by John Lydon
You had to wear a tie to get in. I had no T-shirt, just a tie on with a torn suit. Sid didn’t have a tie, so he used his boot lace—a nice touch, very classy. Rules are meant to be broken, or at least bent. They had to let us in because of the people we were with. The party took place in a large ballroom with all the food upstairs.
I planned it like a general leading his troops into battle. First we ran straight toward this glorious banquet of food because we were hungry. There was no question of knives and forks. We were just munching in and being as piggish as we wanted. Then we went for the bar and did some dancing, followed by more food and back to the bar. There was so much free booze. They were playing some effete Euro-disco music, the Giorgio Moroder stuff without those nasty black people singing over the top. I asked David Frost for a dance, and that didn’t go down too well with him. Here was the same pontificating bastard you see on TV crossing his legs and being so smarmy all the time. We loved it and offended so many of the upper crust in one night. You can see why we weren’t invited to many of those affairs. Apparently we were making lewd suggestions to the young boys and girls. But that was the thrill for this young deb—to have Johnny Rotten turn up at her affair. I never knew her. She was one of those spoiled girls who just wanted to give it back to Mumsy and Dadsy. This girl wanted us to be vile. She followed us around at a safe distance, giggling hysterically: “I wonder who let them in?” Her mother, a duchess, was actually good fun—a horrendous old boiler in another tiara.
The security men followed us around wherever we went. There were cameramen there, but I saw the security people stopping them from taking any photos of us in their company. They didn’t want it to get out that we were among these people. That was such a subtle gesture. The manipulation that goes on in the upper reaches is fantastic. That’s part of the show they put on, but they don’t like to be caught out being as filthy and horrible as they really are. The way those people go on, they put any punk gig to shame. It was debauchery. It’s amazing how much booze those people can put away, shockingly more so than your average working stiff. But these are professionals, and they can afford the hangover cures in the morning. I saw a lot of drugs at that place—people in their dickie bows and cocktail outfits, sniffing away in the corners. We were at the party for over four hours. It was such a rare delight and was the only good thing that ever happened at the Cloisters.
We managed to stay at the Cloisters for two weeks when the office forgot to pay the bill. They gave us no money for food, and the flat was cockroach infested, and the rent wasn’t paid. So we were thrown out. I spoke with my father through my brothers. I needed a car to get our stuff out because the bill wasn’t paid. I didn’t want him to know, but later I was glad he found out. As bad as it was, it was better than nothing. I had to call because we had nowhere else to go. It was me eating humble pie. He drove over to pick us up, and my old man really held back because he wanted to beat the shit out of Nancy. She sat in the car and moaned nonstop until we dropped them off at Sid’s mother’s place.
“We’re stars. We deserve a bigger car than this!”
It was my father’s car, bitch! Did she expect him to rent a limo for her?
“If we were in New York…” She went on and on and on.…
I explained to my father that we didn’t have to live with Nancy. Sid did. Let’s face it, it was what he deserved at the time. Yet I was very uptight about having to call my father in the first place. It was a bad, bad situation, and I was really pissed with Sid and Nancy. It was unforgivable and so ungrateful. There were lots of incidents like that. We used to share loads of apartments, but when Nancy turned up on the scene, it would always amount to the same thing. Her whining would be unbearable. She made life so utterly, completely painful—and for no good reason. If you’ve seen the movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, with Bette Davis, that’s what Nancy looked like all the time. Screwed out of her tree, vile, worn, and shagged out. Sid settled for second best immediately. He disliked himself so much that he did the worst possible thing he could have ever done—hook up with that beast, Nancy Spungen. There’s nothing vindictive when I say she was a beast. She was a very self-destructive human being who was determined to take as many people down with her as possible. Nancy Spungen was the complete Titanic looking for the iceberg, and she wanted a full load. She was a real spoiled cow, and that left a vivid impression on me about what Americans must be like.
CHRISSIE HYNDE: Nancy was an opportunist. I’m not even going to say whether I liked her or not, but she had a negative effect on Sid and he didn’t need that.
Sid and I picked up a flat on Sutherland Avenue, but that soon fell apart because, as I then learned, you can’t live in the same house as a member of your band. We used to hold what we called Beer Keller contests to shut her up. Money was starting to come in then, so I could go out and spend three or four hundred quid on just beer. Everybody else would chip in, and we would sit down and decide to drink the lot to see if we could do it in one stretch. That would stun Nancy because there was no way she could come on with that usual rhetoric with a houseload of serious drunks. There were complaints from the dust-bin men about the garbage. They refused to take that many beer bottles.
Sid’s idea of fun at the time was taking drugs with Nancy. My idea of fun was taking drugs with anyone but her, and the two didn’t tarry well. Sid’s drugs were the hard-core stuff, and I was just speeding, boozing and having late night parties. Nancy and her withdrawals proved unbearable. Sutherland Avenue was rented through the office, so that wasn’t good for me. A little bit of money eventually came my way, but not a great deal. Twelve thousand pounds. I put it directly into a house in my name on Gunter Grove, which apparently Steve Winwood and Island Records used to own. It was one large room like a single office space with two bedrooms above. It suited me fine. That’s when Johnny started to think wisely about himself.
I remember Sid telling me a story. He thought this was great. Ha ha ha for decadence. They were so broke, they were looking out their window, which overlooked a garage. There was a black mechanic working down there, and Nancy went down and gave him a blow job for fifteen quid. Sid thought that was marvelous because he got to watch. What a couple.
They would tell these, well, not stories, because I have no reason to doubt them because these people seemed incapable of lying. It was so far gone, so outrageous, they could absolutely appall people, particularly Malcolm. He couldn’t cope with it. It freaked him beyond belief.
NORA: Sid totally believed in her. He beat her up so badly sometimes. He was dependent on her. “Look, you work now. You go hooking. I need some money.” God, the way he would talk to her in the clubs. Such a demeaning demeanor. If John talked to me in public like that, I would have hit him.
We did everything to get rid of Nancy. Malcolm, Steve, Paul, and I put together this little plan where we bought her a plane ticket and a cab ride when Sid went somewhere. We literally shoved her into the cab and sent her to the airport with a ticket. Go. Here’s money. Just go. Get rid of yourself. We went that far because she was so bad for Sid. She had to go. She was killing him. I was absolutely convinced this girl was on a slow suicide mission, as indeed I believe most heroin addicts are. Only she didn’t want to go alone. She wanted to take Sid with her. That was her whole point and purpose.
She was so utterly fucked up and evil. I don’t believe that people are naturally evil. You make your own decisions, but parents can definitely put you in the wrong direction.
We banned her from being on tour with us, but she would manage to find out what hotel we were in. When we banned her, Sid had to put up with it. When he wasn’t on drugs, he was fine and he agreed. The minute she’d turn up and the gear was there, then it would start all over again. He needed her, but he also fought it. Soon he craved the drugs more than her.
BOB GRUEN: She was whiny and not very good-looking, and that made her easy to dislike.
God, I don’t know how many nights I spent with Sid trying to get
him off those drugs. It was ludicrous. I’d literally lock him up at Sid’s own request. I’d spend weekends, a week, whatever it took, not letting him out of the house. That’s what we would do, my friends and I—these so-called bad influences on me. We’d lock him in a room and let him go through it. I know it’s an awful thing. He’d come out of it hating me. I sat there with him through it all. I had done that several times with Sid. I’ve done it with other people, too. You grin and bear, because it’s a serious thing. Heroin addicts go nuts. They want to kill you, but you just have to do it. They yell abuse at you because they can’t sleep. It can go on thirty-six, forty-eight, however many hours it takes. Then it starts all over again for another period of time before gradually they come down. Of course you have to give them something. Usually methadone, gradually lowering that. Not easy, let me tell you. Vile. Awful. Then of course the old bitch would turn up and that would be the end of it. Down the drain. So I gave up. Eventually I didn’t want anything more to do with either one of them.
When we went to America, I decided I would try to help him again because there were other people on the bus, the crew. That was slightly easier, but then it all fucked up in San Francisco, so it was utterly pointless after that.
I cannot understand why anyone would want to put out a movie like Sid and Nancy and not bother to speak to me; Alex Cox, the director, didn’t. He used as his point of reference—of all the people on this earth—Joe Strummer! That guttural singer from the Clash? What the fuck did he know about Sid and Nancy? That’s probably all he could find, which was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The only time Alex Cox made any approach toward me was when he sent the chap who was playing me in the film over to New York where I was. This actor told me he wanted to talk about the script. During the two days he was there, he told me that the film had already been completed. The whole thing was a sham. It was a ploy to get my name used in connection with the film, in order to support it.
To me this movie is the lowest form of life. I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction. It definitely glorifies it in the end when that stupid taxi drives off into the sky. That’s such nonsense. The squalid New York hotel scenes were fine, except they needed to be even more squalid. All of the scenes in London with the Pistols were nonsense. None bore any sense of reality. The chap who played Sid, Gary Oldman, I thought was quite good. But even he only played the stage persona as opposed to the real person. I don’t consider that Gary Oldman’s fault because he’s a bloody good actor. If only he had the opportunity to speak to someone who knew the man. I don’t think they ever had the intent to research properly in order to make a seriously accurate movie. It was just all for money, wasn’t it? To humiliate somebody’s life like that—and very successfully—was very annoying to me. The final irony is that I still constantly get asked questions about it. I have to explain that it’s all wrong. It was all someone else’s fucking fantasy, some Oxford graduate who missed the punk era. The bastard.
When I got back to London, they invited me to a screening. So I went to see it and was utterly appalled. I told Alex Cox, which was the first time I met him, that he should be shot, and he was quite lucky I didn’t shoot him. I still hold him in the lowest light. Will the real Sid please stand up?
As for how I was portrayed, well, there’s no offense in that. It was so off and ridiculous. It was absurd. Champagne and baked beans for breakfast? Sorry. I don’t drink champagne. He didn’t even speak like me. He had a Scouse accent. Worse, there’s a slur implied in this movie that I was jealous of Nancy, which I find particularly loathsome. There is that implication that I feel was definitely put there. I guess that’s Alex Cox showing his middle-class twittery. It’s all too glib, it’s all too easy.
Sid wanted to be hurt, that’s what he wanted. That and attention. He’d get himself into all kinds of fights, and he’d always lose. He was always covered in scars and black eyes. The sadomasochistic behavior was something I’d never seen in him before Nancy. He bought that image and lifestyle. There were so many incidents, it’s not worth bothering to even remember them. It was continual.
CAROLINE COON: Sid didn’t want to be self-destructive. The adults around him didn’t give him the opportunity to go any other way. When I first met Sid as part of the young fans around the Pistols, absolutely loving what they were doing, Sid didn’t want to destroy himself. Consider how fluid your sexuality is around that age. Then came the adult men, a decade older, around him. They got their thrills from the huge element of hatred in their own psyches. Evil is easy to explain; evil, the enjoyment of destruction. Young people inside that circle didn’t stand a chance. I’m not talking so much about the dark side as much as the hidden side. When I was a nineteen-year-old, I was damn lucky because of the people who took care of me. That was important. That was part of what was missing for them. I guess what I’m challenging is the behavior of the adults. I’m saying that Malcolm, Bernie, and company were of the age of consent and were dealing with men who were very young.
Malcolm, leave those kids alone. Pink Floyd reference.
We signed our second record contract with A&M outside of Buckingham Palace. We didn’t last long there, either—one week in March of 1977. We had a huge fight in the limo on the way. It started out when Sid was taking a piss out of Paul. Sid used to always be on Paul’s case. He called him an albino gorilla in the limo. One remark led to another, then fists flew. We all got hurt, and when we fell out, it was black eyes, I’m afraid. These were not bad things. Every band does it. But it doesn’t help when there’s a load of press waiting at the other end and we’re all fighting out in the street outside Buckingham Palace. The police weren’t amused, either. Then it was on to a press conference, which was another farce. We weren’t briefed, and we had no idea what we were going to be asked or what was going to take place. Again, it was tabloid press goading in their particular offensive way. They try to trick you into saying stupid things. We all just clammed up. Sid threw a custard tart at someone. It was as stupid as that. The press got what they wanted—foul-mouthed yobs. They were happy.
A&M invited us over to their offices and plied us with champagne and booze. Malcolm had hoped to try to control us. Sid got violently drunk in the toilet and broke a urinal with his boot. Boys will be boys, as they say. Somebody was sick in a rubber plant in some executive’s office. I have a drunken vague memory, and I don’t like to incriminate myself, but I think it was me. Steve was aggressive to some of the secretaries. One woman ran out screaming. Was Steve offensive? He may have touched some things on her, but I didn’t see it. Paul was quiet and reserved. He’s laid back, but he follows what Steve does to see if there’s something in it for him. He’ll pick up the tail end, so to speak.
We were totally uninterested in A&M. They were just another load of men in suits. Somebody high up in the company thought that we were utterly loathsome. It’s funny how people point fingers and stand up for the Moral Majority. Always be suspicious of he who shouts loudest.
I’ve seen that collector’s copy of “God Save the Queen” on A&M in that record store in Greenwich Village in New York. Even I don’t have one—and I fucking made the thing. A&M never got around to giving us copies. They pulled it right off the market the second it was pressed. They didn’t press many, and what they did press, they instantly set about destroying. We were on A&M for one week. We were ecstatic! They gave us seventy-five thousand pounds to leave. That was brilliant.
You’d think one of these labels would have had the sense to stand back and say, “Hold on, we’re being scammed here!” But no. They all fell down like dominoes. Maybe they didn’t see a financial future in it. They all thought it would be an overnight flirt and that would be the end of it. The way record companies are such a tightly knit little circuit, they only sign up bands that fit into molds. That’s why the music industry is as boring as it is. It’s not for lack of ideas and artists out there, it’s for lack of signings. The bands can’t get signed up, so they fade away. So
metimes labels sign bands to kill them off. If they have a catalog of one type of music and they sense something that might be changing the emphasis and would threaten the rest of the catalog, they sign it up and just bury it. They’re seeing something that threatens their already well-established treadmill.
Virgin, our third and final label, was very “public school boy.” But they were far more open about it and more into having mad fun. I like Richard Branson because he is chaotic and he takes chances. He doesn’t fit very well in that old established business network. He’s made his own rules. Virgin was always there when we signed with the other labels. They wanted us. I think Malcolm didn’t bother with Virgin because he thought they were just too hippie. At the time, all they had was Mike Oldfield and avant garde bands like Faust, Henry Cow, and Gong. Ugh. We decided to make the best of it, then ironically fit in quite nicely.
When we first met, Richard Branson was kind of buck-toothed and giggling all the time. He was a very nervous, fidgety man. Virgin’s offices were brand new at the time the Pistols signed with them. At least it was new. We tried and failed with all the others. Who else was there? RCA? No hope in hell. But we were never desperate—more curious, I think. I was intrigued just how few record labels there were. It never occurred to me before what a small world the music business is. There’s five or six companies and that’s it. Britain is such an isolated, class-oriented, pop-cultured country. The whole scene is magnified, with music being one of Britain’s biggest exports. What else do they export? Crappy cars! It’s a real fool who buys an English car, condemned to a life of garage misery! Can I have a sponsorship?