Nico, the cool enigma

NICO USED to be a blonde; you can see it on the cover of the Velvet Underground's first album, on a photograph from which her face stares out very haughtily, very icily. Very Germanic. She changed its colour three years ago, just after she finished being the band's chanteuse. A symbolic act, a renunciation of all aspects of Warhol's theatre of junk nightmares? Maybe. She is more prosaic, though: "Blondes are considered glamorous" — she pronounces the ou as oo — "and I don't want to be thought of as glamorous. When you're a blonde, people place you. Anyway, I like my hair the way it is."