Editing Nico (section)

==Personal life==
On 11 August 1962, she gave birth to her son, [[Christian Aaron Boulogne]], whom she called Ari.<ref name="shortbio" /> She was living with Nicos Papatakis in 1962 but told him that [[Alain Delon]] was the father of her child. Delon always denied it, and it has not been verified. Unable to raise her child, she left Ari to be raised by Delon's mother and his stepfather.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1996/02/02/nico-shows-ex-models-disintegration/|newspaper= Chicago Tribune |title='Nico' Shows Ex-model's Disintegration|first= Michael|last=Willmington|date=2 February 1996|access-date=24 July 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2001/0522/blickpunkt/0001/index.html |title=Der Muttersohn |date=22 May 2001 |newspaper=[[Berliner Zeitung]] |language=de |access-date=3 September 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080304061858/http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2001/0522/blickpunkt/0001/index.html |archive-date=4 March 2008}}</ref> Ari became a photographer and actor.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sanjek|first=David|date=September 1996|title=Film review|journal=Popular Music and Society|volume=20|issue=3|pages=171–172|doi=10.1080/03007769608591640|issn=0300-7766}}</ref> He died of a heroin overdose, aged 60, in Paris in 2023.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.thelocal.fr/20230521/french-man-who-claimed-to-be-son-of-alain-delon-found-dead | title=French man who claimed to be son of Alain Delon found dead | date=21 May 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://newsrebeat.com/world-news/169511.html | title=Photographer Ari Boulogne, who claimed to be the son of Alain Delon, has been found dead - News Rebeat | date=20 May 2023}}</ref>

Nico saw herself as part of a tradition of [[bohemianism|bohemian]] artists, which she traced back to the [[Romanticism]] of the early 19th century. She led a nomadic life, living in different countries. Apart from Germany, where she grew up, and Spain, where she died, Nico lived in Italy and France in the 1950s, spent most of the 1960s in the US, and lived in London in the early 1960s and again in the 1980s, when she moved between London and [[Manchester]].<ref name="guardian-simpson"/>

In 1965 she became pregnant during a three-month affair with Brian Jones but decided to have an abortion in London that same year. This event prompted her to seek out a closer relationship with her son Ari.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Nico: Life And Lies Of An Icon |last=Witts |first=Richard |publisher=Ebury Publishing |year=1993 |isbn=9780863696558 |pages=122 |quote=She had just undergone an abortion in London, having discovered she was pregnant by Brian Jones.}}</ref>

Nico was a [[heroin addict]] for over 15 years. In the book ''Songs They Never Play on the Radio'', [[James Young (British musician)|James Young]], a member of her band in the 1980s, recalls many examples of her troubling behaviour due to her "overwhelming" addiction – and that Nico claimed never to have taken the drug while in the Velvets/Factory scene but only began using during her relationship with French film director [[Philippe Garrel]] in the 1970s.<ref name="songsnever">{{cite book |last=Young |first=James |title=Songs They Never Play on the Radio: Nico, the Last Bohemian |year=1992 |publisher=Bloomsbury |location=London |isbn=0-7475-1194-2 |page=150}}</ref>

The final years of her life were mainly spent in the [[Prestwich]]<ref name="guardian-simpson"/> and [[City of Salford|Salford]] areas of Greater Manchester. Although she was still struggling with addiction, she became interested in music again.<ref name="guardian-simpson"/> For a few months in the 1980s, she shared an apartment in Brixton, London, with punk poet [[John Cooper Clarke]]<ref name="guardian-simpson"/> but not as a couple.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/may/29/john-cooper-clarke-punk-poet-interview|newspaper= The Guardian |title=John Cooper Clarke: 'It's diabolical how poor I am'|first= Simon|last=Hattenstone|date=29 May 2012|access-date=24 July 2018}}</ref>

In his autobiography, musician [[Cheetah Chrome]] depicted his friendship with a strung-out Nico in the 1980s and their mutual dependence.<ref name="Cheetah Chrome">{{cite book |last=Chrome |first=Cheetah |title=Cheetah Chrome: A Dead Boy's Tale: From the Front Lines of Punk Rock |year=2010 |publisher=Voyageur Press |location=Minneapolis |isbn=9780760337738 |page=288}}</ref> Shortly before her death, Nico stopped using heroin and began [[Opioid replacement therapy|methadone replacement therapy]] as well as a regimen of bicycle exercise and healthy eating.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Nico's friend [[Danny Fields]], the American journalist who helped her sign to [[Elektra Records]], described her as "[[Nazism|Nazi]]-esque", saying, "Every once in a while there'd be something about Jews and I'd be, 'But Nico, I'm Jewish,' and she was like 'Yes, yes, I don't mean you.'"<ref name="guardian" /> According to Fields, in the early 1970s, Nico attacked a mixed-race woman at the [[Hotel Chelsea|Chelsea Hotel]] with a smashed wine glass, sticking it in her eye while saying, "I hate black people."<ref name="guardian">{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/mar/16/popandrock3 |title=From the Velvets to the void |first=Simon |last=Reynolds |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=16 March 2007 |access-date=6 December 2013}}</ref> [[Island Records]] dropped Nico after she told an interviewer that she did not like "[[Negro]]es" and that they had "features like animals".<ref name="laPointe">{{cite news|last=LaPointe|first=Michael|date=July 30, 2018|title=Nico: Beyond the Icon|work=[[The Paris Review]]|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/30/nico-beyond-the-icon/|access-date=July 30, 2018}}</ref> Nico said she had been raped at the age of thirteen by a black American soldier who had been court-martialed and executed; the biographer [[Richard Witts]] could find no record of this, even when similar incidents were "assiduously documented", while biographer [[Jennifer Otter Bickerdike]] uncovered personal documents that support the story.<ref name="laPointe" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite magazine| issn = 0028-792X| last = Dillon| first = Brian| title = The Misunderstood Voice of Nico| magazine = The New Yorker| accessdate = 2023-10-01| date = 2022-04-08| url = https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-misunderstood-voice-of-nico}}</ref> According to Witts, Nico had [[misogynist]]ic tendencies, describing women as poison.<ref name="laPointe" />

In 2019, Nigel Bagley, Nico's co-manager and promoter in Manchester, said he never saw Nico express racist views, and that she lived in a multicultural city and was friendly with their American-[[Jamaica]]n doorman. Her drummer, Graham Dowdall, noted that Nico had used [[India]]n instruments and worked with [[north Africa]]ns. He said she was "certainly capable of very casual racism" about her promoter, Alan Wise, who was Jewish, but that this was her way of "having a go" at him.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Simpson|first=Dave|date=2019-07-05|title=Nico in Manchester: 'She loved the architecture – and the heroin'|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/05/nico-in-manchester-she-loved-the-architecture-and-the-heroin|access-date=2020-03-18|issn=0261-3077}}</ref>