I once met the legendary Nico, very briefly. I was hoping to interview her for the first issue of a magazine a friend of mine was planning to launch the following month. We went to speak to her backstage after one of her solo performances in a small nightclub. She was sitting on a rickety chair, with dyed black hair, dressed entirely in black against a black stage curtain, smoking a cigarette. No longer the ravishing beauty of the Velvet Underground/Dolce Vita days, she was still a formidable looking woman. You felt her presence, and no mistake. She looked us up and down slowly without saying a word, waiting for us to speak first. The publisher said that we'd like to arrange an interview, and that we'd already taken some film of her concert that night. In fact I had taken a few still photographs but she thought we meant 'film' as in 'movie film'. She stared icily at us for a moment, then drawled in her heavy Germanic accent, 'What a f***ing cheek'. This left the publisher floundering for words, so I stepped in and managed to placate her by explaining that we were only talking about a couple of snaps, and her mood improved. 'What's the magazine called?', she asked. In fact it didn't have a name at that time, or not a definite one, so I plucked out one of the names that had been bandied about in a meeting and said 'Mercury'. 'Nice name', she said, before adding that was leaving early the next day and couldn't fit in an interview but to contact her if she was back in town again. Nico did play again in the same nightclub not long afterwards, and she was superb - performing her Drama of Exile album with a full band - but the magazine had failed to materialise, and (regrettably) I didn't go backstage and ask for the promised interview.

I’ll Be Your Mirror
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
’cause I see you

I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty that you are
But if you don’t, let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won’t be afraid

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
’cause I see you.

Lou Reed