Personal Life
Nico had an affair with French actor Alain Delon which produced a son Christian Aaron Boulogne, whom Nico called "Ari." Delon denied paternity and Nico had difficulty raising Ari, so the boy was raised by Delon's parents. Ari became a photographer, and had a son in 1999.
Nico saw herself as part of a tradition of 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 Ibiza, 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 later in the 1980s, when she lived intermittently between London and Manchester.
During the final years of her life she was based around the Prestwich and Salford area of Manchester and although she was still struggling with addiction had started to become interested in music again.
Nico was a heroin addict for over 15 years. In the book Songs They Never Play on the Radio, James Young, a member of her band in the 1980s, recalls many examples of her troubling behaviour due to her "overwhelming" addiction – and also that Nico claimed to have never taken the drug while with the Velvets/Factory scene but only began using during her relationship with Philippe Garrel in the 1970s. Shortly before her death, Nico stopped taking heroin and began methadone replacement therapy and embarked upon a regimen of bicycle exercise and healthy eating.
Despite her career in music, she was deaf in one ear, which made it difficult for her to understand what others were saying.
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