Disgraceland

by Jake Brennan

  Johnny Rotten was right—Sid never had a chance.

  And if Anne Beverley’s horrible maternal influence on young Sid Vicious wasn’t enough, by his twentieth birthday, Nancy Spungen was bulleting down the double barrel of dependency and affection straight toward Sid, who was dead set in her crosshairs.

  Nancy Spungen was the alpha dog of 1970s groupies. She was an American heat-seeking missile of a woman who kept time with members of Aerosmith and the Ramones. Her only ambition: to live fast and fuck rock stars. Plan A was Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls, and in early March 1977, a few days after her nineteenth birthday, Nancy bought a one-way ticket from NYC to London, to follow Nolan and the Dolls on tour. Jerry Nolan wisely gave her the slip. Plan B was Johnny Rotten—who wasn’t interested—so Sid was Plan C.

  Nancy wasn’t one to waste an opportunity. England’s newest hitmakers, the Sex Pistols, were making waves in the clubs and on the charts. Nancy, rejected by Nolan and Rotten, quickly moved on to the Pistols’ newly minted bassist, Sid Vicious, a decision she based on his looks, his attitude, and his punk rock cred—certainly not on his musical talent.

  Sid was hired into the Sex Pistols for the exact same reasons: for everything but his bass chops. By any measure of musicianship, he could barely play his instrument. But that was what made him appealing to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. What’s more punk than a musician who can’t play, was his thinking. The party line for why the band sacked founding member Glen Matlock—writer of many of the Sex Pistols’ best songs—was that he had admitted that he liked Paul McCartney. And what’s more punk than firing a band member because he admitted to liking a Beatle? Punk’s British incarnation was all about dethroning the dinosaurs of rock ’n’ roll. Sid hated Paul McCartney. Or so he said. Matlock was out. Sid was in. Manager Malcolm McLaren couldn’t have been happier. Sid was a perfect complement to singer Johnny Rotten. An equally disruptive force.

  McLaren wanted the Sex Pistols to take the punk attitude further than their American counterparts. The Ramones may have sang that they didn’t care about history, but that was bullshit. They covered songs from the ’50s and had begun endearing themselves to rock’s old guard almost from the jump. When the Sex Pistols performed a cover, they destroyed it. Purposefully desecrating rock ’n’ roll’s sacred cows, doing the unheard of and bailing on the words to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” Johnny Rotten prattling on with “I don’t know the words, blah blah blah” where the lyrics should have been. He simply didn’t care.

  And Nancy didn’t care about Sid’s musicianship, either. He was tabloid famous and punk rock skinny. That was good enough. The pair hit it off immediately. They had a lot in common. She was needy. He was vulnerable. But whereas Sid’s shortcomings can easily be traced back to nurture (or lack thereof), Nancy’s seemed to be just in her nature. Growing up in a middle-class Philadelphia suburb and raised in a nuclear family, she was highly intelligent—even skipping third grade due to her advanced intellect—but regardless, she never really fit in. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic at the age of fifteen, but despite a history of violence her high intelligence continued to open doors for her: She began attending University of Colorado Boulder at the age of sixteen. However, because of her erratic behavior, she would often slam shut all the doors of opportunity that opened for her. Her freshman year in college was marked by a drug bust, an arrest for storing stolen goods in her dorm room. When she was finally expelled, she moved back to the East Coast and began dealing drugs, turning tricks, and stripping before she found her real kicks—hooking up with touring bands and bringing them back to her parents’ house for some parental-rattling sex and a homemade breakfast. Notches on her bedpost included Tom Hamilton and Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, and all of the members of the formative version of the New York Dolls except Arthur Kane. Nancy lived hard.

  So did Sid Vicious, but Sid’s hard-living rock-star status aside, he was fragile—damaged, no doubt, by being brought up by a needy, junkie mum. That fragility carried into Sid’s young adulthood, when he met Nancy. Sid was just a few months shy of twenty but was still very much a little boy at heart. Despite the caricatures they would become, the couple really loved one other. Sure, Sid was punk as fuck—on- and offstage—but given a choice, he’d rather sit around in his underwear with Nancy, eat Cheerios, get high, and watch cartoons. And Nancy, for her part, train wreck that she was, really did care for Sid. She looked after him and made sure he didn’t shoot too much dope, and she minded his career as best she could. In general, she couldn’t stand being away from him.

  But both craved attention and both had a taste for violence: violence aimed at both themselves and others; cutting themselves out of boredom and quick to enter into public spats physically, usually for show rather than for any real slight.

  Sid once told an interviewer, “When I get so annoyed over something, I need an enemy, somebody who’s done something to me so that I can take it out on them and beat them to a pulp. And I always find 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. Then I feel better.”

  And the drugs made all of the violence so much more intense.

  Sid and Nancy are often cast as a punk rock version of Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers living fast in leather, dying young, and leaving behind good-looking corpses. But only one of Shakespeare’s archetypal lovers willfully ingested poison—and did it only once—whereas Sid and Nancy spent years pumping themselves full of chemicals that should have killed them time and time again.

  Nancy began shooting up while still in high school, and though Sid had flirted with the stuff before he met her—thanks to dear ol’ mum—from the moment they began their relationship to the bloodied end nineteen months later, smack was the glue that held them together, though many forces would try to pull them apart.

  Young Sid Vicious, drug mule for his mum.

  Sid’s friend, Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, said of Sid’s relationship, “He never had a chance, ya know. I mean, especially after Nancy got ahold of him, he was over.”

  This from Mr. Hard As Nails, Lemmy Kilmister: 49 percent motherfucker, 51 percent son of a bitch. A guy who, when a doctor told him his daily intake of Jack and Cokes could kill him, thought the healthiest decision was to switch to screwdrivers because the orange juice provided some vitamin C.

  Lemmy wasn’t the only one who thought Nancy was too dangerous for Sid.

  Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren felt so strongly about it that he tried unsuccessfully to have Nancy run over with a car. He also tried to kidnap her and put her on a plane back to New York. McLaren hated her influence on Sid so much that it was one of the chief reasons he sent the Sex Pistols on tour to America in 1978. Getting Sid away from heroin was McLaren’s secondary reason.

  While on tour, and without a regular dope supply from his junkie girlfriend, Sid, during a moment of desperation, carved “Gimme a Fix” on his chest with a knife. Beyond Sid’s cutting, the tour was a mess. The Sex Pistols, a band with Day-Glo hair and funny accents who spit on their audience, and played a loud, fast, and obnoxious new form of rock ’n’ roll that had only recently started to be called punk, went over like a bomb in clubs across the American South. Chaos ensued, and they made headlines everywhere. “Cash for chaos,” as McLaren, ever the impresario, gleefully put it.

  McLaren intentionally snubbed major American markets like New York and Los Angeles, places where the Pistols would unequivocally be well received, rather than gawked at like sideshow curiosities. The names of the venues alone read like a McLaren punch line: Randy’s Rodeo, the Kingfish, the Longhorn Ballroom. This ensured mutual antagonism between the band and audiences. The promotional opportunities were also ridiculous: radio interviews where they were promised leather jackets; regional reporters who didn’t get it tagging along. Because they were managed so horribly, the band behaved horribly. Sid disappeared multiple times.
r />   The pressure of it all was too much, and the Sex Pistols disbanded after less than two weeks on the road.

  Sid hightailed it back to London to be with Nancy, where they were able to devote all of their energy—and all of the money Sid made on the road—to finding and doing heroin.

  Sid and Nancy moved into an unfurnished flat. Elvis Presley had recently died, and radio was milking the King’s catalog. His version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” came on. Sid laughed at its pomp and at the King in general.

  “Elvis was cool,” Nancy admonished. “Punks wouldn’t know shit without the King.”

  Nancy loved Elvis. Sid thought, maybe Elvis was cool, after all.

  Nancy went as far as to suggest to Sid that he should cover Elvis’s version of Frank Sinatra’s song himself.

  Sid could do it his way, he thought. Screaming guitars. Feedback. Sid singing it with a snarl that would make Johnny Rotten jealous. Not a bad idea after all. Sid used McLaren’s soundtrack for The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle as an excuse to get into the studio and get the track down. The results were stellar. A completely refreshing take on a track that heretofore had been voiced only by musical giants. Sid had added his own touch to their greatness with ease. The song went to No. 7 on the charts and outsold anything previously recorded by the Sex Pistols. But despite Sid’s seeming ascent, the dangerous lifestyle he was living was no secret.

  As one reviewer from NME remarked, “Just a thought: The last person to record ‘My Way’ died soon after.”

  Dying wasn’t an option. Not yet, anyway. Sid’s solo career was now a priority: second to shooting dope, but still a priority. The “My Way” cover was Nancy’s idea. And it was a good one. So in a drug-induced flash of inspiration it was decided: Nancy would be Sid’s manager.

  There is a lot of footage of the couple during this time: Sitting around in their underwear, nodding off, making out. As artist-manager relationships go, it’s highly unusual. But for a couple of full-blown junkies it’s standard fare. Sid grew more and more dependent on Nancy’s care.

  But Sid didn’t lack for female attention. His mum was always around, expressing her love for Sid as only she knew how. She’d come by their flat, delivering care packages of jujubes and syringes. As mother-son relationships go, this too was highly unusual. But again, for full-blown junkies, totally standard fare.

  However, London was becoming a drag. Maybe it was the lack of excitement now that the Pistols were broken up. Maybe it was the friend who they were considering as a producer who turned up dead in their apartment.

  It had started innocently enough: as a business meeting between Sid, Nancy, and John Shepcock. But no business meeting for the couple was complete without a little powder of some sort, and Sid and Nancy had built up so much of a tolerance for most drugs that mere mortals who tried keeping up with them flirted with death. The couple shared a bed with Shepcock that night, and didn’t realize he was dead for several hours into the morning. It almost shocked them into shaping up. Almost.

  In any event, it was a catalyst to get the hell out of England. As was, from Nancy’s perspective, the smothering presence of Sid’s mum. The junkie care packages were one thing, but lately it felt like she was coming by too much, just to make sure the pair were still alive, and to make sure Nancy was doing an adequate job mothering her son. How can a mother who once used her son as a drug mule judge anybody else for not providing adequate care?

  Whatever the reason, Sid’s solo career needed tending to, and the States seemed like the place to be. But this time Sid would be introduced to the America that wanted him. Sid and Nancy took off for Manhattan. The West Side. To be precise, the Chelsea Hotel.

  Sid and Nancy.

  In 1978, the Chelsea Hotel was already legend. It was where Andy Warhol shot Chelsea Girls. Bob Dylan wrote much of Blonde on Blonde there. Leonard Cohen wrote “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” about the time he ran into Janis Joplin in the elevator and later woke up next to her in bed. It’s where Sam Shepard convinced Patti Smith he was single—and a drummer in a punk band—so that she would sleep with him. Chelsea Guitars was down the block. Mother’s was across the street. Lou Reed lived around the corner, and Max’s Kansas City was a short cab ride away. For Sid and Nancy, the Chelsea Hotel was the place to be.

  They lived on the first floor, aka the “junkies floor,” in room 100, the room where Nancy Spungen would die.

  Getting ahead in the music industry is tough stuff. Getting ahead in the music industry with a two-gram-a-day habit and a hotel tan is brutal—so having a dependable supply of smack nearby was clutch.

  Nancy quickly began to make strides managing Sid. By September of ’78 she had a string of high-paying East Coast gigs lined up at $3,000 to $4,000 a pop. Sid’s solo band was hot shit; Mick Jones from the Clash was on guitar, and the New York Dolls rhythm section was enlisted, which meant Nancy’s former obsession, Jerry Nolan, would be along for the ride as well.

  Sid didn’t mind, though. He and Nancy had a different kind of love by now. It was postsexual. More maternal than en fuego. Jealousy didn’t enter into the equation. Sex was boring. Heroin was God. Music was a means to an end: cash for much-needed dope. Jerry Nolan could come along. At the end of the night, Sid would be nodded out at Nancy’s side no matter what.

  The gigs paid off. Nancy was flush.

  But scoring heroin in New York City was getting harder. Sid sometimes had to head uptown into more dangerous, less known territory and deal with the tremendously sketchy addicts along the way in order to cop. Getting stabbed to death in search of dope in a bad section of town was a very likely but unfortunate prospect for Sid.

  Nancy loved Sid. The last thing she wanted was for him to get stabbed scoring dope. So on October 10, 1978, she bought him a Jaguar K-11 knife for protection. It had a five-inch blade on it. And that blade would end up in her stomach within a number of hours.

  There was no dramatic precursor to Nancy Spungen’s murder. Relatively speaking, anyway. There was no fight. No breakdown. Nothing hinting at premeditation. Sid and Nancy were in love—their own version of love, sure, but love nonetheless. They needed each other like a needle needs a spoon. With Nancy minding Sid’s career there was at least some sort of professional horizon to look out onto after waking up from dope binges. And despite the current state of available heroin, Mr. and Mrs. Too Stoned to Fuck were settled into their own routine, their own version of domestic bliss.

  So like any other normal couple in the throes of love, they decided to throw a party in their room at the Chelsea. Except Sid and Nancy weren’t a normal couple. And this was the Chelsea Hotel.

  Friends shuffled in and out. The main point of their visits was so Nancy could score junk. She and Sid were hurting and on the verge of withdrawal. Nancy had called everyone looking for smack. No dice. The best she could do was convince her friend Rockets Redglare to come by with some synthetic morphine. The scene was dark. Unable to score dope, Sid had downed thirty Tuinals and couldn’t move. Nancy kept the guests coming in, friends with drugs to spare, and a few dealers, but nobody had any heroin. The party broke up. Sid roamed the halls looking for a fix. Nothing. Back to the room.

  He and Nancy were alone. The pain was all-consuming. The pills and booze added a haze but did little to numb the hurt. Sid felt it the worst. They tried soothing each other. On their bed they were a tangled junkie mess. In each other’s arms, taking turns moaning in agony in between barely audible mumbles. Sid faded in and out of consciousness.

  Their death pact was on Sid’s mind. The one where they’d promised to kill themselves if the other had died, so that they could be buried next to each other in their leather jackets, jeans, and motorcycle boots. The pact would always come up in moments like these: when the pain got to be too much. Sid sweating it out. Mumbling incoherently. Nancy jabbering on and on.

  “We should’ve gone uptown earlier to score when we had the chance.”

  “Where the fuck was Rockets Redglare with those pills?”
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br />   “Jerry Nolan always had dope…”

  “This was somehow all that cunt Malcolm McLaren’s fault.”

  She wouldn’t shut up. Words, words…more words. Sid came to. They lay face-to-face still twisted up in pain. Sid was shirtless. “Gimme a Fix” scarred across his chest. Black jeans. Half-inch bike chain and lock around his neck. There was the pain again. And there was his knife. He’d had it in his pocket or in his hand ever since Nancy had given it to him the day before. She was jonesing hard now. Sweating in just her black panties and bra. Near naked. Talking nonstop. She would not shut up.