The Marble Index

Template:About Template:Good article {{safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst-infobox||$params=italic_title,name,type,longtype,artist,cover,border,alt,caption,released,recorded,venue,studio,genre,length,language,label,director,producer,compiler,chronology,prev_title,prev_year,year,next_title,next_year,misc|$extra=italic_title,longtype,border,caption,language,director,compiler,chronology,year,misc|$aliases=italic title>italic_title,Italic title>italic_title,Name>name,Type>type,image>cover,Cover>cover,Border>border,Alt>alt,Caption>caption,Longtype>longtype,Artist>artist,Released>released,Recorded>recorded,Venue>venue,Studio>studio,Genre>genre,Length>length,Language>language,Label>label,Director>director,Producer>producer,Compiler>compiler,Chronology>chronology,Misc>misc|$flags=override|$B={{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Is infobox in lead|main|[Ii]nfobox [Aa]lbum}}|true|{{#if:Template:Has short description | |Template:Short description|noreplace}}}}{{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other Template:Category handler Template:Main other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox album with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y|italic_title |type |name |image |cover |border |alt |caption |longtype |artist |released |recorded |venue |studio |genre |length |language |label |director |producer |compiler |prev_title|prev_year|next_title|next_year|chronology|year|misc}}{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|error_category=Music infoboxes with Module:String errors|A|1=Chelsea Girl1967Desertshore1970studioThe Marble IndexThe Marble Index by Nico.pngClose-up, black-and-white photograph of a dark haired woman, looking at the camera with a deep sightNicoNovember 1968September 1968Elektra, Los Angeles*Avant-garde

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The Marble Index is the second studio album by the German musician Nico, released in November 1968 on Elektra Records. The avant-garde sound introduced in the album—a stark contrast with her folk pop debut, Chelsea Girl (1967)—was the result of the combination of Nico's droning harmonium and somber vocals, and the producer John Cale's musical arrangements, which were inspired by modern European classical music. Nico envisioned the release as an attempt to get artistic legitimacy and changing the looks that had made her famous as a fashion model.

Although The Marble Index was largely unnoticed when it was released, it has achieved acclaim over time. Nico's unprecedented sound and personal style—both recognised for their tenebrous quality—are considered an influence on several artists. Most notably, they served as a musical and visual prototype for the 1980s gothic rock scene. Nico and Cale continued working together, releasing two more studio albums in the same vein—Desertshore (1970) and The End... (1974)—which are now considered parts of a trilogy.

BackgroundEdit

File:Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with Nico.png

Nico at Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, where she performed with the Velvet Underground, Template:Circa 1967

Nico had made her recording debut in 1965 with the single "I'm Not Sayin'".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> At Andy Warhol's suggestion, she joined the Velvet Underground as a chanteuse, and sang three tracks on their 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico.<ref name="gadfly"/> Nico and the group were regulars at the Factory.<ref name="icon">Template:Cite AV media</ref> However, Lou Reed was reluctant to include her in the band.<ref name="gadfly" /> This, coupled with her desire to be a soloist, made Nico leave the group as casually as she had joined.<ref name="icon" /> The band members continued to accompany her as she performed on her own and played on her 1967 solo debut, Chelsea Girl. The folk-pop album included songs by Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, and Jackson Browne (with whom Nico had a brief affair).<ref name="gadfly"/>

The American singer Jim Morrison, whom Nico later called her "soul brother", encouraged her to write her own songs; this was "a key breakthrough" for her.<ref name="tothevoid">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They were together in California in July and August 1967, often driving into the desert and experimenting with peyote.<ref name="Witts" /> Morrison, who encouraged Nico to write down her dreams, read the writings of Mary Shelley, William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to her.<ref name="Witts" /> He recorded his chemical visions and dreams, using the material for his songs as he imagined the opium-addicted Coleridge had worked.<ref name="Witts" /> In 1986 Nico said, "He taught me to write songs. I never thought that I could ... He really inspired me a lot. It was like looking in a mirror then."<ref name="stevenwalker">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She began writing material and performing it to an intimate audience at Steve Paul's club, the Scene.<ref name="gadfly" /> Nico composed her music on a harmonium bought, according to Richard Witts, from a San Francisco hippie.<ref name="Witts">Template:Cite book</ref> Her manager, Danny Fields, said that she may have acquired it through the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.<ref name="uncut" /> The harmonium became her trademark with which "she discovered not only her own artistic voice but a whole new realm of sound".<ref name="Carew">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

The Marble Index was produced during a little-studied period of Nico's life. For The QuietusTemplate:'s Matthew Lindsay, "the liminal drift of these years only emphasizes the music's amorphous moorings and lack of precedent."<ref name="quietus">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Nico approached Danny Fields in mid-1968 with the desire to make an album and prove herself artistically.<ref name="uncut" /> Resentful of her beauty, she radically changed her image – dyeing her hair red and wearing black clothes in an effort to distance herself from what had made her a popular fashion model.<ref name="icon" /> Cale said, "She hated the idea of being blonde and beautiful, and in some ways she hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her was grief ... So The Marble Index was an opportunity for her to prove she was a serious artist, not just this kind of blonde bombshell."<ref name="uncut">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Nico already had the title for the album in mind from The Prelude, William Wordsworth's magnum opus. In the poem Wordsworth contemplates a statue of Isaac Newton in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge: "with his prism and silent face / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone."<ref name="Spin">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Asked about the significance of this Wordsworth quote, Nico replied, "I sometimes find a little of my own poetry in other poets, yes. Incidentally, or accidentally."<ref name="stevenwalker" />

RecordingEdit

Template:Quote box Fields relayed Nico's request to Jac Holzman, head of Elektra Records;<ref name="gadfly" /> she then went to Holzman's Broadway office with her harmonium and performed for him.<ref name="gadfly" /><ref name="uncut" /> Despite the challenging nature of Nico's music, Holzman agreed to release her album and assigned Frazier Mohawk to produce it, despite Nico and John Cale's desire to work together. He gave her a budget of $10,000 (Template:Inflation), with a four-day recording schedule at a studio on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.<ref name="gadfly" /><ref name="uncut"/> Fields contacted Cale, who was the album's de facto producer after Mohawk gave him free rein. According to Mohawk, he spent most of the sessions using heroin with Nico.<ref name="uncut" /> Her drug use is cited as influencing the album's sound; Simon Reynolds wrote, "While it may be a reductive interpretation to regard The Marble Index as the ultimate heroin album, its hunger for narcosis, its frigid expanses, recalls William Burroughs's description of the junkie's quest for a metabolic 'Absolute Zero'."<ref name="reynolds">Template:Cite book</ref>

During the sessions, Nico and Cale "fought at every opportunity"; Nico was "in pain" while recording.<ref name="mozipedia"/> Nico and Cale worked on one song at a time, mixing the album as they went, with her voice and harmonium the starting points for each track.<ref name="uncut" /> Cale said about the recording process:

The harmonium was out of tune with everything. It wasn't even in tune with itself. She insisted on playing it on everything so we had to figure out ways to separate her voice from it as much as possible and then find instrumental voices that would be compatible with the harmonium track ... As an arranger you're usually trying to take the songs and put a structure on them, but what I thought was valuable was when you took the centre out of the track and worked around the central core of the tonality and changes. That left you with a sort of floating free-form tapestry behind what she was doing, which is when things became more abstract.<ref name="uncut" />

He also said, "I was pretty much left alone for two days, and I let [Nico] in at the end. I played her [the album] song by song, and she'd burst into tears. 'Oh! It's so beautiful!', 'Oh, it's so beautiful!' You know, this is the same stuff that people tell me, 'Oh! It's so suicidal!'"<ref name="Witts"/> The original release of The Marble Index included eight of 12 songs Nico recorded.<ref name="pitchfork">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "Roses in the Snow", "Nibelungen", "Sagen die Gelehrten" and "Reve Reveiller" were left off the album.<ref name="allmusicborderline" /> The finished album was barely 30 minutes long, which "was as much apparently as Frazier Mohawk, mixing and sequencing it, could stand without starting to feel suicidal".<ref name="uncut" />

CompositionEdit

Template:Quote box The Marble IndexTemplate:'s avant-garde style distanced Nico from rock and pop.<ref name="Carew"/><ref name="Unterberger">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> When an interviewer pointed out the contrast with Chelsea Girl, Nico said that and The Marble Index was "not supposed to be noise, because most pop music to me is noise, alright?"<ref name="stevenwalker" /> According to Cale, the album "makes more sense in terms of advancing the modern European classical tradition than it does as folk or rock music".<ref name="uncut" /> With Nico's compositions based around one or two chords,<ref name="seth" /> Cale decided to avoid drone and raga (Eastern music common on the West Coast at the time) in favor of a European classical approach in his arrangements.<ref name="uncut" /> The music has been compared with Germanic folk music,<ref name="davidhoward">Template:Cite book</ref> Gregorian chant,<ref name="AV3">Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> medieval music such as madrigals,<ref name="Spin" /><ref name="AV3" /><ref name="firstgoth">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> European avant-garde,<ref name="davidhoward" /> Romanticism,<ref name="hogan">Template:Cite book</ref> and the music of Richard Wagner.<ref name="AV3" />

Peter Buckley noted Nico's use of psychedelic drugs during the Summer of Love as an influence on the album's music,<ref name="buckley">Template:Cite book</ref> and Jim DeRogatis described it as "minimalist bad-trip psychedelia".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Frieze called The Marble Index the "bridge between the New York Minimalists of the late 1960s and Brian Eno's ambient records of the late 1970s".<ref name="frieze">Template:Cite book</ref> The critic Simon Reynolds identified the album as "the rock precedent for isolationism", a term coined by the critic Kevin Martin to describe "a loose network of disenchanted refugees from rock and experimental musicians" that originated the genre known as dark ambient.<ref name="isolationism">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Isolationism, Reynolds writes, "breaks with all of ambient's feel-good premises" and "evokes an uneasy silence: the uncanny calm before catastrophe, the deathly quiet of aftermath".<ref name="isolationism"/> He listed Aphex Twin (particularly his 1994 album Selected Ambient Works Volume II), Seefeel, David Toop and Max Eastley, among others, as exponents of this style.<ref name="isolationism"/>

According to Uncut, The Marble Index is "one of that rare breed of recordings which, the better part of four decades later, still has no adequate comparison, existing in a genre all its own".<ref name="uncutborderline">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The album is considered a proto-goth record.<ref name="firstgoth" /><ref name="Thornton" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> André Escarameia felt the album "anticipated gothic rock by more than a decade due to [its] ethereally darker [ambience] and disturbing sonority."<ref name="rooster">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Its soundscape has been described as "bleak",<ref name="Unterberger"/> "chilly",<ref name=Thornton /> "harrowing",<ref name="Lynskey" /> and "everything from the sound of someone rapping on a coffin lid to that of being buried alive".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In her 1969 Rolling Stone review, Anne Marie Micklo described it as "mood music, with an obscure and elusive text recited over it".<ref name="Micklo">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Regarding the record's sonority, British author Simon Goddard wrote, "it was on [The Marble Index] that the real sound of Nico was unleashed: a bleak pumping misery which would define her music for the last two decades of her life."<ref name="mozipedia"/> Lenny Kaye of Wondering Sound described the album as "Circe-like".<ref name="lennykaye">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

SongsEdit

{{#invoke:Listen|main}} Nico's lyrics have been described as "mythological and surrealist".<ref name="frowny">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> According to Spin, "for lyrical inspiration, Nico looked to the Romantic poets and peyote, passions shared with Jim Morrison."<ref name="Spin" /> Stephen Davis wrote that the album's lyrics stem from the collaboration between Nico and Morrison, and his influence can be seen in song titles such as "Lawn of Dawns", "Frozen Warnings" and "Evening of Light".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Morrison offered Nico a model for her writings by showing her how he worked on his poems, indicated by her use of internal rhymes.<ref name="Witts" /> According to Peter Hogan, some of her lyrics "show a marked debt to Sylvia Plath and to William Blake" and a search for artistic legitimacy.<ref name="hogan" /> Other critics have found Nico's lyrics to be intriguing.<ref name="rsalbumguide" /> For example, Richie Unterberger wrote: "Nico intones lyrics that don't quite express specific feelings but convey a state of uneasy restlessness."<ref name="jawbone" /> They have also been described as "stark [and] symbolist"<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and "metaphysical".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The album begins with a gentle piano-and-glockenspiel instrumental before segueing into "Lawn of Dawns", which introduces Nico's harmonium "of undulating motion weaving against her voice".<ref name="seth" /> The song is engulfed in "weird clattering and tintinnabulating", while a "dark twangy guitar ... stumbles to a subdued halt in [its] final seconds".<ref name="AV" /> It features what may be Nico's first lyrics, inspired by her peyote visions with Jim Morrison: "He blesses you, he blesses me/The day the night caresses,/Caresses you, caresses me,/Can you follow me?/I cannot understand the way I feel/Until I rest on lawns of dawns—/Can you follow me?"<ref name="Witts" /> Nico explained the peyote-induced experience which inspired the lyrics: "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."<ref name="Witts" /> The lyrics of the next song, "No One Is There", have been described as "in all probability influenced by Jim Morrison" ("Some are calling/Some are sad/Some are calling mad") and are sung over Cale's classical quartet of violas darting in and out of her unusual vocal tempo.<ref name="seth" /> "Ari's Song" was dedicated to Nico's young son, Christian Aaron "Ari" Boulogne, her only child with French actor Alain Delon, and has been called "the least-comforting lullaby ever recorded".<ref name="rsalbumguide" /> It begins with the harmonium's clipped, whistling tones as she sings softly, "Sail away/Sail away my little boy".<ref name="seth" /> "Facing the Wind" is supported by "Cale-banged piano clusters, scraping of percussion or walls and off-beat tympani"; Nico's voice sounds filtered (possibly through a Leslie speaker), with the "somnambulistic toiling" of her pipe organ accompanied by viola and strident piano.<ref name="seth" />

Side two opens with "Julius Caesar (Memento Hodié)", which lyrically explores myths and gods. It features Nico's low, droning harmonium accompanied by Cale's viola. On "Frozen Warnings", Cale's arrangement harmonically blends with the pipe organ.<ref name="seth" /> It is considered Nico's signature song from her collaboration with Cale;<ref name="pitchfork" /> Nina Antonia wrote: "Of all the strange and wracked numbers on the record, 'Frozen Warnings' is quintessential Nico; lyrics that convey a sorrowful atmosphere and little comfort in the melody."<ref name="AV2">Template:Cite AV media notes</ref> The album's dreamlike quality end with its last song, "Evening of Light", which has been described as "frighteningly quiet and hypnotizing". Nico sings "Midnight winds are landing at the end of time", with harpsichord and Cale's staccato viola building until the latter gains ground and sways with the tympani's "roar and clatter".<ref name="seth" /> The 1991 reissue of The Marble Index also includes the outtakes "Roses in the Snow" and "Nibelungen".<ref name="AV" /> In the latter, Nico's vocals are unaccompanied. The full version (with instrumental accompaniment) was included in the 2007 compilation The Frozen Borderline – 1968–1970; according to Dave Thompson of AllMusic, "It rises to equal any of Nico's subsequent performances or compositions."<ref name="allmusicborderline">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Release and aftermathEdit

Holzman said "there was no question" of not releasing The Marble Index despite its lack of commercial appeal. He saw it as a work of art, rather than a product.<ref name="uncut" /> It was released in November 1968 with little promotion.<ref name="uncut" /> A music video for "Evening of Light", featuring Iggy Pop and the other Stooges, was shot by the art collector François de Menil in 1969.<ref name="icon" /><ref name="gimmedanger"/> He described the clip as "a sort of pre-MTV promotional item for [The Marble Index]. An early pop promo."<ref name="gimmedanger">Template:Cite book</ref> De Menil was interested in shooting a short film with Nico, and she agreed with the condition that they would film it in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Pop's hometown, and that he would be featured in it.<ref name="gimmedanger"/> Dave Thompson described the clip as follows: "It was shot in a cornfield behind [Pop's house], barren and stubbly in the late winter chill, Nico in white and windswept, Pop in whiteface, manic and agitated, caressing and crushing the mannequin parts that littered the field, while a wooden cross is raised before them and set ablaze as night falls."<ref name="prettyface">Template:Cite book</ref> Elektra Records—who had not agreed to finance the project—rejected the music video, as did "any other media outlets that de Menil approached".<ref name="prettyface"/>

The Marble Index "failed to challenge the supremacy of Nashville Skyline, From Elvis in Memphis, Abbey Road and Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations on the album charts of 1969".<ref name="AV" /> Although Holzman was pleased with the album, Nico's longevity with the label was unlikely; he was increasingly concerned with her heroin use and she had a difficult, irresponsible attitude.<ref name="uncut" /> Nico left the United States before she was officially released from Elektra, after a violent incident in a New York City bar.<ref name="uncut" /> Biographers refer to her leaving the U.S. as an exile; Nico said, "When you live in a dangerous place, you also become increasingly dangerous. You might just wind up in jail."<ref name="stevenwalker" />

In London, Nico recorded two more albums with Cale in the same vein: Desertshore (1970) and The End... (1974), now considered parts of a trilogy.<ref name="quietus" /> The album was reissued as a CD in 1991 with two bonus tracks.<ref name="AV" /> Songs from The Marble Index have been included in Nico compilations including The Classic Years (1998),<ref name="classicyears">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Femme Fatale (2002),<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> and The Frozen Borderline – 1968–1970 (2007).<ref name="pitchfork" /> For Elektra's 60th anniversary, "Frozen Warnings" was released as a single on October 25, 2010, with "No One Is There" as its B-side.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Critical receptionEdit

Template:Music ratings

Although The Marble Index was generally unnoticed when it was released, it was praised by the countercultural East Village Other and International Times;<ref name="AV" /> however, most critics found "her desolate soundscapes inaccessible."<ref name="buckley" /> Anne Marie Micklo of Rolling Stone gave the album a positive review, calling side two "a really worthwhile venture into musical infinity".<ref name="Micklo"/> A cult following emerged around it,<ref name="schinder">Template:Cite book</ref> which included music journalist Lester Bangs, who wrote in a 1978 article entitled "Your Shadow Is Scared of You: An Attempt Not to Be Frightened by Nico": "The Marble Index is the greatest piece of 'avant-garde classical', 'serious' music of the last half of the 20th century so far."<ref name="Bangs"/> Although Bangs praised the album, he also wrote that it "scared the shit out of [him]" and described the listening experience as "self-torture".<ref name="Bangs" />

The album's rise to acclaim was slow; for the most part, audiences have remained nonplussed.<ref name="frowny" /> According to Simon Goddard, most critics regard it as "[Nico's] defining avant-garde masterpiece".<ref name="mozipedia">Template:Cite book</ref> The Rolling Stone Album Guide considers The Marble Index the point in Nico's discography where "the difficult listening starts", and the album is "pretty amazing for it".<ref name="rsalbumguide" /> Anthony Carew of About.com called it "a suite of rootless songs written with little precedent" and "an astonishing haunting, the work of a woman who, even whilst alive, seemed a lot like a ghost".<ref name="Carew"/> Anthony Thornton of NME called it an "artistic triumph": "Bleak but beautiful, this album remains the most fitting embodiment of her doomed glamour."<ref name="Thornton"/> According to Spin, "Few records, before or since, have sounded lonelier, spookier, or more desolate".<ref name="Spin"/> Trouser Press described it as "one of the scariest records ever made".<ref name="Trouser Press">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

AllMusic's Richie Unterberger awarded the album three stars out of five, describing Nico's songwriting as "singularly morose".<ref name="Unterberger"/> Dorian Lynskey wrote for The Guardian that The Marble Index forces the distinction between art and entertainment, comparing it to the "terrifying" output of musician Scott Walker (particularly the album Tilt), painter Mark Rothko and writer Philip Roth.<ref name="Lynskey">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Simon Reynolds described the record as "psychic landscapes, glittering in their immaculate, lifeless majesty of someone cut off from the thawing warmth of human contact and fellowship"<ref name="tothevoid" /> and "religious music for nihilists".<ref name="reynolds" /> Sputnikmusic's Louis Arp was less enthusiastic, finding the music "pretentious" and "agitating" in the aura it evoked while deeming Nico's lyrics repetitive and meaningless.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said, "While The Velvet Underground and Nico plus Chelsea Girl convinced me that Nico had charisma; The Marble Index plus Desertshore convince me that she's a fool."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

LegacyEdit

File:Nico at Lampeter University - November 1985 (1).jpg

Nico performing at the University of Wales, Lampeter, 1985.

The Marble Index has a sound which distinguishes it from the musical landscape of the 1960s. Anthony Thornton of NME called it "a stark, oppressive opus that has influenced everyone from PJ Harvey to the Duke Spirit.<ref name="Thornton" /> According to Spin, "[The Marble Index] set the tone for decades of music to come – Arthur Russell, Dead Can Dance, Fennesz, Zola Jesus, Grouper, pretty much every metal band that ever used a harpsichord – but few followers have sailed so near to the edge of the abyss with such chillingly beautiful results."<ref name="Spin"/> The Canadian rock band The Marble Index is named after Nico's album.

Simon Reynolds wrote about a female rocker he called the Ice Queen: "Ice is the opposite of all that women are supposed to be: warm, flowing, giving, receptive. Like Lady Macbeth, the Ice Queen has unsexed herself, dammed up her lachrymal and lactation ducts. She offers cold, not comfort. Her hard surfaces can't be penetrated. She is an island, an iceberg."<ref name="reynolds" /> In The Marble Index Nico took this persona (originally embodied by Grace Slick) even further, making a fetish of disconnection and "[dreaming] of a sort of negative nirvana".<ref name="reynolds" /> According to Dazed, this persona has influenced Siouxsie Sioux, Zola Jesus, and Björk.<ref name="firstgoth" /> The lattermost's 2011 album, Biophilia, was described by Rolling Stone as The Marble IndexTemplate:'s "haunted digital sister".<ref name="Rolling">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The influence of The Marble Index can also be found in the music of Laurel Halo.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

"Frozen Warnings" was included in Toby Creswell's compendium 1001 Songs; Creswell wrote, "Just as she had done with The Velvet Underground & Nico, the singer put a new tone into music."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 2013 John Cale curated Life Along the Borderline: A Tribute to Nico at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which featured songs from The Marble Index and other Nico albums performed by Peaches, Yeasayer, Sharon Van Etten, Meshell Ndegeocello and Cale.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie has listed The Marble Index as one of his favorite albums and stated that it was a "huge influence" in the making of their 1991 album Screamadelica.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, has cited the album as an inspiration, writing, "it completely changed my entire view of what it was possible to do in music", and "you could never mistake it for anything else, which is an astounding thing to be able to do."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The album was also a favorite of American musician Elliott Smith.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Marble Index, which influenced the gothic rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s, has been called "the first goth album".<ref name="altpress">Template:Cite journal</ref> Ian Astbury of the Cult and Peter Murphy of Bauhaus have cited Nico as an influence.<ref name="altpress" /> She lived in the United Kingdom when the gothic rock scene was developing, with supporting acts including the Sisters of Mercy and Gene Loves Jezebel. According to Murphy, "Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror-film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real."<ref name="altpress" /> David Dalton of Gadfly Online disagreed: "Some say she is the originator of Goth, but this is just silly, a misunderstanding, a pastiche. Nico has no heirs. She is a discrete entity."<ref name="gadfly">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The album's release coincided with a change in Nico's look, when she adopted what has been called a "gothic horror princess" persona<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and "switched from dyed blonde to dark henna and started wearing black, heavy fabrics and boots".<ref name="tothevoid" /> As a result, in addition to being a musical prototype for the goth subculture, Nico became a visual one as well.<ref name="jawbone">Template:Cite book</ref> Claire Marie Healy wrote, "Nico's visual statement of these years speaks of the power that comes with creating a new persona for yourself"<ref name="firstgoth" /> and she described the singer as "the first ever goth girl".<ref name="firstgoth" /> By the early 1980s, many women began to dress like Nico; nicknamed "Nico-teens", they were the first goth girls, encouraging a cult following for the singer.<ref name="Witts" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Pennyblack contributor Eoghan Lyng praised the process: "It's not the destination that's high on her mind, but the process; explosive, earnest, and laced with a lustre for adventure."<ref>https://pennyblackmusic.co.uk/Home/Details?id=28085</ref>

AccoladesEdit

Publication	Country	Accolade	Year	Rank
About.com	United States	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	2010	25
Spin	United States	The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s<ref name="Spin" />	2013	14
GQ	United Kingdom	The 100 Coolest Albums in the World Right Now!<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>	2005	23
The Guardian		citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	2007	*
Paul Morley		Words and Music, 5 × 100 Greatest Albums of All Time<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	2003	*
Sunday Herald	Scotland	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>	2001	*
Rock & Folk	France	The Best Albums from 1963 to 1999Template:CN	1999	*
Rock & Folk		555 Albums from 1954-2014Template:CN	2014	*
Gilles Verlant		300+ Best Albums in the History of RockTemplate:CN	2013	*
Mucchio Selvaggio	Italy	100 Best Albums by DecadeTemplate:CN	2002	83
(*) designates lists that are unordered.