In 2006, Sienna Miller depicted her life in the film, Factory Girl.Here she comes / You better watch your step / She’s going to break your heart in two / It’s true … This the first verse of vocals in the song “Femme Fatale” by The Velvet Underground and Nico. Sedgwick has also continued to fascinate contemporary audiences. Most recently, Beck tackled it for his “ Record Club” online series. Through the years, “Femme Fatale” has been covered by many artists, including Big Star and REM, as well as Nico on her 1985 solo album The Blue Angel. On a live version of the song recorded in 1969, (less than a year before Reed would quit the band), and later released by Polydor as The Quine Tapes in 2001, Reed comments on Sedgwick’s reckless lifestyle: “She paid for it because she got put away… Edie’s a superstar. Both songs then appeared on the band’s debut album, The Velvet Underground And Nico, in 1967. The Velvet Underground recorded “Femme Fatale” at Scepter Studios in New York in early 1966 and the song was initially released as the b-side to “Sunday Morning” in December 1966.
(Sedgwick died of a drug overdose in 1971 Nico, born Christa Päffgen, died in 1988.) For many fans, the song has come to also represent her. Though the song was written by Reed with Sedgwick in mind, it was sung on record by Warhol’s new muse and controversial Velvets member, Nico.
FEMME FATALE THE VELVET UNDERGROUND SKIN
(Several Dylan songs from the Blonde On Blonde period, including “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat” and “Like A Rolling Stone,” are thought to have been inspired by Sedgwick.) Sedgwick, who was born in California to an wealthy but deeply troubled American family, met Warhol in 1965 and began appearing in his underground art films, such as Kitchen and Poor Little Rich Girl.īut by 1966, Warhol and Sedgwick had fallen out, and the New York socialite could be found at the Chelsea Hotel, where she became linked with Bob Dylan. I said ‘Like what?’ and he said, ‘Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale, Lou?’ So I wrote ‘Femme Fatale’ and we gave it to Nico.” “Andy said I should write a song about Edie Sedgwick. One of those stars was the heiress and socialite Edie Sedgwick. That “problem” could also apply to the character from The Velvet Underground classic, “Femme Fatale,” with it’s famous line, “She’ll build you up to just put you down.”Īccording to Victor Bockris’s Lou Reed: The Biography, Reed wrote the song at the request of Andy Warhol, who at the time was managing The Velvet Underground, while making art and films with a group of “superstars” at his Factory loft in New York. Is there a man amongst us who has not run into something like that?” In an interview with the New York Times, Reed says Lulu is a “particular kind of woman,” and describes the project as “a vehicle for a certain kind of problem men have with women… The music is trying to give you that feeling of being upset or angry, wherever she takes you. But “Lulu” is also a character that seems to reappear from another part of Reed’s past.
With this week’s release of LouTallica’s Lulu, an album of songs based on the work of German playwright Frank Wederkind that is sure to puzzle fans of both artists, Reed has returned in part to the strange theatrical world of Berlin.
No, was something else: the one that almost sunk the ship.” “My major interests are the lyrics of that. In the eclectic interview (Reed is notorious for being a tough interviewee), the songwriter talks about the impact of revisiting Berlin. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, with an album and film of the performance following in 2008. At the time of the interview, Reed had recently performed his 1973 magnum opus Berlin at St. We featured Lou Reed in a cover story in 2009. When downtown rock and roll legend Lou Reed and heavy metal gods Metallica shocked music fans everywhere with the announcement that they were collaborating on a project, we thought it’d be a good time to dig into the American Songwriter archives.
Finding the roots of LouTallica’s “Lulu” in an early Velvets classic
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