The Marble Index (album) - Song Information

Song Information

The singer introduced "No One Is There" at a live concert in Copenhagen, Denmark on 14 February 1982 by saying, "This song I wrote for Richard Nixon on Halloween. I want to dedicate it to Ronald Reagan." The performance was later included on the 1982 live album, Do or Die: Diary 1982.

"Frozen Warnings" went on to be one of the most performed song from this period of Nico's career. It appears frequently in the extensive volume of live recordings from her final years, including from her famous performance at the Library Theater in Manchester. The song also exists in two studio versions, one with Cale's synthesizer found on The Marble Index as well as a slightly longer version without the synthesizer but an additional repetition of the lyrics "the frozen borderline".

"Lawns of Dawns" was said to be about Nico's experience with peyote in the California desert with Jim Morrison in the late 1960s. Nico commented: "The light of the dawn was a very deep green and I believed I was upside down and the sky was the desert which had become a garden and then the ocean. I do not swim and I was frightened when it was water and more resolved when it was land. I felt embraced by the sky-garden."

"Ari's Song" concerns Nico's only child, Ari Boulogne. While she recorded the track, she brought pictures of the child with her into the booth for inspiration.

"Prelude" is actually a minute-long instrumental of the outtake "Réve Réveiller", which was a song sung in French that was excluded from the album's release.

The album's final track, "Evening of Light", was made into a music video to promote the album. It features Nico walking around a field with others, including a white-faced Iggy Pop, who run amok while Nico elegantly strides with the wind blowing her hair in her face. The clip ends with the men erecting a cross and setting it aflame. (The clip was shot behind The Stooges' house in Ann Arbor.)