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Christa Päffgen, who died 20 years ago, would have been 70 next week. We recall the forbidding German chanteuse – better known as Velvet Underground plus-one Nico--in this riveted revisiting of her 1968 masterpiece The Marble Index. The album's wasteland dread never sounded so apt… -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

"FROZEN WARNINGS close to mine, close to the frozen borderline..."

Close? Way beyond it, luvvy, way beyond outlaw romance. The sound of the steppes. Ice-cold, timeless, monolithic. Hard to take, too: it polarises. Nico-junkies will retreat to distant confinement, to emerge weeks later pure-purged, translucently Aryan. Others reach for their gun, shrieking, "Oh that whine..." Or just laugh.

"Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain..."

It's no accident that Nico should record Jim Morrison's "The End" on a subsequent bout in the studio: her version of Morrison's apocalypse was ice to his fire. A long slow breath of anguish at the mangled flotsam of a civilization, far in the future, as far away, as remote as Roman remnants are to us now. The message? Civilizations do die. Tee-hee, that means ours...

"In the cold dark snow..."

Who needs history? History is only relevant in rock 'n' roll when there's nothing else to talk about. OK, I mean I could say that Nico was doing the East German hop… no, further east, Polish, Balkan, Caspian, ever east to those black holes, those gaping empty spaces on our earth which we've tamed, haha... before Bowie, actually. Before the studied (as ever) but so right, oh-so-effective Low motion that enabled the chameleon to stay ahead, to mystify, to soundtrack our mesmerized isolation. A woman in 1968? Lulu? "History" has caught up.

"I don't sing for the audience. I try to remain alone as much as I can...not to make contact at all..."

But what does it mean?

Marble: opaque, with hidden depths, massive, monolithic. Index an indicator, to the now alienation/remoto-chic, beyond that, to the western wildernesses of pain to come... Whatever you want actually. You only need me to tell you to the extent that the plastic that contains these associations is deleted (I mean, how fatuous) and this should be rectified immediately--none of this elitist-without-a-cause I've got this album kaka, you should all be able to hear this in full uncensored shrink-wrapped sensurround (wear your woolies tho') courtesy of fab Elektra, home of Bread and other heavy manna...

"I can't respond in the old way..."

Well, she did this in 1968 with John Cale producing and it was his first real go since leaving our rave Velvet Underground (and didn't he do well?) and then he did the Stooges which as you've been told countless times is important (believe what you read!) and it was her second album and further out than Chelsea Girl, which is also important and deleted (courtesy of Verve/MGM, home of, gateway to, etc.) and it has eight tracks and side two is the slab 'cos the three tracks "Julius Caesar," "Frozen Warnings," "Evening Of Light" all merge as a mood and it really is what I say it is and nobody bought it and I did (in a bargain bin, natch) and listened to it in darkened rooms at midnight and just oozed into those dark-brown plains plucked by the wind, the mass of the thunderheads complementing/competing with the brokenglass mountains and the violin fights the electric violascreech and nobody wins...

"While, somewhere in the depths, a harmonium played..."

Well, I'm 24 now and older but really I'm regressing systematically and I listen still to The Marble Index, all the time, because it's so right, so reassuring. I'm so glad to know the post-apocalypse is covered...even better than Pere Ubu--I mean, they show signs of life.

Nico doesn't. Do you? Really?

Read more Nico and Velvet Underground interviews and reviews at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 13,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.