Sid Vicious – Max’s Kansas City – 30th September 1978

Sid Vicious And The Idols Max’s Kansas City performance 30th September 1978

Search And Destroy / Chatterbox / Something Else / I Wanna Be Your Dog / Belsen Was A Gas / Stepping Stone / Take A Chance With Me / No Lip / Chinese Rocks / My Way (part of)

A particularly extreme example of the self-immolating celebrity — and one of the first high-profile casualties of the punk era — John Simon Ritchie A.K.A Sid Vicious was given his education in unhealthy lifestyles early in his existence, his mother Anne using (and sometimes selling) heroin throughout his childhood. His father, a Grenadier Guard in the British Army named John Ritchie, left the family shortly after his son’s birth, and his stepfather Christopher Beverly died after only six months, leaving Anne to raise young John Simon primarily on her own. Shortly after the dissolution of her first marriage, Anne relocated herself and her son to the Spanish island of Ibiza, returning to England in 1965 just prior to her second marriage and living in Kent for several years before moving to Hackney in 1971. It was here that John made the acquaintance of John Lydon while both were attending Hackney Technical College in 1974; it was also during this period that he initiated his own hard drug use and began to cultivate the destructive behavior that would earn him such notoriety in later years.

Ultimately, John Ritchie dropped out of school and spent his time hanging around with the so-called Bromley Contingent, a gang of disaffected youths that adopted the music and fashions of the emerging UK punk rock scene and maintained an orbit around the John Lydon (now Johnny Rotten) – fronted band The Sex Pistols. In the summer of 1976 Ritchie became a member of The Flowers of Romance alongside future Public Image Limited guitarist Keith Levene, but the group never actually did anything in public; before the end of the year he had joined Siouxsie and the Banshees as a drummer, although this situation did not endure far beyond the group’s debut performance in September of 1976. Afterwards, while living in a squat with both Lydon and John Wardle (later Jah Wobble), Ritchie chose to call himself Sid Vicious in order to distinguish himself from the overabundance of Johns, and subsequently did his best to live up to the anti-social implications of his new name. By early 1977 he had been drafted into the Pistols to replace departing bass player Glen Matlock, despite the marked limitations of his playing ability (supposedly, Vicious’s bass was turned down during many Pistols shows, and his recorded parts were actually performed by either Matlock or guitarist Steve Jones).

Prior to Vicious’s membership, the Sex Pistols had already earned themselves widespread notoriety for their combative attitudes and use of profanity (a couple of fucks and a shit) during an interview on national television with Bill Grundy; their debut single Anarchy in the U.K., released by EMI in November of 1976, also created a considerable stir around the band despite EMI’s decision to cease manufacturing it after less than two months. Vicious helped to maintain this anarchic reputation by vandalizing the office of A&M’s Managing Director (an act he consummated by puking on the director’s desk) during the party celebrating their signing to the label. The band was forced to find a new home a week later, and thus it was that their next single God Save the Queen was instead released by Virgin in May of 1977. The song instigated an even stronger negative response than Anarchy in the U.K., but the resulting hype also successfully pushed it up to the #2 position in the British charts — although there is some evidence to suggest that it might have actually reached #1.

Issued in October, the Pistols’ debut full-length Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols lived up to the controversy created by the two preceding singles, the album’s title resulting in an obscenity trial that was ultimately dismissed. A month after Bollocks’s release, the fate of the band’s already rapidly-deteriorating bass player was sealed through his meeting with ex-prostitute / heroin addict Nancy Spungen.

Nancy was born in Philadelphia on 27 February 1958, and was a difficult child almost from birth. She threw ferocious tantrums that scared her parents and cried so much that she was given her first sedative at the age of three months. By the age of 4, she had seen a psychiatrist. When Nancy was 11, she attacked her mother with a hammer and smashed her bedroom to pieces. She first tried heroin at the age of 13 and two years later was an addict. Her behaviour was so out of control that doctors refused to treat her until she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. By the time she was 17, her parents asked her to leave home. The unbalanced groupie from New York who had come to London with the intention of latching onto a punk celebrity, Spungen found the equally unbalanced Vicious an easy target, and soon had him sharing her heroin habit as well as her bodily fluids. This tumultuous relationship created significant problems between Sid and his band mates. Lydon in particular repeatedly pressed his friend to sever his ties with Spungen, but the unhealthy co-dependence that had formed between the two was something that Vicious was unwilling to leave behind.

At the start of 1978 the Sex Pistols embarked on their first American tour, organized by their manipulative manager Malcolm McLaren. The tour fell apart after only two weeks, however, and a few days after a performance at Winterland in San Francisco Rotten announced the dissolution of the band — apparently as a bluff, but no one called him on it and McLaren and half of the band promptly buggered off to Brazil. Vicious had not fared very well in his forced separation with Spungen during the tour, and he immediately flew to New York to reunite with her. A short period was spent back in England before traveling to Paris to contribute to McLaren’s Julien Temple-directed film The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle (1978) (a largely fictional account of the Sex Pistol’s history); Vicious’ first solo tracks would be recorded for the film’s soundtrack, which included a piss-take on the Frank Sinatra standard My Way and covers of Eddie Cochran’s Something Else and C’mon Everybody.

After raising some money through a final UK performance with the help of a backing band named The Vicious White Kids, Sid and Nancy relocated to New York City on a permanent basis, taking up residence at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street. With $10,000 to spend, the couple went on a drug holiday, scoring heroin on the streets while developing a taste for the barbiturates Tuinal and Dilaudid, a synthetic morphine. They made an effort to kick their habit by signing on at the Spring Street Methadone Clinic, but it was a sour experience for Sid, who suffered frequent beatings from other addicts. He and Nancy then started taking methadone in an attempt to wean them off heroin.

Vicious then attempted to launch a solo career, with Spungen assuming the role of manager and various British and American punk musicians acting as his new band The Idols. A poor-quality collection culled from some of his live performances during this period was eventually released as Sid Sings in 1979. These solo ambitions were abruptly brought to an end in October, when he was arrested for killing Spungen, found dead in their apartment from a single stab wound on the morning of the 12th.

At 2.30am on 12 October, their personal drug dealer with the fantastic name of Rockets Redglare received a frantic call from Nancy to get some ‘D-4s’ (the street name for Dilaudid) and hypodermic needles. Rockets arrived at 3.15am with only some methadone – he had been unable to get any D-4s. Nancy was wearing a shirt over black panties. Sid was sacked out on the bed and the couple was already high on Tuinal, which had slowed them down physically, but did not satisfy their craving for Dilaudid, which they intended to take intravenously. Nancy showed the dealer her open handbag, which was stuffed with 50 and 100 dollar notes. She told him that she would pay double if he could get forty D-4s. He left just after 5am to try his contacts.

Just after this, the guest in room 228 called the front desk to complain about all the noise coming from room 100 below him. The desk clerk sent a bellhop named Kenny to check it out, and he found Sid Vicious wandering the corridors, singing loudly. When Kenny asked Sid to be quiet, Vicious taunted him with abuse, and a fight ensued. Kenny swiftly beat Vicious into submission, bloodying Sid’s face as he fell. The bellhop then returned to the lobby.

At about 7.30am, a woman’s loud moaning awoke Vera Mendelssohn, a 48-year-old sculptor in room 102. It came from next door – room 100, and was a lonely, frightening sound. Nothing more was heard from there until Sid himself telephoned after someone had already called the front desk just after 11.00am.

11.00am on 12 October 1978 the desk clerk at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City received a telephone call. A man told him, “There’s trouble in Room one hundred.” The clerk sent a bellboy to check it out, but before he returned, the front desk had another call, this time from room 100. “Someone is sick here”, a different male voice said. “Need help.”

The platinum blonde lay face-up on the floor of the toilet, her head under the sink. She wore only a black bra and panties, both items soaked with blood from a one-inch knife wound in her lower abdomen. The hotel bed was also extensively stained with blood. The desk clerk called for an ambulance, which arrived with a police escort. After the paramedics confirmed that the woman was dead, police checked the room and found drugs and drug paraphernalia as well as a bloodstained Jaguar K-11 folding knife with a five-inch blade and a black jaguar carved into the handle. The victim had been resident in Room 100 with her drug-addicted boyfriend.

The drug-addled musician could not remember the incident, but the knife responsible for the wound was still in the room when Spungen’s body was discovered. Police found Vicious wandering the hotel hallways, crying; he was immediately taken into custody and charged with second-degree homicide.  By the time Sid Vicious was arrested, he had taken enough Tuinal to kill a horse.

Virgin Records on instruction from Malcolm McClaren put up the money required for bail shortly after his arrest.

Vicious’ mental state became even more erratic following his arrest. His mother Anne Beverley flew out to New York City on 16 October, the day of his release on bail. Within a week, he tried to commit suicide by overdosing on methadone and slashing his right arm. His mother discovered him and rushed him to Bellevue hospital, saving his life.

Another arrest followed in December due to an assault on Patti Smith’s brother Todd at Max’s Kansas City; after serving two months in jail, Virgin supplied his bail for a second time, and he was released once again pending his trial for Spungen’s murder. That trial would never take place: Vicious was found dead of what is speculated to be a deliberate heroin overdose on February 2nd at the home of his new girlfriend Michelle Robinson.

Supposedly his ashes were scattered on Nancy Spungen’s grave by his mother Anne Beverly as per his request, but whether this actually was accomplished remains in dispute as this act was against the express wishes of the Spungen family…

Photographs of the Sid Vicious Memorial March below taken by Janette Beckman in 1980.

Kill Your Pet Puppy Collective memories of the Sid Vicious Memorial March

Nancy Spungen was not murdered by Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious, Malcolm McLaren says.

McLaren said he can’t believe it.

The former Sex Pistols manager said Vicious, the band’s bassist, was incapable of murdering her.

Spungen was found dead on 12 October 1978 in the couple’s New York hotel room having suffered a single stab wound to her abdomen from which she apparently bled to death.

Vicious was arrested and charged with her murder but claimed to have no memory of the event. He died of of a heroin overdose on February 2 1979.

Writing in a blog for The Daily Beast, McLaren said: “I was stunned when I first heard this and I still can’t believe it. Sid was capable of a wide range of self-destructive acts, but I didn’t think that he could kill someone, especially his girlfriend, unless it was a botched double suicide.”

He added that he believed Spungen was killed after getting in a fight with someone who had stolen money from the couple’s room.

He wrote: “He passed out on the bed, having taken fistfuls of the barbiturate Tuinal. All around him, drug dealers, and friends of Nancy came and went from Room 100.

“Money was stolen and Sid’s knife was taken from the wall where it was hung and seemingly used by someone defending themselves in a struggle with Nancy.

“Nancy was no pushover. Probably, she caught this person stealing money from the bedroom drawer.”

He also revealed that Vicious’ mother Anne Beverley smuggled him heroin hidden in her vagina.

McLaren wrote: “Sid’s mother, Anne, was kind enough and helped him wherever she could. A small-time drug dealer, she smuggled heroin in her vagina to Sid at Riker’s Island, a detention center in New York where he was awaiting trial for the murder of Nancy.”