Sid Vicious's Life Was Just As Messed Up As His Death
Few rock stars have burned out with the same vigor as Sid Vicious. His fireball career lasted only two years but in that tumultuous time, Vicious transformed from a shy David Bowie fanatic into a spiky-haired punk icon who will forever sneer at us from posters, ads, and book covers the world over.
He could never play a single Sex Pistols' song successfully on his bass but it didn't matter. Sid Vicious was punk rock in its purest, most dangerous form. His wild antics were often the desperate acts of an addict looking for his next fix, and he surrounded himself with whatever destroyed him the most - violence, drugs, and his most lethal favorite, Nancy Spungen.
Sid Vicious Awoke To Find A Trail Of Blood Leading To His Dead Girlfriend
Sometime during the early hours of October 12, 1978, Nancy Spungen crawled out of her blood-soaked hotel bed in New York City and made her way to the bathroom where she collapsed on the floor beside the toilet and died from a single knife wound to the abdomen. After finding Spungen and alerting the front desk about the accident, Sid Vicious wandered the hotel halls weeping, telling a neighbor, “I killed her... I can’t live without her... She must have fallen on the knife.”
Various drug dealers had been in and out of their hotel room all night, leaving numerous sets of fingerprints everywhere. The police also discovered that at some point $1,500 was stolen from the drugged-up couple so it wasn't clear who was responsible for Spungen's death. Perhaps the victim tried to stop the robbery and got slashed in the stomach.
There were endless suspects, but detectives arrested Vicious for his girlfriend's murder and considered the mystery solved.
He Shot Up Speed Mixed With Toilet Water, Shocking Even Dee Dee Ramone
Before Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols, he'd hang out with Dee Dee Ramone whenever the Ramones were in London. One particular night, Ramone and Vicious went to a party with ample amounts of speed. They went to the bathroom where the sink, toilet, and floor were covered in puke. Vicious pulled out a syringe, filled it with the drug, then stuck it in the toilet and loaded it with puke water. Without bothering to cook the mixture, Vicious jammed the syringe in his arm.
He then looked at a stunned Dee Dee, who was no stranger to depravity, and said, “Man where did you get this stuff?”
His Mom Might Have Killed Him
According to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, Anne Beverley smuggled heroin in her vagina to son Sid Vicious while he was incarcerated at Riker's Island. After his release on bail, there was a freedom party for Vicious at the apartment of his new girlfriend, Michelle Robson. The party tapered off when Peter Gravelle arrived with 98% pure heroin provided by Beverly. Gravelle warned the Pistols bassist not to take too much, but he still overdosed. Eventually, the party guests departed and left Vicious and the remaining heroin in Beverly's care.
McLaren claims Beverly provided her son with the heroin that night because she knew he would hate life in jail.
His Mother Gave Him Heroin As A Birthday Present
Before Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols, he and John Lydon would often hang out, listen to music, and drink beer in his home. Vicious's mom, Anne Beverley, was a junkie and had used her young son as a drug mule when they lived in Spain, stuffing his toddler pants with blocks of hash to sell whenever they returned to England. One night, Beverly came over to offer a gift to Vicious. When he asked her what it was, she handed him a bag of heroin and a couple of syringes and told him, "Happy Birthday, Sidney."
Lydon, who happened to be there, was horrified, but Vicious told him not to worry about it because his mom meant well and the heroin helped him relax.
Sid Vicious Didn't Mind Self-Mutilation
At a truck stop during the Sex Pistols' American tour, a cowboy recognized Sid Vicious and invited him and Bob Gruen to his table for breakfast. The cowboy put his cigarette out on his hand and challenged Vicious to do the same. The Pistols bassist was hungry but he played along and hit his hand with his knife, making a small cut that bled down his fingers and all over his eggs. He continued to eat them to the horror of everyone watching.
When they reached Dallas, Sid Vicious carved "Gimme a fix" into his chest using a mirror and a piece of glass. During a show at the Longhorn Ballroom he yelled, "All cowboys are queers" over and over until he was punched by an audience member. Blood ran down his face but instead of cleaning himself up, Vicious spent the rest of the show dripping blood.
He Strangled A Cat With A Belt
Photo: Rogelio A. Galaviz C. / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0In a horrific incident that Mark Helfond wished he could go back in time and stop, Sid Vicious wrapped his belt around a cat's neck and choked it.
After Sid Vicious's mom kicked him out of the house, he and John Lydon lived in squats where the anguished youth would strangle cats and slash himself with an old Heinz baked beans can lid. Lydon's father witnessed these incidents and attributed them to Vicious's desperate need for attention:
"If he was sitting here and no one was taking any notice of him, he'd cut his hand or something to attract attention. You'd have to take your mind off everything else and look at him."
Vicious Could Swing His Axe Better Than He Could Play It
Video: YouTube
Brian Faltin, the self-described black sheep of a prominent ranching family, went to Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio one night to pick a fight with the Sex Pistols who he thought were, "just sewer rats with guitars." At first Faltin went after John Lydon, but the lead singer merely blew snot at the instigator. Instead, he targeted Sid Vicious and threw a beer can at him.
This set off the Pistol bassist, who had carved up his own arm earlier in the evening and tossed his bloody bandage into the crowd. In a burst of rage, Vicious lifted his 10-pound bass guitar and swung it down on Faltin. Luckily, he missed and only grazed the shoulder of a roadie who was trying to hold back the audience.
He Thought About Suicide From An Early Age
While attending Kingsway College for difficult and expelled kids, Sid Vicious was singled out by a counselor after mentioning suicide. The counselor asked Vicious to bring a friend to the session and John Wardle went for a laugh. When the counselor told him that Vicious planned to kill himself, Wardle joked back that "Sid might as well end it all."
Instead of laughing, Vicious nodded his head very gravely. Wardle came out of the session seriously worried about his friend's darker side.
According To Nancy Spungen's Mother, Vicious Abused His Girlfriend When He Was Depressed
During Nancy Spungen's final phone conversation with her mom, Deborah Spungen, she admitted that many beatings, including a broken nose and a torn ear that she'd said were from fights in London, were caused by Sid Vicious. Nancy said that Vicious had stopped beating her for while but had started up again after the Sex Pistols broke up and the bassist couldn't find work.
The pair spiraled into heavy drug use while holed up together in New York's Chelsea Hotel. Nancy would verbally abuse her boyfriend if he came home without drugs.
He Beat A Music Journalist With A Bike Chain
Relations were raw between the Sex Pistols and many journalists, but they were especially bitter with Nick Kent a reporter for the New Musical Express. Kent had rehearsed with the Pistols before John Lydon joined the group and he felt as if he should be the band's rightful lead singer. Kent often badmouthed Lydon in the press, but one night, when he turned up at the 100 Club for a Pistols gig, things got exceptionally worse.
When the reporter tapped Sid Vicious on the shoulder and asked him to move over, Vicious told Nick Kent that he didn't like his trousers, pulled out a bike chain, and lashed him over the head three times. Blood splattered over the wall behind Kent's chair, but he said it didn't hurt that much and he never bothered to get stitches.
Because Of Vicious, The Sex Pistols' Contract With A&M Lasted Less Than A Week
Photo: s fitz / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0In 1977, the EMI record label dropped the Sex Pistols because of their notorious behavior; the last straw happened at Heathrow Airport where they yelled at airport staff and spat on each other. A&M's label signed them immediately after at a press ceremony held outside Buckingham Palace. Afterward, they all went back to the A&M office for a kickoff party where Sid Vicious committed vandalism, allegedly by destroying the managing director's office and vomiting all over his desk.
A&M broke the contract with the Sex Pistols six days later.
He Never Really Learned To Play The Bass
Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead said that he tried to teach Sid Vicious how to properly play the bass guitar, but his pupil didn't have the attention span for it so he gave up. Steve Jones, guitarist for the Sex Pistols, would put bits of tape on the fret board to show Vicious where to put his fingers, but he also gave up on teaching the bassist because it was "a pain in the *ss."
According to Jones, Vicious is only recorded in one Sex Pistols song, "Bodies," and even then "he's out of tune."
Vicious Wrote A Sweet, Detailed List About Nancy Spungen Not Long Before She Died
Many who knew Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen personally were shocked to learn that he was the main suspect in her murder case. Even those who hated Spungen and thought of her as a bad influence who got Vicious hooked on heroin admit that he deeply loved her. Vicious wrote a list of all her great attributes in 1978, only months before she died. He penned it on a piece of torn notebook paper, neatly numbering the items and underlining the title.
In the list, he highlights her beauty, her great figure, her sense of humor, her great conversation and wit, her lovely eyes, her fashion sense, her feet, and other slightly raunchy things about her.
After Spungen's Death, He Broke A Bottle on Todd Smith's Face
While on bail during Nancy Spungen's murder trial, Sid Vicious went to the Hurrah nightclub in New York to see Skafish play. Vicious stared down one of Skafish's roadies, Tara, and started flirting with her, prompting her boyfriend, Todd Smith, asked Vicious to wait until the band finished to flirt with the girl. The Pistols bassist responded by smashing a beer bottle across Smith's face. The action sent the boyfriend to the hospital and Vicious back to jail.
