Free University, Berlin
In the next dressing-room, the other group was limbering up.
‘Hun-a … Hun-a … Hun-a …’ Hard-core, leathered-up Teutons. Very Sturm und Drang … very angry.
Raincoat dunked his teabag. ‘Betcher anythin’ they’ve all got day-jobs in a skin shop … I know the type – all saddlesoap and no polish.’
Nico chuckled. ‘You mean, they’re all fa-a-ags?’
‘Course they are. All that “Night of the Long Knives” bizness, everyone of’em a brown ’atter.
Unbelievably, Raincoat was the road manager in Demetrius’s absence (fear of flying). Raincoat’s chief concern was to ensure a plentiful supply of teabags and jammy dodgers in the dressing-room. And, of course, to assist Nico in any way possible in the acquisition and administration of her personal needs.
‘Bosch – Krupp – Bosch – Krupp …’ The storm troopers were hammering their fists on the wall. Nico had opted to let them go on first – so she could top the bill. It was five or six years since she’d last appeared in Berlin and there was an air of expectancy, at least in our dressing-room.
For a small guy, Echo’s absence left a big hole. Demetrius had attempted to fill it with a funk rhythm section from Chorlton, plus Spider Mike on guitar … slap bass and the Pinball Wizard. Nico seemed as unconcerned as ever. Either she was prepared to sacrifice her last remaining shreds of credibility by ignoring the musical incompetence of her accompaniment or, in some bizarre hubris, she perhaps imagined that the naked contrast of styles between the ‘purity’ of her solo spot and the directionless absurdity of her backing would somehow isolate and enhance her true artistic status, like a diamond in a slag-heap. She believed in the ‘Star System’, that fate confers upon certain chosen individuals a life of higher meaning and purpose.
‘Garbo lives in me.’ Nico maintained that Garbo’s soul transmigrated to her body when the Nordic goddess retired from the screen.
‘Always thought our budgie ’ad a look of Steve McQueen,’ said Raincoat.
The audience were in a slavering sulphate frenzy by the time the support group had finished. They wanted substance, they wanted meat, they wanted to fill their ears with the screams of battle and the clash of steel on steel.
We’d barely got into the first number before a blitzkrieg of beer glasses rained down upon us. Nico shooed us all off stage and told the crew to turn down the lights, leaving one single spot searchlight illuminating the harmonium. She would show them who was boss.
There were a few refractory barks from Der Jungling but the beer assault abated. Nico started up the pedals. She began to play a weird, haunting little tune in a major key. Major keys were something of a rarity in Nico’s repertoire. I listened from the wings. It was almost like a children’s nursery song, curling insidiously around the hall, its nagging simplicity simultaneously disconcerting and intriguing the audience.
‘This song is dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof.’ A few cheers. Then she began:
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles …
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
(Unity and Justice and Freedom)
Für das Deutsche Vaterland
(For the German Fatherland)
‘Hitlerite!’ someone shouted.
‘Nazi!’ yelled another. Soon the whole assembly took up the chant: ‘Na-zi! Na-zi!’
The first beer bottle glanced off the side of the harmonium.
Nico picked up her cigarettes and set-list. ‘Na-zi! Na-zi!’ They continued hurling bottles and shouting after her as she left the stage, punching their fists in the air in a perfectly synchronised salutation.
‘Jesus. I hate this country,’ said Nico afterwards. ‘Every time I come here I remember why I left.’