Ever since William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet 400 years ago, there's been a long list of comparisons to literature's most famous lovers. One such modern-day comparison is the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. He was a talentless punk rock hero who managed to fall into a band called the Sex Pistols. She was a drug-addicted hanger-on who won his heart. Together, these star-crossed lovers descended into a hellish, toxic relationship that ended in both their deaths.
The story goes that Sid murdered Nancy before overdosing some months later. But was Nancy's death quite so cut and dried, or is there more than meets the eye? Was a mutual, Shakespearean love pact to blame for their deaths? Today, to try to understand their destructive, lethal relationship, we'll meet the real Sid and Nancy, beginning with their origin stories, before taking a closer look at what might have happened that fateful night in Room 100 of Manhattan's Hotel Chelsea.
Sid Vicious was born Simon John Ritchie in Lewisham, South London, on May 10th, 1957. His parents were John and Anne Ritchie. John was a jazz trombonist and – somewhat ironically – a guardsman at Buckingham Palace where he helped God Save The Queen... and the fascist regime! Perhaps that's where Sid's anarchistic tendencies came from?
John and Anne met while they were both serving in the British Army. He promised to support her and her newborn baby when they moved to Ibiza. Yet almost as soon as they arrived, the cheques failed to show up. Anne knew John had abandoned them, and she and her baby were on their own.
Anne soon moved back to England and remarried, but Simon’s new stepdad died soon after. As a teen, when he wasn't wasted, future-Sid was a funny, sarcastic lad who made people laugh, but he also had a dark side.
By the time he was a teenager, he was drinking hard and getting into fights or threatening people with chains or broken bottles. There wasn’t much to do in his hometown, as the quiet, parochial Kentish town of Tunbridge Wells doesn't exactly scream Anarchy in the U.K. Simon also started self-harming and, before long, he and his mother moved to East London, where the streets were anything but paved with gold.
Across the pond in Philadelphia, on February 27th, 1958, a little girl named Nancy Laura Spungen was born to Frank and Deborah Spungen. On top of a difficult birth – she was choked by her umbilical cord – baby Nancy was an absolute nightmare.
Her mom once said, "I know it's normal for babies to scream, but Nancy did nothing but scream." Not even the liquid barbiturates she was prescribed from the age of three months could quell her violent behavior. These drugs may well have paved the way to her later drug addictions. Talk about getting into drugs at a young age!
Growing up, Nancy was prone to temper tantrums. In Deborah Spungen's memoir, And I Don't Want To Live This Life: A Mother's Story Of Her Daughter's Murder, she writes, "A 7-year-old ran our household. When she wanted something, no matter how big or small, she hollered and screamed and backed us into a corner until we were the ones to back down. We gave in to her. Why? Because there was absolutely no peace in the house until she got what she wanted."
After being expelled from school at age 11 and threatening to kill a babysitter with a pair of scissors, Nancy was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 15. While spending time in a mental institution, she attempted to batter her psychiatrist. She also ran away from another school and attempted suicide by slitting her wrists… again with scissors. It seems this little lady had a penchant for violence, cutting, and blades.
Despite everything, Nancy graduated high school and went on to attend the University of Colorado, aged just 16. She was bright as a button and excelled academically, you see. But in her freshman year, she was caught trying to buy marijuana from an undercover cop and again for possessing stolen goods.
She accepted a plea bargain and was banished from the state of Colorado. In 1972, when she was just 17, she left Philly and moved to New York City. Unfortunately, she landed slap bang in the middle of a heroin epidemic.
Back in Blighty, in 1973, Simon had his first encounter with an equally crazy fellow student at Hackney Technical College. That crazy young man's name was John Lydon. The pair shared a love of music, avant-garde fashion and, of course, anarchy. It was a match made in heaven.
The pair independently made their way to the punk scene's homes in Carnaby Street and Chelsea's famous Kings Road, where Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood owned a then-unheard-of clothing store named S.E.X. Lydon later recalled the pair also busked together, playing Alice Cooper songs, and that people gave them money to stop playing!
Naturally, Sid was on tambourine. Once a man gave them "three bob" (15 pence), and they danced like idiots. But it wasn't all fun; Simon once assaulted N.M.E. journalist Nick Kent with a motorbike chain, with help from Public Image Limited's future bass player, Jah Wobble.
After squatting with John Lydon and Jah Wobble in London's pretty vacant buildings, the future Pistols' lead singer gave Simon the nickname "Sid Vicious" after Lydon's pet hamster Sid (who itself had been named after Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett).
The hamster was prone to outbursts of violence and once bit Simon, to which he replied: "Sid is really vicious!" The name stuck like a punk sniffing glue. Incidentally, it was Sid who coined Jah Wobble's nickname, as that's how he drunkenly mumbled his real name, John Wardle.
In 1976, Sid joined early punk band, The Flowers of Romance alongside The Clash and Public Image Limited founding member Keith Levene. Sid also played drums for Siouxsie and the Banshees and could have joined The Damned had he not missed the audition.
Sid held a grudge against The Damned's Dave Vanian for the missed audition, so – out of his mind on booze and amphetamines – he turned up at a Damned gig and threw a glass towards Vanian on stage. The glass missed Dave and smashed on a pillar, partially blinding a girl in one eye. Sid was arrested the next day and was sent to jail.
In 1977, bassist Glen Matlock left another punk band, The Sex Pistols, and, since Sid attended every gig anyway, manager Malcolm McLaren gave him the role of bassist… even though he couldn't play for toffee!
Malcolm later stated: "If Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude," and admitted that if he had met Sid before he hired Johnny, then the "more-charismatic" (but less talented) Sid would have been the Sex Pistols' frontman. Drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones had little patience with their new bass player, but McLaren was certain Sid's rockabilly, tough-guy image with his leather jacket, spiky hair, and chains could make him, ahem, sorry... make them millions.
Lemmy from Motörhead taught Sid to play bass, though Viv Albertine from The Flowers of Romance and later The Slits says she "went to bed, and Sid stayed up with a Ramones album and a bass guitar, and when I got up in the morning, he could play. He'd taken a load of speed and taught himself."
So, now might be a good time to address who invented punk. As the Sex Pistols were taking over Britain by swearing on live TV, New York was the home of American punk. Some say the music movement started in Britain, but artists like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and rock bands like The New York Dolls certainly played their part in proto-punk at the beginning of the ‘70s or – in MC5’s case – even as early as the late ‘60s.
The truth is, American and British punk both evolved independently as an expression of anger and frustration. The two cultures definitely influenced each other, though. American punk was more closely rooted in rock n' roll/glam rock and focused on the music, whereas British punk revolved slightly more around the fashions and attitude.
By the time the Sex Pistols and The Clash took over British airwaves and dance halls, US punk bands like The Ramones and Television, and new wavers like Blondie, and post-punk art popsters Talking Heads were flourishing, and clubs like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City were well-known gathering spots for New York’s musicians, artists, poets, waifs and strays.
One such waif and stray was Nancy Spungen. When she wasn't working as a stripper or sex worker, she was a groupie who followed punk bands and rock bands like Aerosmith and Bad Company. In 1977, heroin addict Spungen moved to London, and not because she wanted a Holiday in the Sun: Britain was fast approaching its infamous Winter of Discontent.
As the industrial revolution began to fade in the mid-to-late Seventies, the United Kingdom was rife with factory closures, unemployment, poverty and riots. Trash had to be piled in parks thanks to widespread strikes, and bodies went unburied in cemetaries. This socio-economic hellscape created a palpable sense of Anarchy in the U.K., which, in turn, helped spawn the British punk movement.
Legend says Nancy Spungen followed ex-New York Dolls and current Heartbreakers, Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, to London to win Jerry's heart. But fate, destiny, the gods - call it what you want – intervened, and instead she ended up hanging out with the Sex Pistols.
When lead singer Johnny Rotten – that's John Lydon's stage name – spurned Spungen's advances, she started chasing Sid Vicious. At first, Sid also rejected her, but over time, he grew to feel sorry for her as everyone rejected her. There was a very good reason for this. She was toxic to her core, or in rock n’ roll parlance… Nancy was B-b-b-b-b-b-bad to the bone.
Soon, these two desperate, vulnerable addicts with a penchant for drink, drugs, knives, violence, self-harm, and self-destruction fell madly in love. Dangerously in love. Sid had found his soulmate, and Nancy hers. This meeting of minds would be the death of both of them.
Not long after, Sid introduced Nancy as his girlfriend at a Pistols gig. Guitarist Steve Jones recalled, "She showed up with Sid, and I was thinking 'who the f*** is this? This is a horrible person.'" Johnny Rotten had always stuck up for his old, talentless mate but not when it came to Nancy.
Everyone who met Nancy warned Sid to stay away as she was trouble with a capital ‘T'. The only people who hated her more than the band were the British tabloids, who labelled her "Nauseating Nancy" based on her outrageous, intoxicated, antisocial behavior, which included verbally and physically abusing Sid in public. That said, the violence was even more heated behind closed doors, and about to get much, much worse.
In April '77, Malcolm McLaren had to rescue a drug-addled Sid from Nancy's friend's party. The host was Linda Ashby, and her apartment was where celebrities and Members of Parliament would pay to be whipped.
Linda was a lesbian dominatrix. Six days after this episode, Sid's mom became concerned for her son's health when he started to "turn a rather disturbing shade of yellow." Imagine the same color as the cover to Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). Sid was rushed to hospital, where doctors confirmed punk's baddest boy had contracted hepatitis from sharing dirty needles.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the Pistols’ record label, A&M, dropped the band from their contract after just one week, before Richard Branson’s Virgin Records snapped them up. As a result of Sid's hospitalization – and his terrible bass playing – Steve Jones had to play Sid's bass parts on the band's debut album.
Vicious only appeared on one track, "Bodies," though even that was later overdubbed by Jones! The thing about punk was… it wasn't about talent; it was about attitude, and Sid and Johnny Rotten had that by the bucketload.
In May 1977, the Pistols released "God Save the Queen" during Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. The BBC refused to play the sacrilegious song, but it went to Number 2 in the charts anyway. This was followed by their next megahit, "Pretty Vacant", in July.
Immediately, Johnny, Sid, Steve and Paul shot to fame, becoming the must-see punk rock band. They were the embodiment of punk on the British side of the Atlantic. The Pistols’ fans started out with the Bromley Contingent (a group of followers that included Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol) now included every kid with a hairsprayed, foot-high mohican and leather jacket held together with safety pins and Union Jack patches. Suddenly, every kid in England wanted to be spat on by the Pistols!
But the more fame and fortune came his way, the more Sid just wanted to get high with Nancy. He'd become more and more distant and was often absent from recordings and meetings. He preferred to spend his days arguing and fighting Nancy in their West London apartment, then sinking into a heroin-induced coma.
One night, Nancy had to stop Sid from jumping out of a hotel window; in return, he violently attacked her. Blood was spilt, and the police were called but ultimately didn't press charges. It was around this time that things got so bad that manager Malcolm McLaren even plotted to kidnap Nancy and put her on a plane back to the States!
In January 1978, Nancy was distraught when Sid left her behind as the band embarked on a month-long American tour. The tour only lasted two weeks because the band was tearing itself apart. Sid was doing his utmost to antagonize the crowds, and tensions hit boiling point between Sid, Johnny, and McLaren.
Sid's worsening heroin habit was destroying him. One time, he walked through a glass hotel room door. In San Antonio, Texas, he struck an audience member over the head with his bass guitar. Before they played the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Sid – again going cold turkey from heroin withdrawal – scrawled "gimme a fix" into his bare chest.
By this point, the band had it up to here with Sid’s antics, so they gave him an ultimatum; he must choose between the band and Nancy. On January 14th, after their gig at Winterland in San Francisco, Johnny, Steve, and Paul had finally had enough, so the Sex Pistols split up. Johnny Rotten summed it up with his famous line, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Lydon later explained: "I felt cheated, and I wasn't going on with it any longer; it was a ridiculous farce. Sid was completely out of his brains... just a waste of space. The whole thing was a joke at that point." But to Sid, this meant he was free to do what he wanted. He and Nancy moved to New York and checked into the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was Manhattan's Hotel Chelsea.
America wasn't faring much better than the U.K. The Big Apple was in dire economic straits. As punk and disco provided two exact opposite city soundscapes, brownstones burned, and criminals reigned supreme while the police were stretched too thin to do anything about the city's rampant drug problems. According to Sid and Nancy's friend, Victor Colicchio, it was: "a time when the inmates ran the asylum."
Long before the fame and fortune had messed him up, Sid had abused multiple drugs (which his heroin-addicted mother often provided him with), but Nancy introduced him to the New York punk rock scene. Heroin was much easier to come by in The Big Apple, and their addiction soon spiraled out of control.
Created by a socialist to accommodate an electric mix of economic classes and artistic people, the Hotel Chelsea was like a microcosm of New York and all its problems. Drugs, dealers, pimps, and guns were everywhere, and you didn't venture above a particular floor if you valued your life. After multiple arguments and bouts of domestic violence, Mr and Mrs John Simon Ritchie – the name they checked in under – were moved to Room 100, where the manager could keep a better eye on them.
Just as Yoko Ono was blamed for splitting up The Beatles and Jeanine Pettibone split up Spinal Tap, Nancy Spungen had played her part in breaking up the Sex Pistols. She volunteered to become Sid's manager to help him launch a solo career, yet over the next few months, Sid and Nancy spiraled into deeper drug abuse.
As the heroin took over his life, he recorded lead vocals on three covers: Frank Sinatra's "My Way", and two Eddie Cochran tracks: "C'mon Everybody" and "Something Else" for the soundtrack of The Great Rock' n' Roll Swindle (1980) movie.
Sid also performed in New York with various musicians, including Mick Jones from The Clash, ex-Pistol bassist Glen Matlock, members of the New York Dolls, and Rat Scabies of The Damned. He mostly performed at Max's Kansas City and drew pretty sizable crowds until he again started turning on his own audience.
Sid's self-destructive personality and penchant for heroin threw his career and any potential he had further down the pan. Some say Nancy made good money from Sid's gigs, money which he never saw. This caused even more tension in their already volatile relationship. Very soon, it would all come to a tragic end.
According to glam punk rocker Neon Leon, on October 11th, 1978, Nancy presented Sid with a Jaguar Wilderness K-11 folding knife "to protect himself" in New York and in the hotel.
That night, a whole host of unsavory characters came and went from Sid and Nancy's room at the Hotel Chelsea. Witnesses say they saw Sid take around 30 Tuinal pills, a highly potent sedative… and a dose that would kill most people. Sid fell into a deep, dark comatose state.
The next morning, Sid awoke from his drugged-induced stupor to find Nancy Spungen dead on the bathroom floor in Room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea. She was just 20 years old. Police discovered she had suffered a stab wound to the abdomen and bled out over several hours.
Police immediately arrested and charged Sid with second-degree murder. At first, he claimed they had argued that night and that he had stabbed her, but he never meant to kill her. But later, Sid changed his version of events several times. At one point, he stated he couldn't remember what happened, then that Nancy had accidentally fallen onto the knife.
Ten days after Nancy's death, on October 22nd, Sid attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrist with a smashed light bulb. He was hospitalized at the infamous Bellevue Hospital, New York, where he again tried to kill himself by jumping out of a window. Before hospital staff managed to stop him, he’d been shouting: "I want to be with my Nancy!"
In a November 1978 interview with the BBC's Nationwide T.V. show, Sid stated Nancy's death was "meant to happen" and that "Nancy always said she'd die before she was 21." When the interviewer asked Sid if he was having fun and where he'd like to be, Sid replied, "Under the ground." Within a few short months, his wish would come true.
On December 9th, 1978, Vicious was arrested and charged with assault after attacking Patti Smith's brother, Todd, at a Skafish concert in New York. He was sent to Rikers Island jail for 55 days to undergo enforced detoxification.
Sid was released on February 1st, 1979, and taken to the New York Criminal Court, where his lawyers – who were paid for by Mick Jagger – were confident they could get him off the murder charges. Along with some help from Virgin Records, Sid's mom posted his $50,000 bail and left the criminal court with her beloved, messed-up son.
Within 24 hours, he would be dead...
That same night, a small group of friends – including Jerry Only of The Misfits – gathered at Sid's new girlfriend, Michele Robison's Manhattan apartment, to celebrate Sid making bail. He'd been on a rigorous detoxification methadone program during his time at Rikers Island.
Still, at the party, Sid allegedly had his friend, photographer Peter ‘Kodick' Gravelle, deliver him some heroin. Sid died that night from a heroin overdose and was discovered the next morning by his mother. He was 21.
Sid's mother asked for her son's ashes to be scattered over Nancy's grave, where she’d been buried in a Jewish cemetery in Pennsylvania. Her request was denied. Instead, her son was cremated at Garden State Crematory in New Jersey.
Some say punk died the day Sid Vicious died. His death may have embodied the 'Live Fast, Die Young' punk ethos, but the movement's spokesperson had turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer… or had he?
Some believe Nancy stabbed herself in a suicide pact and that Sid couldn't go through with keeping up his end of the bargain. Others speculate he simply passed out before he could. Indeed, after his funeral, Sid's mother found a suicide note inside one of his jacket pockets that may be an intriguing clue as to what really happened. It read, "We had a death pact, and 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."
Sid and Nancy's story is often cited as a modern-day anti-Romeo and Juliet story. But what if there were no "anti" about it? What if their story exactly mirrors what happened in Shakespeare's play? If you remember your English Literature classes, Romeo believes Juliet is dead, so he drinks poison and dies. Juliet wakes from her sleeping potion and learns that Romeo is dead, so she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger.
It certainly seems like Sid and Nancy could have had a Shakespearean suicide pact. Why else would Sid take 30 Tuinal pills that night – more than enough to kill a man – if not to kill himself?
Perhaps Nancy woke from her own drug-induced sleep, found Sid unconscious and – believing him to be dead – stabbed herself with his knife. When you factor in that she bought the knife earlier that same day, this explanation seems to stack up more and more. That said, it didn't take Sid long to find a new gal considering he was so heartbroken.
Speaking of the knife, there was some confusion about whether Nancy was killed with a 007 knife or the actual weapon used to kill Spungen: A Jaguar Wilderness K-11 folding knife. The confusion seems to be a frequently misreported fact, as Sid often carried a 007 knife. In fact, police reports state the Jaguar knife was found "complete with the appropriate blood stains and fingerprints". But if Sid had been handling the "murder weapon" that day, wouldn't it have had his prints on it anyway?
Furthermore, after everyone else had left, two drug dealers are rumored to have come to Sid and Nancy's room that night to deliver supplies to the couple. They were notoriously laissez-faire when it came to money; Sid was always paid in cash, and people would follow them around New York as rolls of dollar bills would literally fall from their pockets.
A sizable chunk of money – $25,000 in cash; a royalty payment from Virgin Records – went missing from their hotel room that night. Could the two drug dealers have robbed them, and Nancy's fatal knife wound was a result of a robbery gone wrong?
All the evidence points to Sid in the hotel room with the knife, but as he was the only other person in Room 100 that night, and him not being able to tell us, we'll never truly find out if Nancy's death was suicide, murder, or a robbery gone wrong.
What we do know is that their tumultuous, toxic, co-dependent relationship led to each other's deaths. Had they never met, Sid might still be alive today making terrible music, and Nancy may have become Mrs Jerry Nolan, New York Doll.
To find out more about Mr Vicious and Miss Spungen, check out The Great Rock' n' Roll Swindle or Alex Cox's film Sid and Nancy (1986), starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb.
The Sid and Nancy biopic also features a young, up-and-coming 21-year-old actress and musician by the name of Courtney Love, who went on to become Mrs Kurt Cobain. Together, Kurt and Courtney would go on to become grunge rock's anti-Romeo and Juliet story for a whole new generation, and some would blame her for Kurt's death.