The Sex Pistols stand alone release-'Never Mind The Bollox..’ features very little of Sid Vicious if at all.
Sid was not the greatest of musician or using the word musician was a loose word to describe him. He was self taught, the story of how he did hinges on the debut record By The Ramones.
The Ramones self titled debut album, the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ of the Punk generation, this was the tool Sid used to learn the bass.
A marathon fourteen-hour session of purely listening and learning as you go taught Sid the bass or so legend goes at least, throw in the story of being on speed to stay awake and focused and now it becomes more real.
Anyone associated with Sid or the Pistols always maintain that Sid was a far better singer than bass player, the ‘Rock N Roll Swindle Soundtrack’ holds weight to that theory. With songs such as 'Something Else' and 'C'mon Everybody' and his apocalyptic version of 'My Way', are without doubt extremely good as rock songs go let alone punk songs and suited Sid perfectly. He had the snarl and can add that extra tone of aggression and malice in his vocal.
In the background of Jim Callaghan's Labour Led Britain, heading into a winter of discontent,what spit in the face hope the Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind The Bollox..’ must have given the young generation.
As the needle hit the marching intro of 'Holiday In The Sun', not an album of escapism but rather one of aggressive acceptance at the state of the country, like the Bob Dylan of the sixties, the young had a voice.
A monumental work is found in the Sex Pistols one and true release.
Sid plays two roles on that album, one the image of the album, a projection on what a band with that much aggression should act and look like, the other was the tune 'Bodies', the only song that Vicious is reported to have played bass on.
By all accounts he was hospitalised during the recording due to having contracted hepatitis or jaundice depending on who is telling the story. Steve Jones is the man covering the bass lines throughout the rest of the recording as legend goes.
Did he do it?
Nancy Laura Spungen was murdered on the 12th-of-October 1978 at the age of 20.
The girlfriend of Sid Vicious suffered a stab wound at the Chelsea Hotel in New York and bled to death. All very bleak and sad.
Viscous was arrested and charged with her murder and served time in Rikers Island penitentiary in New York.
Before Vicious stood trial and while out on bail, he died of an overdose,four months after Nancy on the second-of-February 1979. This was an apparent assisted suicide as he had proclaimed he wanted to be:
'Under the ground!'.
His previous suicide attempts pointed to this frame of mind, this led to the case was being closed by the NYPD.
The theory of what happened that night,
has been told many times, which leads to
two theories as to how Nancy or ‘Nauseating Nancy’, as the British tabloids named her, died that night and neither involve Vicious murdering her.
The first is Spungen made it clear she did not want to live past the age of 21 and a suicide pact, which went wrong, Sid being too stoned to kill himself and Spungen stabbing herself with the hunting knife Sid had obtained for some say that very reason.It would explain Sids testimony of;'She must have fell on the knife'
By that he means stabbing or pushing the knife into herself. In the days and weeks that followed Vicious had tried to commit suicide, one attempt jumping out a window screaming;
“I want to be with Nancy!”
Sids mother, Anne Beverly is thought to have assisted in the suicide and presented a letter after Sids passing that 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.'
That is one theory, the second that may be very close to the truth is this, it was a botched robbery, botched in the sense that Vicious was out cold but Nancy disturbed whoever it was that had entered the room.
A fact not widely publicised is Sids royalty money was gone from the room safe.
There had been two people present earlier that night, an apparent drug dealer only named as 'Michael' and a comedian-dealer known as Rockets Redglare, who had been to the room to delivery a batch of drugs earlier that evening was due to return.
So when he or this supposed 'Michael' returned to rob the royalty payment, they would have found Sid passed out and maybe got disturbed by Spungen which led to her murder.
Apparently this Rocket Redglare did admit to the murder years after but to friends and not the NYPD, if there's truth in it it’s long buried.
The NYPD closed the case quickly, no investigation was ever done to find out what happened to Sids royalty money, nor were the fingerprints on the knife and in the apartment ever fully investigated. It was a dead Punk,a dead junky, but behind it all it was twenty-year old girl and a twenty-one year old guy.
Kevin Burke January ‘19
