If a biography is judged solely by its length and detail, then Blake Gopnik’s 900-page doorstopper about Andy Warhol can be safely adjudged to be definitive. But while I have no doubt that the book covers the key facts of the artist’s life, there still seems to be something missing.
Time and again, Gopnik tells us about Warhol’s shyness and social awkwardness but it is not made sufficiently clear how he still evolved to become such a charismatic and influential figure. In other words, we never get to the root of the magnetism that drew such a devoted following, particularly among life’s misfits, mavericks and outsiders. Continue reading
“When you have no-one, no-one can hurt you”. The bleak lyrics by Will Oldham from ‘You Will Miss Me When I Burn’ by Palace Brothers are hardly life affirming. Olivia Laing takes a more positive line from Dennis Wilson’s ‘Thoughts of You’ in which the Beach Boy sings how “Loneliness is a very special place”.
By common consensus, the career high of Nico (Christa Päffgen b. 16th October 1938 d. 18th July 1988) came in the late 1960s as a Warhol superstar in Chelsea Girls and as the singer of three songs on the The Velvet Underground’s groundbreaking debut album.
