She was more like a Lotte Lenya
kind of singer. It was about her singing more than anything else,
’cause I think having a star within The United States Of America would
have put us on the map.”
In hindsight it’s difficult to imagine how Nico, who
has already begun a solo career, would fit into the USA – who will have
broken up by mid 1968 in any case – or indeed almost any other band on
the scene. As it happens, her fate might perhaps be sealed by her
aloofness on the one occasion when she and Moskowitz do meet during the
fall of 1967. UCLA humanities professor Kurt von Meier has arranged a
small party to bring together The United States Of America, Country Joe
McDonald, and Nico – a most unlikely combination that doesn’t mesh too
well. The group had just met McDonald backstage at a gig at the Ash
Grove in Los Angeles, Moskowitz explains, “But meeting Nico! God, this
was going to be hot stuff. We’re all sitting around a coffee table, and
finally Joe and Nico show up arm-in-arm. They look at us, they walk out
to the patio. They came back in, peeked at us, didn’t say a word,
walked back out again. And this went on and on for the whole of the
evening! They keep popping in through different doorways, looking at
us, and then walking out. Either they were in thrall with each other,
or smoking or doping up or something, and just didn’t want to share it.
“Had she spoken to me that night, had she sat down
in the living room with us and introduced herself like a mensch, it
might not have been a bad idea to have two singers. Looking back now,
that would have been a very intriguing idea. But she was trying to do
an end run, which I didn’t go for. And I probably felt threatened
because she was so snobby that night.”
Although the exact date of this incident is not
clear, it’s probably somewhere around November 1–5. The United States
Of America’s engagement at the Ash Grove – their very first public
concerts – runs from October 27–November 5, but Nico probably doesn’t
make it out to LA until November 1 at the earliest, having played a run
of shows at the Scene in New York at the end of October.
