“Few people in or out of the film industry found it easy to believe producer Joshua Sinclair when he announced to the press, late in 1977, that Marlene Dietrich was about to break her retirement and self-imposed isolation within her Paris apartment. She had, Sinclair continued, agreed to appear on screen in her first speaking role in eighteen years, in the German-English film Just a Gigolo, with rock star David Bowie. Lonely for precisely the human contact she paradoxically but insistently rejected, she also found irresistible a salary of $250,000 for two half-days of work in a Paris studio, where the sets for her scene were transported from Berlin … On a bitterly cold morning in February 1978, she arrived on time for work, “her jaw set and her shoulders hunched with determination”, as an eye witness recalled … next morning, Dietrich returned for the more difficult second task – to sing the film’s title song, which was to be heard near the end of the picture … far from offering the perfunctory delivery of a song she disliked, Marlene Dietrich sang with heart-rending simplicity. Nothing she had done on stage or screen over a period of sixty years could have prepared witnesses that day (or viewers of Just a Gigolo since then) for her astonishing rendition of this simple confessional song. On the words “youth will pass away”, there may be heard a tremor of sadness in her voice that was without precedent in any prior recording or theatrical appearance … And when she came to “life goes on”, the voice became plangent, almost a whisper as she managed, to poignant effect, an octave. In only one take, the scene and the song were captured forever. There was a moment of reverential silence round her and then the bystanders broke into applause.”

/ From Dietrich (1992) by Donald Spoto /

“There is something medieval about her: I have the feeling that if you picked Nico up and dropped her back into a village in the 14th century she would not be disconcerted, and might even feel more at home … In the liner notes on her first album Chelsea Girl there is a very typical Nico statement about Lenny Bruce. “I like him for that thing … that nothing is wrong to do or to say or to take … he really destroyed himself in the end.” Ten years later her beautiful face shows the ravages of a life lived much too hard, but if she is self-destructive, she is contentedly so. I don’t think she suffers much from self-doubt or anxiety or regret. There is something impervious about Nico, as if her real life is lived at some still centre of herself where experience cannot go. People call her music depressing, but it is very soothing too: her songs are as tranquil as morphine, peaceful like the grave.”

/ From Mary Harron’s interview with Nico in the November 1978 issue of New Wave magazine. Harron, of course, would go on to direct provocative films like I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page /

“Nina Hagen was an opera-singing punk rock incendiary from Germany who entered 1980 with a major label deal, massive sales figures in Europe, and an outsized fanbase that packed most of the rooms she played … She was riveting not because of her flashy clothes, thick eye makeup or neon hair - anyone can dress the part. It was the way she screamed, the way she fell into deep and bizarre voices and contorted her face to the delight of her fans … (Hagen was) an incomparable performer, a new mother, an activist, a clown, a disciple of Christ, a true believer in UFOs, and without question, a star.”

/ From Pitchfork’s review of NunSexMonkRock (1982) /

“Nina Hagen is at once the most outlandish of rock clowns and the most intensely committed and flaked-out female pop visionary since Patti Smith herself.”

/ From Tim Holmes’ review of the album Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985) in Rolling Stone /

“My best memory is of coming into the basement one afternoon for office hours (5 PM to 8 PM), unlocking the door and finding a gorgeous German woman staring into a TV with no reception that was all snow and blaring white noise. “Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Nina Hagen?” “Yes.” She sat, not moving, still staring into the screen. She must have been locked in there all night since I was the first one down there that day. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Communicating vis zee aliens," she said, still staring. I left her to it, and not long after that she was gone.”

/ Billy Beyond recalling a freaky encounter with Nina Hagen in the article “A Nearly Complete Oral History of the Pyramid Club” by Mickey Boardman in Paper magazine, October 2024 /

“She is beautiful and more than beautiful; she is surprising. Darkness in her abounds, and all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery dimly glistens, and like a lightning flash, her glance illuminates: it is an explosion in the dark.” From the poem The Desire to Paint (1869) by Charles Baudelaire.

"She didn't bother with neurosis; she went straight to psychotic." Music manager and publicist Danny Fields on his friend Nico.

“When she sang with the Velvet Underground it was like a loved one taking a razor to your throat.” Steven Puchalski, Slimetime: A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies (1996) “If they ever held auditions for the Angel of Death, Nico probably would have walked it.” From a 1988 music press obituary for Nico.

“Make no mistake, my friends, for this record is dark, dark. Its dominant mood is Gothick: guttering candles sputtering black wax on cold stone floors as the sound of Nico’s harmonium drifts in from another room. It doesn’t have a beat, and you can’t dance to it.”

/ Rolling Stone magazine’s review of Desertshore /

“Nico isn't here to be pleasant, neither is she a ghoul: she's a presence which makes us conscious of our mortality and of our own uncertainty with it. It's both life-affirming and morbid at the same time, and it feels like you went on a wondrous hike along the Styx and have faced death after listening to the record.”

/ Sputnik Music review of Desertshore /

“The Nico-(John) Cale collaboration continued on Desertshore. Here the disjunctive imagery is set to slightly less gothic arrangements than before, proving Nico’s chanting (she doesn’t “sing” any more than she writes “songs”) can be as chilling a cappella as it is accompanied by a horror-movie soundtrack.”

/ From The Trouser Press Record Guide (1985) /

S&D: What are your plans? Nico: Possibly the album, other than that … I would give myself at most, five more years … S&D: Well, things aren’t going to last much longer than that anyway. But you – you’re irreplaceable …   Nico: The reason that I don’t shoot myself right now is because I know I’m the only one.

/ Nico interviewed in the San Francisco punk zine Search and Destroy in 1977 /

“In recent years Nico dyed her hair jet black, moved to Manchester and became a pillar of the punk movement, of which the Velvets had been the forerunners. She also gave up heroin for bicycling, which was to turn out the more dangerous amusement – she died when she fell off a bicycle while on holiday.”

/ From The Daily Telegraph obituary for Nico /

“I overheard her being asked how she would like to be remembered. She deadpanned: “By a tombstone.””

/ John Keenan, club promoter, quoted in The Guardian in 2019 /

“Nina Hagen is at once the most outlandish of rock clowns and the most intensely committed and flaked-out female pop visionary since Patti Smith herself.”

/ From Tim Holmes’ review of the album Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985) in Rolling Stone /