Simon John Ritchie
(better known by his stage name Sid Vicious)
(May 10th 1957 – February 2nd 1979)
was an
English musician,
best known
as the
second bassist
for the punk rock band
The Sex Pistols.
After his death in 1979
at the age of 21,
he remained an icon
of the punk subculture;
one of his friends noted
that he embodied
"everything in punk
that was dark,
decadent
and Nihilistic."
Early Life
Simon John Ritchie
was born in
Lewisham,
southeast London,
to John and Anne Ritchie
(later named Anne Beverley; died 1996).
Anne McDonald
had dropped out of school
and joined
the British Army,
where she met
Ritchie's father,
a guardsman at
Buckingham Palace
and a
semi-professional
trombone player
on the
London jazz scene.
Shortly after Simon's birth,
he and his mother
moved to Ibiza,
where they expected
to be joined by his father,
who did not appear
and provided no
financial support
Anne reportedly
sold marijuana to get by.
With the help of the
British Embassy in Spain,
Anne returned to
England and,
in 1965,
married
Christopher Beverley,
who died six months later
of kidney failure.
Anne and Ritchie
settled in
Tunbridge Wells, Kent,
where they lived
from 1965 to 1971,
and where Ritchie
attended
Sandown Court School
(later renamed The Skinners' Kent Academy).
In 1971,
the pair moved to
Stoke Newington in
Hackney, East London,
where Ritchie
attended Clissold Park School
(later renamed Stoke Newington School).
At this time,
Ritchie began using
the name
'John Beverley'.
By 1973,
Anne's life was
consumed by her
addiction to heroin,
to the point where,
as Ritchie's friend
John Wardle claimed in a
2009 interview,
she was unaware that her son
was attending
Kingsway College of
Further Education
(later known as Westminster Kingsway College).
While at Kingsway,
which he was likely
attending to complete his
O levels,
Ritchie told a counsellor
that he was
contemplating suicide.
When Ritchie turned 16
that year,
Anne kicked him out
of her home.
In a 1988 interview,
Anne said:
"I remember saying to him:
'It's either you or me,
and it's not going to be me.
I have got to try
to preserve myself
and you just fuck off.'
He said:
'I've not got anywhere to go,"
and I said:
'I don't care.' "
In 1973,
Ritchie met fellow
Kingsway student
John Lydon,
who introduced him
to his friends
John Grey
and
John Wardle.
All four,
who became known locally as '
The Four Johns',
quit school
and began squatting
in various
dingy locations.
Three of the four
Johns would then
take nicknames:
Lydon nicknamed Ritchie
"Sid Vicious"
after Ritchie
was bitten by
Lydon's hamster Sid
(named after Syd Barrett);
Lydon was dubbed
"Johnny Rotten"
by his bandmate,
guitarist
Steve Jones;
and Ritchie
nicknamed Wardle
"Jah Wobble".
The four young men
started hanging around
the King's Road in
Chelsea, London
which was a
centre for
music and fashion.
A favourite spot was
Malcolm McLaren
and
Vivienne Westwood's
clothing store,
Vicious met
American expatriate
Chrissie Hynde,
before she formed
her group
the Pretenders.
According to her
2015 autobiography
Reckless:
My Life as a Pretender,
Hynde convinced
Vicious by paying him £2
to join her in a
sham marriage
to enable her
to get a work permit
and remain
in the country,
after John Lydon
had already declined.
The plan was thwarted
by the register office
being closed the day
the
'happy couple' turned up.
According to Lydon,
he and Vicious
took up busking,
with Lydon singing
and occasionally
playing the violin
and Vicious playing
a tambourine
or an acoustic guitar.
They would play
Alice Cooper covers,
and people gave them
money to stop.
In 1975, Lydon,
Steve Jones,
Glen Matlock
and
Paul Cook,
with McLaren
as their manager,
formed the Sex Pistols,
the band
Vicious would eventually join.
Vicious was
photographed watching
the band attack
their audience
at the Nashville Rooms
in West Kensington
in 1976.
Vicious then began
his own musical career.
Vicious had become
the Sex Pistols'
uber-fan,
never missing a concert.
He was encouraged
to be
drunk and disorderly,
with Wobble saying,
"Sid was offered up as a
sacrificial lamb
by the people
around the Pistols.
None of them
would have
gone over the top.
He was their
kamikaze pilot,
and they were all
too happy to strap him in
and send him off."
In March 1977,
the Sex Pistols were signed
to A&M Records.
In celebration,
they trashed the
company's offices,
and then held a
private party at
the Speakeasy,
a club and restaurant
frequented by
established members
of the London music scene.
The Sex Pistols
members confronted the
BBC DJ Bob Harris,
who was the presenter of
the Old Grey Whistle Test,
a television show
which featured
non-chart music.
Blocking Harris behind the bar,
broken bottles in hand,
they demanded to know
when they would be
on the show.
A bar fight ensued.
Vicious jammed a
broken bottle
into the face of
BBC recording engineer
George Nicholson.
Harris was rescued by
the Procol Harum road crew,
who grouped around him
and escorted him
out of the club,
where they found
that police had had to
cordon off the entire block.
None of
the Sex Pistols
were arrested but,
the next day,
A&M dropped them
and
Capital Radio
banned all
Sex Pistols music
from its stations
Vicious played his first show with
the Sex Pistols on
April 3rd 1977,
at The Screen on the Green;
his debut was filmed by
Don Letts
and appears in
Punk Rock Movie.
But he could not
play well
and had no
bass experience,
so guitarist
Steve Jone
s played bass
on the band's
debut album,
Never Mind the Bollocks,
Here's the Sex Pistols.
Vicious was allowed
to play bass
on one track,
"Bodies",
but his contribution
was later overdubbed
by Jones.
He also missed most
of the band's rehearsals
and recording sessions
because he was in hospital
with hepatitis,
likely caused by
intravenous drug use.
By this time,
Vicious was using heroin,
with many believing that
his mother was his supplier.
Dee Dee Ramone
had seen him
shooting drugs
on more than one occasion,
and Rotten's friend
John Gray
had found Vicious
shooting speed
while he was still
living with his mother;
Vicious told him that
the drugs were
"me mum's"
Also in 1977,
Vicious met
Nancy Spungen,
an American groupie
living in London,
who had a
life-long history
of unstable
mental behaviour
and was also a
heroin addict.
Spungen,
who had initially set
her sights on Rotten
and who supported
herself by alternately
dealing drugs
and working as a
topless dancer,
made herself useful
on the King's Road scene
by procuring drugs
for musicians.
She and Vicious
became inseparable,
which caused problems
with the band,
whose members
did not like her
in January 1978,
the Sex Pistols embarked
on a two-week
USA tour.
There was rising tension
within the band.
Rotten was
barely speaking to anyone.
Warner Bros.,
which organized and
staffed the tour,
insisted that Vicious
clean up his heroin habit,
so he was using methadone.
He was in a constant state of
semi-withdrawal
and furious that
the band had blocked
Spungen from accompanying them
on the tour.
McLaren had long been
keeping Vicious on
rations of $14.00 (US)
a week
but he still managed
to find drugs. T
o make matters worse,
McLaren, ever eager
for more chaos
and careful that
journalists were on-scene,
booked the band,
not into the clubs
of New York,
but into bars in
Louisiana,
Georgia,
Tennessee,
and Texas
Death of Nancy Spungen
On the night of
October, 11th 1978,
Vicious and Spungen
hosted a party
in their hotel room,
during which Vicious
took approximately
30 Tuinal tablets,
and was comatose
for the rest of the night
while numerous people
came and went.
At about 11 a.m.
the next day,
hotel staff found
Spungen dead on
the bathroom floor,
with a knife wound
to her abdomen.
Vicious was found
wandering the hallway.
He first claimed to have killed her,
then said he
remembered nothing.
Two people who had been
at the party stated that
Spungen was alive at 5 a.m.
The murder weapon
was identified as a
Jaguar K-11 hunting knife,
which Spungen had purchased
for Vicious a few days earlier.
Vicious was arrested and charged
with second-degree murder.
He told police that he and Spungen
had argued that night
but gave conflicting versions
of what happened next, saying,
"I stabbed her,
but I never meant to kill her"
then saying that he did not
remember anything,
then that Spungen
had fallen onto the knife.
The arresting officer,
Sgt. Thomas Kilroy
of the
Third Homicide Unit,
said: "
... Vicious admitted killing
Miss Spungen
during a dispute
McLaren firmly believed that
Vicious was innocent.
Noting that the knife
was left in plain view
and that the couple
kept their cash in a drawer,
he believed that Spungen
caught one of the
party guests
stealing money
and was stabbed by
that person.
Given the number of people
who had been
through The Night
Possibility that a third party
was involved in
Spungen's death
On 28 November,
Vicious was interviewed
by the Irish journalist
Bernard Clarke.
He said that Spungen's death was
"meant to happen"
and that
"Nancy always said she'd
die before she was 21".
He said that he just wanted
to have fun.
When asked where he
would like to be,
he replied,
"Under the ground"
Death and Aftermath
On the morning of
February, 1st 1979,
after completing his
detoxification programme,
Vicious was released
from Rikers Island.
He arrived in Manhattan,
and by chance,
met his friend
Peter Gravelle.
Vicious asked Gravelle
to find him some heroin.
Gravelle brought $200 worth
of the drug
to the apartment of
Michelle Robinson
at 63 Bank Street,
where he joined
Vicious,
Robinson,
Beverley,
Jerry Only
of the band
The Misfits,
Eileen Polk,
Jerry Nolan
of the Heartbreakers,
Esther Herskovits,
and
Howie Pyro.
Gravelle said that
they sat around
doing drugs,
and he left
at 3:00 a.m.
Only said that he
and Anne Beverley
made dinner,
and that he,
Polk, and Pyro
left early,
when the heroin
use began.
He noted that
Vicious was already
nodding off,
and around 11:00 p.m.,
he "picked him up
and slapped him around"
before Beverley
put a blanket over him
and told Only
"that he'd be okay.
I was like,
he's just been in priso
n for two months
so he had to be clean
so you know you can't be
messing with him."
However,
Gravelle said that Robinson
gave Vicious four
Tuinal
(a barbiturate and a favourite of Sid's)
to help him sleep.
Vicious died over the night
of a drug overdose.
Robinson and Beverley
discovered his body
the following morning,
on
February, 2nd 1979
Anne Beverley later claimed that
Vicious and Spungen
had made a suicide pact
and that Vicious's death
was not accidental.
She produced a
handwritten note,
which she said she found
in the pocket of
Vicious's leather jacket,
reading
"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
C 'Mon Everybody
My Way
Born To Lose
(Live)
I Wanna Be Your Dog
(Live)
Take A Chance on Me
(Live)
Stepping Stone
(Live)
My Way
(Live)
Belsen Was A Gas
(Live)
Somethin' Else
(Live)
Chatter Box
(Live)
Search and Destroy
(Live)
Chinese Rocks
(Live)
I Killed The Cat
(Live)
My Way
(Take 3 Demo)
Something Else
(1st Mix Demo)
Beyond The Grave
(Sid Vicious)
(Interview) [*]
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