Nico's former apartment, Prestwich

Nico was a bohemian German singer, songwriter, actress, and model (real name Christa Päffgen) who still has a cult following. For a time she lived in Prestwich three miles north of Manchester city and here I am outside her attic apartment.

I visited the house in Prestwich Park Road South in Prestwich. It was flats when Nico lived there and she was in the attic one. There was a mattress on the floor and the place was a mess. A basic 1930s gas fire was the only source of heat. Neighbours encountering her found an unsmiling, aloof, monosyllabic, sometimes grumpy woman who seemed to be living in another world (she was off heroin and into booze at the time.) She was often seen playing pool in the local pub.

How did she come to live in a district of Greater Manchester? In 1981 she arrived in Manchester to do a concert. She met Alan Wise who was a key figure in the birth of The Haçienda nightclub and Factory Records. He became her manager. She was hovering above poverty and addiction and Alan could get her regular work and a legal supply of methadone. Even though this was before Manchester received mega-millions of pounds worth of investment Nico said she liked Manchester as it reminded her of Berlin. After doing a couple of shows abroad Alan found her this attic flat on a quiet road of capacious Victorian houses. She was living there with two lads who were into the Manchester music scene (they kept chickens and ferrets in the garden.) Neighbours didn’t get to know this elusive free-spirited German who was a cult figure across the music world but a benign collision of tragedy and beauty to them.

She didn’t make it to fifty. After a concert in Berlin in June 1988 she flew to Ibiza to visit her son. At noon one hot day she told him she was going off on her bike to buy marijuana. Alone she came off the bike. A couple came across her on the ground waving a book, one side of her body immobile. Three hospitals refused to take her thinking her a vagrant, a druggie or a foreigner lacking medical insurance. A forth took her in and doctors unable to find any obvious wounds suspected sunstroke had triggered a heart attack. A scan showed she'd suffered a cerebral haemorrhage (a bleed on the brain) probably from banging her head on the road. She spent hours drifting in and out of consciousness. Life-saving injections didn't work as there was not one viable vein to breach. She passed away at 8pm on Monday 18th July 1988. Nobody knows what happened. Did she faint from the heat or exhaustion? Ride in a wall? Loose her footing on the pedals and come off? Her ashes were interred in her mum’s grave outside Berlin. Her son died of a heroin overdose in Paris aged 60.

I’d been grave-hunting around Prestwich before and knew of a strong Jewish population. Once walking down a lane street to find the home of wrestler Giant Haystacks I can remember seeing men in blacks suits and Homburgs hats mowing lawns and trimming hedges in hot sun.

The Sat-Nav took me to Prestwich Park Road South. I took some footage and photos and the owners didn't appear. They're probably used to loitering geeks. Mark and Janet Wraeg bought the house in 1988 when Nico was still living here (considered to be “just this mad woman upstairs in the attic.”) They never knew Nico to receive any visitors. Due to countless leaks and lack of heating system the building was almost uninhabitable. They told Nico builders would be arriving to undertake major renovations. They didn’t try to evict her as she said she was going to visit her son in Ibiza and would leave once her travel documents and methadone scripts had arrived. One day she came downstairs carrying two black bin bags and wheeled out the bike she left in the hall. She got the bike and bags into a waiting black cab and they didn’t see her again. About two months later they read she’d died in Ibiza.

Good to see Nico's final home. I did a salute and left.