In the 1970s, punk ruled the streets of London. Multicoloured hair, leather, safety pin piercings…it was fast, furious, and fun. Of all the bands playing at the time, one became forever synonymous with the punk era, the same band that gave us the infamous Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
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Simon John Ritchie was born on 10th May 1957 in London, England. He didn’t have the best start in life; his mother, Anne Beverly, was a drug addict who put herself before her child; one of Anne’s boyfriends had also started dealing drugs to Simon, and he began to inject speed up to 14 times a day. In an interview, she described how she kicked him out at 16. ‘I remember saying to him, ‘It’s either you or me, and it’s not going to be me. I have got to try to preserve myself, and you just fuck off.’ He said, ‘I’ve not got anywhere to go’, and I said, ‘I don’t care’’.
At 17, he met John Lydon and began living with him, squatting in abandoned buildings. In fact, John Lydon gave Simon the nickname by which he would become famous; John had a hamster named Sid (after Syd Barrett), and it bit Simon. Simon cried out, ‘Sid is really vicious!’ and John liked that so much he began to call Simon ‘Sid Vicious’. John would go on to be known as ‘Johnny Rotten’. They would occasionally busk for money together, and Sid even appeared as a drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees at their first gig at 100 Club Punk Festival in Oxford Street. Steve Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees said, ‘Actually before he got deeply into drugs, he was one of the funniest guys. He had a brilliant sense of humour, goofy, sweet, and very cute’. Sid was briefly with a band called Flowers of Romance and was also considered as the lead singer for The Damned, but he didn’t show up for the audition.
In February 1977, Glen Matlock left a band called The Sex Pistols and Sid, who attended every gig they played, was asked to join as the bassist. He played his first gig with them on 3rd April 1977 at The Screen on the Green in London. Sid couldn’t play his instrument at all, but he looked & acted the part; their manager Malcolm McLaren said, ‘If Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude’. The band recorded their infamous album, ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’, although Sid only played on one track, Bodies, which was overdubbed. Steve Jones played the rest of the bass lines recorded.
It was in 1977 that Sid Vicious would meet Nancy Spungen.
Nancy was born on 27th February 1958 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US. She was born with severe cyanosis (discolouration of the skin) due to oxygen deprivation; her umbilical cord had strangled her during delivery. The doctors said there was no brain damage, although this could be seriously disputed (as you can read about in the story of Rosemary Kennedy). As a baby, she was volatile, constantly screaming and crying; at just three months old, a doctor gave Nancy a liquid barbiturate to calm her down, but it didn’t work. Her mother, Deborah Spungen, would later state, ‘I knew it’s normal for babies to scream, but Nancy did nothing but scream’. Her violent outbursts continued throughout her childhood, especially towards her younger sister, Susan, and her psychiatrist, who initially thought she was just looking for attention. Nancy was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 15 years old.
Her parents were exhausted with dealing with their daughter’s erratic behaviour and decided to enrol her at Devereux Glenholme School in Connecticut, followed by Devereux Manor High School in Pennsylvania. Nancy was highly intelligent and would excel at school but she ran away in 1972 and slit her wrists in a suicide attempt. Despite this, she graduated in April 1974 and was accepted into the University of Colorado Boulder, but five months into her first year, she was caught buying marijuana from an undercover police officer. She was later caught with stolen property in her dorm room, and both incidents led to her expulsion.
At 17 years old, Nancy left for New York City and worked as a sex worker to support herself. Around this time, she started following bands such as The New York Dolls and Aerosmith, and it didn’t take long before she was a well-known groupie. In 1977, she moved to London and began following The Sex Pistols. It didn’t take long for Sid and Nancy to meet, and the rest is history, so to speak.
With his gaunt face, dishevelled appearance and unimpressed sneer, and her bleach blonde hair, blood-red lips and snarl, both clad in leather, they defined the image of punk. They began a volatile relationship, swinging between passion and violence and punctuated by drug abuse and self-harm. They adored each other, and many people would agree they were genuinely in love, but it’s almost like they didn’t know how to deal with that love. The press demonised Nancy and nicknamed her ‘Nauseating Nancy’; she was frequently blamed for Sid’s descent into heroin use despite the fact he was a prevalent drug user before meeting her. John Lydon was not a fan either, later saying, ‘She couldn’t help it, I suppose, she was just naturally poisonous.’
The Sex Pistols broke up in January 1978, and Sid & Nancy moved to New York City, staying in room 100 at the Hotel Chelsea. Over the next few months, their drug abuse escalated. On the 12th of October 1978, Nancy was found dead under the sink in the hotel room’s bathroom; there was a single stab wound to her abdomen and a trail of blood from the bed to the bathroom. She was just 20 years old. The police were alerted and interviewed Sid in the hotel hallway before taking him to one of the hotel’s conference rooms. His story changed repeatedly, at one point saying he killed her because ‘I’m a dirty dog’, followed by ‘I stabbed her, but I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her, but she treated me like shit’. He then proclaimed his innocence and devised various possibilities that Nancy may have rolled over onto the knife in bed. It’s important to remember that he was heavily influenced by drugs while saying all of this. The police arrested him, handcuffed him, and led him away. The police notes say that Nancy was killed with a Jaguar Wilderness K-11 with a 13cm blade; Sid's knife was a 007 hunting knife (and I read in a couple of places that Nancy had bought him this knife).
Sid’s bail bond was $58,000, which Virgin Records immediately paid. On 22nd October, Sid attempted suicide by cutting his wrists but was found and taken to the hospital. He broke his bail a few weeks later when he attacked Patti Smith’s brother, Todd, with a broken bottle during a barroom brawl. He was arrested again, and on the 9th of December 1978, he was sent to Rikers Island metro jail. He was released on 1st February 1979 after being bailed out at $10,000. He had been in prison for 55 days and underwent a very painful detoxification programme. Sid had a small get-together with a few friends on his release to celebrate. He asked his mother, Anne Beverley, to find him some heroin, which she did (I’m in two minds about this; a drug addict can be very demanding and persuasive, but I also think she could have refused). He complained that it was too weak and asked his friend Peter Gravelle to acquire some. He did, and this heroin was reported to be 98% pure, far too strong for human consumption. Sid overdosed but was revived.
On the 2nd February 1979, Sid died of a heroin overdose and was found by his mother. He was 21 years old. There are rumours that Anne had administered the fatal dose to her son, to ‘put him out of his misery’, but there is no proof. Later on, Anne found a suicide note amongst Sid’s belongings. The couple had beforehand talked about planning to kill themselves. The note read, ‘We had a death pact. I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans, and motorcycle boots. Goodbye’.
Nancy is buried in the King David Memorial Park in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. Anne asked Nancy’s parents if she could bury Sid next to Nancy, but they refused; reportedly, after Sid was cremated, his mother secretly scattered his ashes over Nancy’s grave.
There are many theories that Sid had nothing to do with Nancy’s death, despite the police being convinced he had murdered her; after his death, the NYPD closed the case and refused to look at any other leads. So, what did happen to Nancy on the night that she died? On the night of 12th October, neither had access to heroin as the supply had temporarily dried up. While going through withdrawals, they bought whatever drugs they could get. That night, Sid had bought 30 Tuinal tablets, a strong sedative, and had taken all of them. Would he have even been conscious when Nancy was stabbed?
Drug dealers had visited the hotel room the night Nancy died, and there was talk of a robbery taking place as well. Phil Strongman wrote the book ‘Pretty Vacant. A History of Punk’ in which he accused Rockets Redglare (real name Michael Morra) of killing Nancy. Redglare was an actor and stand-up comedian who appeared in films like Desperately Seeking Susan and Big. He had been one of the people to deliver drugs to the couple that fateful night; Nancy had called him at 2.30 am asking for Dilaudid pills (an opioid prescribed for pain relief). Until his death in 2001, Redglare denied any knowledge to the public, although he admitted to it in private circles. Some believed him, and others thought he was saying it merely for attention.
Another drug dealer visited Sid and Nancy’s room on the night she died. Known only as Michael, he was staying on the 6th floor of The Chelsea Hotel. A guest at the hotel claimed Michael was smiling as he told him Nancy was being carried out in a body bag and that Sid had killed her; Michael was also seen carrying a wad of cash that was tied up with Nancy’s purple hair tie. This information was passed on to the police, but nothing ever came of it. Michael checked out of the hotel and was never heard of again (all Bailey Sarian fans are now thinking ‘SUSPISH’).
There is always the possibility that Nancy killed herself. Both Sid and Nancy were known to hurt and mutilate themselves. Was it self-harm gone wrong? DJ Howie Pyro, who was with Sid the night he died, believed she had stabbed herself.
Nancy’s mother, Deborah, had her own theory. A few weeks after Nancy’s death, Sid wrote to Deborah: ‘Her pain was just too much to bear. Because you see, I felt Nancy’s pain as though it were my own, worse even… I love her with such passion. Every day is agony without her. I know now it is possible to die from a broken heart. Because when you love someone as much as we love each other, they become fundamental to your existence… So, I will die soon, even if I don’t kill myself. I guess you could say that I’m pining for her. I could live without food or water longer than I’m going to survive without Nancy… [she] was too beautiful for this world’. A poem was also included: ‘Such a joy to hold you in my arms/and kiss away your tears/ but now you’re gone there’s only pain and nothing I can do.’ Deborah would later say, ‘the depth of his emotion, his sensitivity and intelligence were far greater than I could have imagined’.
Another letter that Sid wrote to Deborah read, ‘Nancy once asked me if I would pour petrol over myself and set it on fire if she told me to. I said I would, and I meant it’. Deborah said, ‘from that, it wasn’t hard for me to…visualise Nancy handing Sid the knife and ordering him to prove his love for her by using it on her. By shutting my eyes, I could hear his protestations. And then her screams. No one will ever know for sure what happened that night. It is my belief that she wanted to die, so she made Sid the instrument’.
John Lydon has spoken out many times on Sid and Nancy. He said, ‘Nancy Spungen was a hideous, awful person who killed herself because of the lifestyle and led to the destruction and subsequent death of Sid and the whole fiasco. Her death is all entangled in mystery. It’s no real mystery, though. If you are going to get yourself involved in drugs and narcotics in that way, accidents are going to happen’.
‘October 12th, Thursday, a gloriously depressing day for some. 1978, it’s the arrest of Sid Vicious, poor old Sid gets collared in his Chelsea Hotel apartment in New York for the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend Neeeeancy Spungeeeeen, BITCH! This was one of the worst creatures to walk god’s earth. I don’t know if Sid did kill Nancy; it would be nice and romantic to think he did, but the reality, I think, is a little different; it was all pathetic and awful.’
‘If you know anything about the demise of Sid and Nancy, they died several, several months, if like anything up to a year beforehand, because of the heroin, and the drug taking, just the sordid squalor of it all’.
And that was the fate of Sid and Nancy, the brutal truth of abuse and drugs against the romantic myth—two tragic characters who found each other and encouraged their own destruction. We will never know if Sid killed Nancy, whether purposefully or not if it was someone else, or if it was even herself. I can’t make up my mind on this one; each theory seems equally plausible. And was Nancy as bad as the press made out, or was it a case of an outspoken woman being vilified? Either way, I hope they are both at peace now. As always, please let me know what you think in the comments, take care of yourselves, and I will see you next time.
Hi! I spend a lot of time writing for the website, and I basically exist on caffeine and anxiety - if anybody would like to encourage this habit, please feel free to buy me a coffee!
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