testuser

Chapter 10

When Sid's second hearing for bail came up at the start of February, he
was desperate to be released. McLaren was back in London fighting the
impending court case brought by Johnny Rotten against McLaren's man-
agement company Glitterbest, with Rotten calling him "the most evil man
alive". There were discussions aimed at settling out of court but at the last
moment these failed and the date for the court hearing was set for 7
February. McLaren was further distracted by rumours circulating that
Rotten's lawyers were pushing for the civil action to be followed by a crim-
inal case. Events had also become immensely complicated by the involve-
ment of both Warner and Virgin. As a result of this, McLaren was unable
to attend Sid's own hearing in New York on 1 February - he still preferred
Sid to stay in the safe confines of the jail, but the ex-Pistol pleaded with
him to pay the bond. Wearily, McLaren agreed, and transferred the money
across the Atlantic, so Sid was released. McLaren simply could not afford
the time to be in New York with Sid when he was released the next day.
This complication was to have devastating consequences.
Sid's bail was set with the condition that he was banned from clubs, dis-
cos or any gatherings where he might be tempted to repeat the Todd Smith
incident. He walked out of the prison gates to be met by his mother, who
had promised McLaren her son would be in safe hands, and Michelle
Robinson. Sid put his arms round his mother to support himself, as he was
frail, dreadfully weak and ashen grey. His grubby "I Love New York" T-
shirt was only half-filled by his skeletal body and as he walked off he thrust
his hands into the air in triumph. Twelve hours later he was dead.

That Sid died so soon after he was released for the second time gives some
suggestion of his mental state. That he was allowed to be so openly around
the drug that killed him indicates something of the environment he was in.
Instead of keeping him quietly at home waiting for the trial, Sid was taken
to Michelle Robinson's Greenwich Village flat for a celebration party
attended by eight friends. Nancy's death was spoken about and suicide
pacts were even mentioned. Sid boasted that the hard men in Pikers Island
got on with him well because he was cut from the same cloth - the reality
is that Sid was abused (physically and possibly sexually) and ridiculed
throughout his second spell in prison, just as during the first.
As with Nancy's death, the exact chain of events is unclear, although there
is far more certainty that Sid administered the fatal dose himself. After a
meal of spaghetti bolognese, heroin was produced around midnight and
passed around. Despite warnings that it was extremely pure, Sid was anx-
ious to have some, so he took a fix straight away. Since he had been in
prison for nearly two months and forcibly cleaned up, his body was no
longer used to the drug and he almost immediately went into a seizure,
with his lips turning blue and his skin taking on a grey tinge. He was taken
to bed and covered with blankets, and his pulse was checked regularly until
some 40 minutes later he began to revive. He was then walked around the
flat until his head had cleared and he seemed to have made a reasonable
recovery.
Around 3 a.m. the party finished and Michelle and Sid retired to bed. At
some point Sid awoke from his slumber and iniected yet more heroin, and
this time there was no one awake to rouse him from his drugged sleep. His
cleaned-up body could not handle the second dose and he died in the night.
The following morning, Groundhog Day, his mother arose from the couch
where she had slept and took two cups of tea into Sid's room. Sid lay naked
on top of the covers. It was then that Anne Beverley realised her son was
dead. Michelle was still asleep, unaware of her new boyfriend's death.
His mother was perplexed, because she had held the heroin that night,
and knowing it was so pure she had put the remainder safely in her back
pocket when the party had finished. She was unsure how Sid could have
got hold of the drug. Rumours immediately started circulating that the
heroin had been spiked with a poison, perhaps strychnine. This seems highly
unlikely, especially as earlier that day Sid had told her, "Mum, Nancy is
there on the other side waiting for me. If I'm quick, I can catch the girl I
love." The suicide theory was compounded when a note was found say-
ing, "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 motor-
cycle boots. Goodbye.
McLaren had planned to fly to New York the very next day and take Sid
to the safe haven of Miami, where he could immerse himself in the pro-
posed recording sessions. Sid had been relatively healthy after his deter in
prison, and there was even hope of an acquittal with all the new evidence
that McLaren's legal team were unearthing. Justifiably worried that no one
reliable was there to look after Sid on his release from prison, McLaren
had sent Barbara Harwood, a trainee homoeopathic doctor, to look after
him. However, before she could set out, she received a phone call from Sid's
mother saying he was dead.
Anne Beverley had seen her son go through so much. Now he was dead
she responded in Melody Maker in a somewhat unexpected fashion: "The
day Sid died he was beautiful. He died in his sleep amongst friends. What
more could you want?" She went on to say, "I'm glad he died in view of
what happened. Nothing can hurt him anymore. Where could he have gone
from where he was at? He was in a corner. It would have come out that it
was a suicide pact, which made him guilty of manslaughter, and, sorry,
here's five years... he couldn't have done that, because he was not a hard
man, he was too sweet and too soft."
In the aftermath of Sid's death there was a strange period of both sorrow
and exploitation. On the one hand, people who had said it was inevitable
now wondered if they could have done more to stop it. On the other, the
money-makers started realising the endless potential a dead Sex Pistol pro-
vided. The latter tended to be in the majority Only three weeks after his
death Virgin Records released his version of'Something Else', backed with
a Steve Jones-led rendition of'Friggin' in the Riggin'.' Virgin claimed that
the single had been previously scheduled for that release date, but having
said that, schedules can always be changed. On the back of the sleeve,
designer Jamie Reid wrote, "The media was our lover and helper and that
in effect was the Sex Pistols' success. As today to control the media is to
have the power of government, God or both." The power of the media's
interest in Sid Vicious now became apparent, as the release was widely pub-
licised and sold massively. Virgin's marketing and sales force hopes were
justified as the single reached No. 3 and sold 382,000, over double the
amount that 'God Save the Queen' shifted. In years to come, the cartoon
Sid Vicious featured in the promo for this single became one of the most
popular tattoo designs available.
His three singles were also included in the Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle
soundtrack and Sex Pistols albums, and his own 'My Way' enjoyed rock-
eting sales in the weeks following his death. Before the year was out Virgin
had also put out Floggin' a Dead Horse, a Sex Pistols greatest hits pack-
age, and Sid Sings, an album of live material from the sub-standard Max's
Kansas City gigs he performed just before Nancy's death. To ensure bad
taste prevailed, a free Sid poster was given away with the album. Sid would
probably have loved it.
The logical extension of the renewed fascination that Sid's premature
death brought was Alex Cox's critically acclaimed 1986 movie Sid and
Nancy (originally called Love Kills). Anne Beverley initially tried to pre-
vent the film being made but once she met Cox and heard his ideas she
agreed to assist on the project - Cox was already famous for his cult film
Repo Man. I-Ie presented a script written with Abbe Wool, and Zenith Films
bought the rights. The search was now on for the two key players.
Rumours had been rife in the music industry for some time that such a
film was going to be made - the NME even advertised for Sid lookalikes
to send in their photos. In the end, both actors chosen to play the central
roles were relatively unknown. The part of Sid went to London-born Gary
Oldman, who bore an extreme physical resemblance to the Sex Pistols
bassist. It was a wise choice. Oldman applied a remarkable perfectionism
to the role, starving himself down to the same scrawny frame as Sid, stu-
diously copying his movements, accent and mannerisms. Even the padlock
and chain worn around Oldman's neck was Sid's actual necklace.
This attention to detail was replicated throughout the film. With Anne
Beverley on board, the background to Sid's life was exactly reproduced.
Glen Matlock arranged the music, although the rest of the Sex Pistols dis-
liked the idea and refused to co-operate. However, with the addition of
Debbie Wilson, formerly of the Bromley Contingent, assisting with factual
detail, and the use of some of Jamie Reid's artwork, the finished film was
scrupulously detailed.
Oldman improvised heavily with the script (which he made no secret of
the fact he disliked), but his fluid approach seemed to work - his on-screen
relationship with Nancy, played by American Chloe Webb, was intense,
powerful, and most important of all, believable. Alex Cox made full use
of this celluloid chemistry, and managed to achieve his goal of focusing on
the detrimental effect of drugs in the love affair, as he told NME:"We want
to make the film, not just about Sid Vicious and punk, but as an anti-drugs
statement, to show the degradation caused to various people is not at all
glamorous." As a result, the closing scenes in the Chelsea Hotel are
depraved, sordid and desperately depressing.
On its release, music and media magazines hailed the film's merits, with
Rolling Stone and The Los Angeles Times being just two examples of the
American heavyweight support. In the UK, the Mail on Sunday called it "a
savagely brilliant account of the last days of Sid Vicious". The praise was
justified - Alex Cox accurately portrayed the rollercoaster ride of Sid and
Nancy's love affair, from the passionate euphoria of their early love, through
to the sheer hell of their heroin fuelled self-destruction. After watching Sid
and Nancy, compelled by the spiralling depths of the portrayed drug addic-
tion, the viewer can only agree with Anne Beverley's epitaph to the film,
as she told Alan Parker in his book SidS Way: "They were a modern day
Romeo and Juliet...if ever two people shouldn't have met it was Sime and
Nancy.
Back in 1979, this was all a long way off. Sid was cremated in New York,
the city that had fascinated him so much that it had eventually drawn him
to his early demise. At first, his dying wish to have his ashes sprinkled on
Nancy's grave were denied when the Spungen family refused to reveal where
she was buried. Even in death Sid Vicious continued to confuse. Some
claimed that Sid's mother finally found out the location of the Jewish ceme-
tery where Nancy was located and carried out her son's last wish. Other
reports in the tabloids suggested that the casket containing his ashes was,
in fact, dropped and smashed on the floor of Heathrow airport, only to be
swept up and disposed of in a fittingly farcical ending.
Whatever became of Sid's remains, questions began to be asked about what
could have been done to save him. Fingers of blame were pointed in vari-
ous directions as people tried to make sense of what had been an almost
inevitable conclusion to two years of escalating self-destruction.
In the first instance, Sid's friends at the party were lambasted for not pro-
tecting him sufficiently from heroin, at a time when they knew he was par-
ticularly vulnerable. All reports suggest it was freely available, very pure
and, after so long without it, doubly dangerous. His mother, loyal to the
last, could also be criticised for her part. She never chastised Sid, never gave
him any parameters to stay within, and the resulting free licence he indulged
in took him to his grave. On the night of his death, she was the one hold-
ing the heroin. Vivienne Westwood had always felt Anne spoilt Sid, like
many one-child families do, saying she supported his lies while on bail just
as she helped him do drugs. Sid used to shoot up heroin in front of
her almost as a challenge to her parental authority. Some said that Sid
never grew out of his childhood, that he was a young impressionable mind
thrust into a violent and dangerous arena, with no one there to check
his activities.

Having said all that, Anne Beverley was always behind Sid, she never
questioned him, never let him down and would drop everything to be at
his side in times of need. During a childhood that was fragmented, inse-
cure and at times traumatic, Anne succeeded in bringing some stability and
identity into Sid's life. She was a far more loving mother and friend than
many people ever have. It was just unfortunate that one of the indulgences
she and Sid shared helped to kill him.
Many bitter voices talked of Malcolm McLaren's role. He had recruited
Sid into the Sex Pistols in the first place and had played on his weak char-
acter, encouraging increasingly more depraved behaviour, so that by the
time the US tour ended Sid had reached a dangerous peak of excess. He
played on Sid's lack of personal confidence and his inability to form his
own character, and shaped him into a punk clichC that was exceptionally
bankable. As Johnny Rotten gradually proved more and more difficult, Sid
remained an easily manipulated puppet, a figurehead for McLaren's revo-
lution. Having said that, McLaren also helped Sid, intentionally or other-
wise, during the dark days in Rikers Island, and that should not be forgotten.
Malcolm McLaren later said of Sid in The Wicked Ways of Malcolm
McLaren: "Sid was a guy who never saw any sense of danger, a real street
kid who never saw a red light. He was always the ultimate believer in the
Sex Pistols' ideas and attitudes... long after Rotten had become a bit of a
joke, very serious, very career minded." McLaren was bitterly disappointed
that Sid did not fulfil what he saw as great potential, as he told the music
press at the time: "Sid showed what a good voice he had for that band and
things were looking very good for him. To me he was the archetypal punk,
and someone I had great respect for. I think he had a lot of people he could
reach out and communicate with from the stage, and I still think he had
great potential."
Johnny Rotten (now Lydon again), Sid's best friend, has since openly
admitted that be has retraced his part in the tragedy many times, wonder-
ing if he could have behaved differently. It was not as if he didn't try at all,
however. He tired of Sid's continued abuse and did try to help him off drugs
several times, but once Sid was with Nancy, Rotten no longer felt the bond
of friendship was there: "His attitude changed completely when he met
Nancy. He was banging up all day and night. He became a total bore and
just didn't recognise anyone anymore. It was pathetic." Despite this, Rotten
never assuaged the guilt he felt for pushing Nancy on to Sid in the first
instance, and later felt he could have done more, as he said in his autobi-
ography: "If only I hadn't been lazy and washed my hands of him like
Pontius Pilate. That's something I'll have to carry to the grave with me. I
don't know what I could have done but I should have done something.
There are always ways. You must never be lazy when it comes to your
friends."
Then there was Nancy, the wicked witch of the piece. Her premature
death had surprised many people, who had suspected that Sid would die
first, after which Nancy would lust move on to another gullible star. She
preyed on Sid's weaknesses to achieve her own ends, she manipulated him
and alienated all his close friends, all the people who might have stopped
his decline. She was persistently dishonest with him, and deep down Sid
knew this. She introduced him to his heroin habit, she contributed to the
break-up of the band that was his passion and she took him back to New
York, filling his head with ideas that were to be utterly destructive. She
convinced him that to be a true rock'n'roll star, he had to play the dan-
gerous drugs game. Indirectly, once she had gone, her hold on his mind
was so complete that Sid went into a shock from which he never recov-
ered, and her death was the immediate catalyst for his own demise. She
must carry a heavy burden of responsibility.
After Sid's death, Nancy's family received scores of obscene phone calls
from distraught Sid fans who berated Nancy's parents for not using con-
traceptives to prevent their daughter ever being born. In punk circles, and
especially amongst Sid's close friends, Nancy was seen as instrumental in
Sid's death, to the extent that many people were of the opinion that, had
he not met her, he would still be alive today. Many felt they had never had
the chance to see Sid with good friends around him, people who would
look after him, because Nancy was always there, corrupting him constantly.
On the other hand, Nancy and Sid clearly loved each other. Despite their
frequent fights and damaging mutual habits, the pair were devoted to each
other and provided close comfort and company at many difficult times.
When Sid was in hospital with hepatitis, Nancy was the only regular visi-
tor he had and he never forgot that - she was his ally, his friend and his
lover. They shared the same outlook on life and he worshipped her. He
once said, "Nancy was great because she and I were the same, we both
hated everyone." Whatever anyone else thought of her, Nancy Spungen
was the light of Sid Vicious' life.
The media were blamed in some quarters, for elevating a nobody to a
lofty star status that he patently could not handle, with the only logical
conclusion being his early death. The Sex Pistols played a game with the
media, and Sid desperately wanted to be seen by the press and public alike
as the personification of the Sex Pistols. Even when the band had split, he
sought to maintain that image, despite the newspapers' rapidly dwindling
interest in him. Sid was a media creation in some ways, with the enormous
amount of mythologising that sprang up around him and is still there to
this day. Sid fell to what became punk's in-built drive to oblivion. With the
dying embers of punk rock cooling at the end of the �seventies, heroin swept
through the punk has-beens, convincing them they were still somebody. Sid
fell for this trap and it destroyed him.
At the same time, many of the elements of Sid Vicious were very real,
very much of his own making. One of those elements was his self-destruc-
tive impulse. Sid's musical contribution to the Sex Pistols was zero, so he
compensated for this by contributing to the visual circus. As his lack of
musicianship grew ever more apparent, he made up for it with increasingly
gross acts of anarchy and self-mutilation, slashing himself with broken bot-
tles, appearing for interviews smashed on dope, fighting needlessly - any
thing that might elevate him to the status of a punk rock hero. He openly
admitted he cut himself as a release of this frustration: "Everything is done
when I get so annoyed over something so much that I need an enemy... and
I always find that I'm sitting in a room with a load of friends and I can't
do anything to them, so I just go upstairs and smash a glass and cut myself.
And then I feel better."
Then there was Sid's fundamental character. Poor old Sid. Vivienne
Westwood always sympathised with him, as she told Craig Bromberg in
his book, The Wicked Ways of Mdlcolm McLaren: "Sid didn't know bad
from good. He didn't know right from wrong most of the time, that boy.
He just didn't have an ego, especially not about wanting to perform, even
though he was a natural performer. He was just a very affectionate, very
intelligent, very funny, warm person." So he was too dumb to make up his
own mind, yet friends claimed he was sharp, witty and highly intelligent.
When Rotten first met him, he was consumed with David Bowie, suffer-
ing an impulse to imitate. Rotten had nothing but contempt for this desire
to copy others, even when he was the subject of that imitation himself, as
he told Trouser Press magazine: "I don't like walking the streets and see-
ing three thousand imitations of me, that pisses me off, quite frankly. I
always used to laugh looking at all the Bowie imitators, all the Bryan Ferry
imitators. It was just a ioke, people without minds of their own, or direc-
tions or anything. The great unthinking majority." Sid was very much a
part of this unthinking majority - he aped Dee Dee Ramone and did not
sway from this admiration even when the Ramones announced they did
not like him or the Sex Pistols. Sid seemed unable throughout his life to
acquire an identity of his own. Whereas great performers take elements of
others and mould something new, Sid just stole blatantly and clumsily. Even
his trademark leather jacket was nothing new.
For many observers the drugs took a large slice of the blame. Apparently
he was funny, goofy and sweet before the heroin, an animal afterwards;
perceptive before, stupid after. Rotten said in his autobiography, "Sid was
naive but full of wit about things. Excellent person, but drugs did him in
and turned him into a deeply unpleasant Mr Hyde." However, Sid was
injecting speed and assaulting people way before he met Nancy or shot
heroin. True, he was young, but at 19 he knew he was taking the heroin,
he knew he was doing the things he did to himself and to others. Other
heroin addicts used the drug and didn't do the things that Sid did. He knew
that after every deter he would end up back on the stuff and he chose to
do that.
There were other elements of Sid's character that contributed to his down-
fall. His obsession with his looks, which had started with his varnished toe-
nails, dominated every aspect of his life. Even in New York, when he was
fearfully thin and hideously drug-riddled, he would look in the mirror to
check his hair or adjust his clothes. As his fame grew, Sid's vanity swelled,
and with that the desire to present the ultimate punk rock vision and his
absolute need to be noticed became predominant. In many ways, he was
noticed, but it cost him dear. His lack of identity meant he would always
follow the crowd, and it is ironic that he made perhaps his only memo-
rable musical contribution with the single 'My Way', singing lyrics which
bore little relation to his approach to life.
There were other players in the death of Sid Vicious. There were people
who could have helped but didn't, others who deliberately added to his
downfall. Ultimately, however, Sid was his own worst enemy. The person
most responsible for Sid Vicious' death was Sid Vicious.
From an obscure hanger-on to a dead punk-rock icon, Sid Vicious' time
in the spotlight was only 21 months, just one month for each year of his
life. In that time, his close friends saw his mental and physical health dete-
riorate dramatically, while his fame and notoriety rocketed. Some said that
he ruined the Sex Pistols, that they never produced the same greatness once
he had joined and started to screw up. Others believe Sid Vicious was the
single most interesting element in the whole Pistols story. Similarly, by the
time Sid was dead, punk rock itself had become absorbed into the main-
stream with major acts selling millions of records and the more acceptable
term 'new wave' being used to quantify the left-overs - punk's radical begin-
nings had been hijacked by the mainstream for the benefit of mass con-
sumerism. Punk fragmented in the months following the Sex Pistols'
break-up, but for many it was more specific than that - Sid's death her-
alded the final nail in punk's coffin.
Since his death, Sid's role in punk and in the Sex Pistols has been docu-
mented, distorted, fabricated and generally mythologised. Some twenty
years later, when the band reformed for their 1996 anniversary tour, Johnny
Rotten was less charitable about his former friend. At the press conference
to announce their return, Rotten told the waiting media, "Even if Sid was
still around, it [the reunion tour] would have to be with Glen. Sid actually
did nothing. Sid was a coathanger. It's unfortunate that as the years have
gone by, the rumour mongers, liars and ex-managers have managed to blow
out of all proportion and take away from what was real. Sid's been cloned
and the arseholes and morons have bought that imagery totally, lock, stock
and barrel. It was never about studded leather jackets and black biker boots.
I mean, that's dull, that's the clichCs and trappings of everything that was
in rock'n'roll before we started. So when I see gangs of punks running
around in studded leather jackets these days, I just get sick. They got it
wrong. They can wear all that stuff by all means, but don't be calling your-
selves no punks... People seem to have built this huge myth around him
and that's all well and fine cos it's funny. But they should know that that's
all it is. A myth."
The other members of the Sex Pistols survived through self-preservation,
persistence, a degree of emotional stability and luck. Sid had none of these.
Sid became a twisted punk myth, as Rotten says, and aged lust 21 he entered
the rock'n'roll hall of fame. Like that other leather-jacketed rebel, James
Dean, Sid Vicious burned out early. He was always telling Glen Matlock
he would die by the time he was 21, and regularly claimed to have had pre-
monitions of his death. When it finally came true, Sid had already written
his own epitaph, having told an interviewer in January 1978, "I'll die before
I'm 25, and when I do I'll have lived the way I wanted to."