Nico

With the insistence of Warhol, she recorded vocals for three songs of the Velvet Underground\'s debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). At the same time, she started a solo career and released Chelsea Girl. Nico\'s friend Jim Morrison suggested that she start writing her own material. She then composed songs on an harmonium, a non-traditional rock instrument: John Cale became her musical arranger and produced The Marble Index, Desertshore, The End... and other subsequent albums.\n', ' In the 1980s, she toured extensively in Europe, USA, Australia and Japan. After a last concert in Berlin in June 1988, she went on holiday in Ibiza to rest but died after having a stroke while bicycling.\n', ' Nico was born Christa Päffgen in Cologne. When she was two years old, she moved with her mother and grandfather to the Spreewald forest outside of Berlin to escape the World War II bombardments of Cologne. Her father Wilhelm, born into a dynasty of Colognian master brewers, was enlisted as a soldier during the war and sustained head injuries that caused severe brain damage and ended his life in a psychiatric institution; according to unproven rumors, he was variously said to have died in a concentration camp, or to have faded away as a result of shell shock.\n', '