Original subtitles

- Nancy Spungen of Philadelphia was found

in the singer's suite at the Chelsea Hotel.

He's been charged with second degree murder.

- Vicious who allegedly plunged his hunting knife

into his lover's stomach in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel

where they lived together for the last month

of their two-year relationship.

- Vicious, whose real name

is John Simon Ritchie, was arraigned today

in Manhattan over the objections

of the District Attorney, bail was set at $50,000.

* Just another mixed up junkie

* Just another lonely heart

* Dead and soon to be forgotten

* Killed by greedy showbiz tarts

* Oh, oh, terminal love

* Oh, oh, terminal love

* Oh, oh, terminal love

* Oh, oh, terminal love

* Oh, oh, terminal love

- I was home, Malcolm called me up

and said, "Have you heard the news?"

and I said, "No," and he said, "It looks like Nancy's dead,

"and they're accusing Sid of killing her."

He asked me to try and find out what happened

and by the time I had heard about it,

they were already taking Sid away

and I didn't really know what happened.

- Nobody knew what the details were.

They came out over the years, and I'm still,

today learning new details about whether Sid did it or not.

- I mean I think he probably thought maybe he killed Nancy.

I don't think anybody really knew what happened.

- I mean, Nancy could push your buttons to the point

where you wanted to at least hit her, you know.

She pushed me that way sometimes where

it was like, enough, you know.

- Sid, damn you.

Fuck.

- Like I said, there's eight million theories.

I mean, he could've, you know.

You know, done it and gone back to bed.

- No matter how much they fought,

and they had this, that was like, that was their routine,

like two kids fighting In the schoolyard,

but they loved each other type of thing.

I don't think there is anyway that he would have killed her.

- Yeah, there were a million different theories.

There was that guy, Rockets Redglare.

There was the suicide pact one where

Sid was supposed to kill Nancy and then kill himself

and he chickened out trying to kill himself.

- Yeah, if you were to tell me or tell anybody

that knew them that they both committed suicide

in some grand spectacular fashion,

we would have believed it, but nobody, including myself,

that knew them, would believe that he killed her.

- If someone was trying to kill her,

they would have just done ehh, and walked away.

You know what I mean, like, that's not how that goes.

You know what I mean?

- I know that Sid and Nancy used to play

very heavy sub/dom games.

They used to cut each other and stuff like that.

And from what I gather, the cuts

that Nancy died from were fairly shallow.

Most people wouldn't die from them.

I just think they were cutting each other

and they went into a nod, she bled to death,

he woke up, she was dead beside him.

* Yeah, I'd like to tell my story

* About people I knew at the Chelsea Hotel

* Chelsea Hotel

* Yeah, Chelsea Hotel

- It's late August 1978,

and after a relationship of 17 months,

Sid and Nancy are in New York City

and check into the Chelsea Hotel.

- I mean, the Chelsea Hotel,

it is very artistic community for years

with very known literary figures and here comes this punk,

and in one night, every bit of history

at the Chelsea Hotel was overshadowed.

- The Chelsea right then was, for me,

it was like the center of the Zeitgeist.

I mean, everybody came through the Chelsea.

- You could see Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe

going and plotting their next thing

with Interview Magazine, and Debbie Harry.

Nico was my neighbor across the hall from 119.

- You know, it was a very druggie place

and it was very free place, too, to do whatever you want.

You know, the people who ran it were very experienced

with lunacy, and so they fit right in.

- I know that on the upper floors, there was robberies.

There would be drug dealing, prostitutes.

It was considered a bit dangerous.

- It was pretty scary, but especially

on the first three floors.

* Oi

* Oi

- Honey O'Roarke and I were coming in from someplace

and we went into the lobby at the Chelsea Hotel

and there was all this money on the floor.

Heh, in front of the front desk.

And a blonde woman with a leopard coat,

maybe fishnet stockings and high heels and blonde hair,

and we said, "Hello, hello, your money's on the floor."

She turned around and there was Nancy Spunger,

except she had a big bruise on her head, you know,

and a black eye, and stuff like this, and looked horrible.

- And I met them the first night they got there.

They were in Maxis, Kansas City, and I remember

saying hello to Nancy and Sid was just kinda way out of it.

He was stoned on the dope and he was drinking vodka

and something, and he just kinda had the glass

and he was barely sipping the straw 'cause

he was so stoned and he couldn't even talk.

- And when she came back with Sid,

they both got on the methadone program.

- They were doing dope and then probably also

their methadone and Tuinols and you know,

whatever they could stick in their face.

- I remember talking to Nancy and she said,

"You know, we're here in New York now

"and I'm managing Sid and you should come over

"to the Chelsea and take some pictures of me and Sid,"

and they looked terrible.

They looked like junkies who hadn't slept

in a couple of days, which is what they were, you know.

- She called me up right away.

She said, "Yeah, Sid and I, can we come over?"

I said, "Yeah, sure, come over."

So they come over, and it's like, kinda strange

because she's like the mother.

He's like a lost, he looked like a, he was lost.

She would tell him, "Sit down over there."

He would sit down, and unless she told him

to get up, he'd still be there.

- He was someone who had this permanent snarl,

but when I said, I don't remember what we talked about.

We just talked about random things

and he asked me about being an actor

and there was a sweetness to him, and I remember that.

Then Nancy showed up and he behaved differently around Nancy

and I didn't dislike her.

I didn't know her.

She was abrasive.

But that stuck with me that, you know, later, years later,

I was thinking, you know, this was a sweet kid underneath

who was putting on this act.

- That's the path he was going down,

off of his reputation.

That's all he had, you know, of being a Sex Pistol,

and after the Sex Pistols split up like that,

basically all he had was Nancy and his character.

- I stopped hanging out with him out in the streets

because it was like, well, he's Sid Vicious.

So there we are having pizza at Ray's Pizza

and here's people who want to come and fuck with us.

I used to go to the methadone clinic a couple times with him

and I said nah, that was, you know, guard.

I'm not the bodyguard, nah.

- Steve and I were living at the Chelsea

and Sid and Nancy were our neighbors.

They lived upstairs.

We lived on the main floor.

He would come down all the time by himself to talk to Stiv

and I think they were pretty broke, actually, at the time.

So Nancy would usually come down with him in the morning

and she would leave and he would stay with us all day.

You know, with curtains drawn, we were in the dark,

just talking and playing music.

I guess she was stripping or doing something

in Times Square, and basically the highlight of Sid's day

would be when she would come home with money and drugs.

- You dress differently, you act differently.

Why is this coming out in it?

Is that just part of the business?

- It's just the way we are.

We don't do anything for business.

- Michael McKenzie, who was doing my show occasionally

brought them in and I met them

that night when we did the show.

I never go sit down with notes.

I'm always interacting with people so that it was real.

- I mean, I arrange recording, I arrange gigs.

I arrange the publicity, I--

- By this time, she has an English accent, which I guess

she acquired within a year of going to London.

- I think Sid is hot.

- Okay, well you check him out later.

- Well, you'd better keep your fuckin' hands off him, dear.

- Oh, yeah.

- Oh, yes.

- I like your laugh.

- She was one obnoxious woman, but she was one strong woman.

She didn't care about anything,

so it made for an easy flow of information.

- What do they think about the feminist movement?

- The feminist.

- I'm very cool with, I believe in it a lot.

- So do I.

- Nancy basically takes over answering all the questions,

even the ones that are directed at Sid.

- Ah, he's gonna be playing at Max's on the weekend

of the 29th and we're gonna play in Boston on the 24th.

We have gigs coming up in Toronto.

- Nancy's now is the powerful, you know, sort of,

maybe like the Yoko Ono figure almost.

Almost that she, you know, was managing Sid

and Sid was this rock star and it was her chance to sort of,

really be on top, and you know, have people want

to be asking her, you know, could I be

on the guest list and I want to see Sid play.

- All she ever, her entire, you know,

Academy Award was to go back to New York with the prize,

and just be like, "Fuck you, everybody, I won."

- So when Sid played at Max's that was this big deal

and everyone had to be there, and you know, so I think

that made Nancy probably feel very powerful and that

this was this big, exciting moment for her where

she kind of was running the show and controlling things.

- At sound check, everybody was like just

taking photos and gettin' high and sharing equipment.

Only thing I noticed though was Nancy had

a very diabolical attitude

about the finances,

you know, how money was gonna be distributed, you know.

- The one time he played at Max's,

he couldn't even finish the song.

He would start singing a song and then kind of stumble

halfway through the first verse, and Nancy would come out

and give him another drink, and said,

"You're doing okay, Sid, you're doing okay.

"Just start the next song."

And I remember Mick Jones talking about it and saying

he couldn't believe, 'cause Nick Jones actually

played guitar for one or two of Sid's solo shows

and he couldn't believe that Sid was so out of it,

and that the show was so poorly planned and so badly done

that Sid couldn't even finish the song.

- I don't remember people like leaving,

you know, complaining, "Oh, they played a bum note."

That's what punk rock is supposed to be about.

You know what I mean, nobody could care.

- Yeah, people didn't like it, I thought it was great.

I thought it was, what a way to go out.

You know, with a show like that, with people like that

on stage at Max's Kansas City in a packed place.

Sid liked it.

He felt good about it, and really

at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

- I was walking on 23rd Street.

I saw Sid, he started yelling my name.

You know, "Gino, what' goin' on, come here."

I went, "Yo, Sid, what's up?"

So he comes over to me.

We started bullshit.

He's telling me he's got trouble with Nancy.

I was like, "Why, what's goin' on?

"What do you mean trouble with Nancy?"

He was like, "Nancy wants me to kill myself."

Kill yourself, what are you talkin' about, man?

You're doin' fuckin' great!

"No, no, no, she's serious, man.

"She wants us both to kill ourselves."

Kill yourselves, come on, man.

You're fuckin' crazy, I'm like, c'mon, stop this bullshit.

Well, he's like, "Well, I don't know, man.

"You know, but I ain't goin' through with it.

"I'm tellin' her yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do it,

"but I ain't doin' shit, she's nuts.

"You know what I'm sayin' to ya?

"I'll play her game, but I can't take

"this bullshit with her, you know?"

- Sid was born at Lewisham Hospital on

Friday, May the 10th, 1957.

He was born to Anne Jeanette McDonald

and John George Ritchie.

By the time Simon was in school, she was on speed

and other pharmaceuticals and was just, you know,

really going downhill.

- Sid said one of his main memories of his childhood

was his mother pushing him away so she could shoot up.

And he would try to laugh it off, you know,

and say, "Oh, one drama, fucking junkie there,"

but it was one of those things that you could sense.

There was a real outrage beneath it.

You know, basically he felt that she'd been pretty useless

in terms of bringing him up and you know, that she was

just a you know, selfish waster and this.

Anything he'd done he'd had to do on his own terms.

- According to her, she did say

she was a difficult child,

a baby even, an infant and toddler.

She said she acted out.

At the time, her mother took her to the doctor

and said, "My kid is throwing tantrums

"and my kid is screaming," and they gave her phenobarbital

to a toddler, so to start off with,

she really started young

on her drug journey.

- And I think that's unconscionable to give

a little kid drugs like that, but you know,

in her mother's defense, maybe they didn't know

so much about it back then, and Nancy was difficult.

- So by 11, the public school didn't want her anymore.

And she was too hard to handle.

So her family sent her to a place in Connecticut

and it's really a boarding school for children

and young teens with emotional issues.

- Sid was one of those characters around

at the 100 Club and Louisa's and things.

He was a definite face, but there weren't many

of us really at all in them days, you know.

There might have been 20 if that.

The picture of Sid I always remember from those early days,

we were in a squat somewhere, and someone had

a bunch of pills and asked Sid if he wanted some,

so Sid was like, "Oh, yeah, sure, sure, we'll have some,"

and he sort of took a handful, and he took them,

and then asked what they were.

When people think too much about punk and music,

and there was more punk and attitude,

that was the big thing with that whole,

and Sid not only was the epitome of that attitude,

but he became the caricature of it as well.

He became the avatar of punk.

He established the look, the black leather jacket,

the torn jeans, the sort of spiky hair and everything.

Before that, it was remarkably open to change.

Anything that people didn't like

to see flared jeans and long hair but apart from that

it was very open to sort of styles and the like.

It was later that Sid, when he became canonized,

you know set that style in stone

as the caricature of punk, you know.

He was around for a long time

before he joined the Sex Pistols.

He was always banging a famously invented pogoing.

* Tracks on my arms

* And tracks on my face

* There's tracks on the walls

- Nancy was one of those super groupie girls

that hung out and new Aerosmith

and people from the New York Dolls.

- She wanted to come to New York and she came with us

to New York

in the back of the car there, you know,

and Joe Hanson and her, they had sex in the back

of that car on the way to New York.

- She seemed to be like a perfectly nice person.

I know that a lot of different people on the scene knew her.

She was very young, that's the thing that people forget.

I think she was probably just in her teens.

- She used to live on 23rd Street

right at the very foot of the.

When I needed a place to stay and I would like,

be coming home from Max's Kansas City after what they call,

the last drink a minute, you know, hour, whatever,

and I would wind up with nobody, and I didn't have a place,

I'd go down to 23rd Street , "Nan, Nancy?"

She said, "Oh, come on in, you can fuck my girlfriend,"

and I would stay at her house and, boy,

she was, she was the sweetest.

I thought she was cool, you know, really, always,

always looked after me, and always, you know,

"You have any money, do you need cab fare?"

- Despite what people said about her,

and she had a shit-reputation from the beginning,

like people would say, "Oh, Nancy's a groupie,"

"Nancy's a junkie," she's this and she's that,

but I liked her right away.

It was something about her.

I mean, she was funny and she was honest,

so we became friends.

- In the time I knew her, twice she tried to kill herself.

Twice she slit her wrists, once at home

and then one night at Max's in the bathroom.

She says, "I'm going upstairs and slitting my wrists."

So I followed her, and she did.

- She had a personality problem.

It was, you know, I don't want to say narcissistic disorder,

but it was a borderline disorder because she can go

from happy and fun and funny

to cursing you and calling you every name in the book

with like, on a dime.

- She was very smart.

Her IQ was like in the mid-130s.

This girl was a smart girl.

- He came on tour with the Pistols

and you know, he'd be playing with Barbara.

He used to drive the van.

He'd be playing with the kids and everything.

He was very sweet, and you know,

his name Sid Vicious was a bit of one of those

oxymoron things where he was actually,

he was called Vicious because he was so soft.

He was like marshmallow, really,

but once he was christened Vicious,

he said he had a name to live up to, so he had

to go on with this, people would try to call him out

for a fight and he'd have to be prepared to defend himself.

- Well, by then, you know, Sid was dealing speed.

- Speed was the drug of the day,

although diners were around as well.

We can take smack.

We didn't take cocaine, definitely didn't take...

We didn't have the money for cocaine.

- Nancy was famous among the women.

They all hated her.

By reputation, I knew she would sleep

with all these different guys in bands.

She worked as a stripper so she had a lot of money

and she could afford to buy them drugs.

- She was buying guys drugs like crazy.

This girl made $200 a night.

I made $160 a week.

Sometimes $300, and she was always broke.

- I knew kind of early on that it bothered her.

She didn't want to do that for a living, you know,

but she had a habit and she had to support her habit,

but she was never happy go-go dancing.

- She was talking to us about her job

and said that she was a dominatrix

in a brownstone up on East Side.

It was kind of a brothel where they had different

theme rooms and one was a nurse

and one was a school girl and one was a secretary,

and people could have their fantasy.

She said basically she would, you know, her job

was to tie up bankers and whip them.

And I said, "Really, people want to do that?"

And she said, "Yeah, well, there's these

"German bankers that like to be beaten up

"and they pay a lot of money for that."

- She wanted to hang out with rock stars

and Nancy's main ambition in life was to be a groupie.

And I found that fascinating to listen to her stories

of who she was with and what she did

and that whole culture, I found really fascinating.

Her and Sable, there was always

a little rivalry between Nancy and Sable.

- Once I got to know her, went into the,

"Nobody likes me, why doesn't anybody like me?

"They seem to like you."

I said, "Listen, I'm gonna be real honest."

But she was very smart.

"I'm gonna be honest with you," I said.

"They don't like you because they're old-fashioned

"and you're a go-go, you're a stripper," I said.

"Number one, and number two, you're a junkie."

- I remember the night before she left to go to London.

No, actually she was packing, it was two nights before

because the night before, she called me from the airport

to tell me that she'd slept with Iggy Pop.

You know, this was big news.

But like a couple of nights before she left to go to London,

she was packing and there was her stuff all over the floor

and a big mess, and she said,

"I'm going to England to be with the Sex Pistols."

You know, she was definite about it and I said,

"Well, what if you don't get to meet them?"

She said, "Oh, no, I will meet them

"and I will come back with them."

- The Sex Pistols, the brief was that they were

the greatest thing since sliced bread, you know.

They were the greatest band ever.

It wasn't a in this sort of situationism

of Malcolm, and that was how I went

through all of that stuff.

Sid wanted to be famous.

He wanted to have lots of sex and drugs and rock and roll,

and the best group for that was the Sex Pistols.

- He was very, very idealistic about the Pistols.

- Before the Sex Pistols, the Flowers of Romance,

I mean, they were the epitome

of the punk band that couldn't play.

They did some rehearsals.

Belsen Was A Gas by the Pistols

was written around that time.

- He got to stay at the 800 Club

with Siouxsie and the Banshees where him as a drummer

was merely hitting drum and then hitting the wall,

and just doing that the whole song.

Really, not trying to do anything else,

but be obnoxious as a drummer.

The circumstances of him joining the band

were faded in the mist of mystery.

But, you know, for whatever reason, Glen was asked to leave

the band and Sid was asked to come in, and of course,

for him, that was, you know, a fantastic, this was...

He wanted to be a Sex Pistol, you know?

All the time he wanted to be a Sex Pistol.

He wanted to be a pop star, wanted to be with the best,

the greatest band in the world.

- Being in the Pistols was one

of the most best times of his life.

He had all the girls and all the fun,

and he's such a nice guy.

- The one person I noticed a difference when Sid joined

the Pistols was in Rotten because Sid and Rotten

used to best friends, you know, for years,

and Rotten always said how he hated Glen Matlock,

He was too much of a choirboy

or whatever the deal was, and so you know,

he was, his and as soon as he got

in the band, he started to hate Sid.

You know, Sid was getting more attention than Rotten was,

and Rotten didn't want to give up his attention.

- The only time I saw Sid with them was,

I didn't like the way they joked with him, you know.

* Hands in the air

- Jerry somehow got a letter from Nancy or she called him

or what like that, or through ,

and she said she'd get his guitar out of

and bring it over if we could put her up for a few days

in London or something like that.

She was coming over on a visit.

She wanted to see what was happening on the London scene.

- So I was on my way to work one morning

walking down Congress Street, when up from behind me,

hand tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around

and looked and it was Nancy in the morning light,

makeup running down her face, big grin on her face,

and she said, "Hi, I'm in London, where's Jerry?"

And I said, "How did you get here?"

She said, "Oh, Freddie Laker, it's real cheap.

"His planes are so cheap."

And I said, "I'll take that up with Freddie Laker later,

"but you leave, go back to New York."

"No, I wanna see Jerry, I came over to see Jerry."

I said, "Nothing, nothing will

"ever let me let you see Jerry.

"I will hide him, I'll lock him in the closet.

"I'll bury him alive, I'll do anything

to keep you away from Jerry Nolan."

She said, "Oh, you're so mean," and off she went.

- She'd already gone through Saint John's.

Saint John's was bangin' her.

She tried to get it on with John Lydon, didn't work,

so Sid was the obvious choice.

- I don't have a lot of good things to say about chicks

sometimes because of that influence of Nancy.

You know, he became to believe everything.

He believed everything that he wanted to be and without

any humility, and became very conceited about that.

And I think that was a great thing because Sid had charm.

Sid, when he was younger, before Nancy, and even afterwards,

you know, to be highlighted, Sid had charm.

He was funny, he was witty.

He was pretty clever in a sickening sort of way,

and when he was like that, he was great company to be with.

But then when he got into the smack, I think that Sid

probably would have fallen into that with those ways anyway,

but Nancy certainly accelerated it,

and that whole New York thing, the Johnny Thunders,

Nolan, Jerry Nolan thing and everything.

The New York punks were far more, far harder

about that drug thing than we were.

We were just little innocent children compared.

- Nancy always wanted a rock star boyfriend.

Sid was in a big band.

The Sex Pistols had quite a lot of notoriety

and so she started going out with Sid,

and I think that's when Sid got into the heroin.

- No, no, Sid, you see, because there was a lot

of shit going on at the time with all that Nancy

and the Heartbreakers introduced him to heroin.

His words were always that Nancy hadn't gotten him

into anything that he hadn't done before,

which I always took to mean both injecting and taking smack.

- As soon as he met her, they both got into it

a lot more heavier than he was on his own,

and so it was just like, I guess that sort of made

their relationship that much stronger,

one line built the bond, you know, the whole drug thing.

- I didn't see Nancy many times, but when us and them

would get together, they would usually be out of it.

You know, I'm not sure if Nancy was

a terribly good influence on Sid.

- Yeah, you put the cigarette on the bed.

- You know, Sid loved Nancy, really loved Nancy

and it was a modern love affair, so it feels bad,

but she was a whiny, horrible, horrible vampiric woman.

She was like, "Oh, Sidney up."

And, I was like, we tried to kidnap her once.

There was this strange picture where Sid had gone

to the dentist and we bought Nancy

a one-way ticket to New York, and she'd be there

screaming at the top of her voice,

"You can't do this, this is kidnapping."

And she'd be running up into the hotel

and we'd run after her and pull her out

and say, "Come on, Nancy, this is best."

It was a really, really stupid idea of Malcolm.

- Nancy was quite good-looking and sexy potentially,

but, you know, she was a fuckin' nightmare.

- Nobody liked her.

She had no friends in London that I knew of.

Nobody had anything good to say about her.

Malcolm had tried to get rid of her forever.

They were both strung out, like, to the bone.

They were a mess, and I can see where

they were doling them out like an allowance.

- You know, there's a story for her.

We used to have the cab account with the Sex Pistols

so we could fill up black cabs

and not have to worry about paying them.

And Sid and Nancy started to abuse this to the extreme

so that we'd have things like Nancy would catch a cab

to Harrod's, Harry Punk at nine in the morning,

and she'd ask the cab to wait

and at six in the evening, she'd come out

of Harrod's and get in the cab.

She would have kept the black cab all day outside Harrod's.

In the end, we had to get them their own separate account.

- By this time, Nancy had completely taken over control

of Sid, and Sid had become

very much a focal point of the Sex Pistols once more because

of his undeserved reputation of being such a bad ass,

which he wasn't, you know, and Nancy was really

behind all that, making more and more trouble,

and complaining that Sid didn't get all the attention

he should get and said didn't get all the money

he should get, which, of course, Malcolm was giving them

no money, which was Malcolm's way, you know.

- This is a guy for awhile, seemed like

the nice famous person in the country, but you know,

if it was in the morning, we'd be sitting there, you know,

just going through our pockets for enough change

to get a pint of some milk and some cigarettes

or something without having to touch our scoring money.

- She always wanted to get her claws into a rock star

and she got Sid, but I just remember,

this guy isn't one of the big in the money,

and he's trying to bum some money

to get some dope, so I'm not like very impressed.

- She just thought he should be getting thousands

of pounds for being who he was, I guess.

I mean, really, all he wanted money for was drugs anyway.

- We used to usually get the brown Persian gear.

That was what was around like 90% of the time then,

but once I got some white,

took me

and they came around and Sid just took a gram

and tipped it in the spoon, and I said, you know,

I said, "Please, man, I don't want you,

"I don't want you leaving here in a box.

"This isn't what you're used to," and ah,

he just wouldn't do it and have it at all.

He took it and survived and that was it.

I think he went into this huge doubt which in whether

is he gonna come around and then he comes around

and goes "Oh, do us another one, man."

- She swore, she's like, "I'm gonna make him so famous,"

and "I'm gonna manage him," and I was, you know,

I was just kinda, "Yeah, sure, okay, whatever,"

and at the time, they weren't moving yet.

They hadn't decided to move to New York,

but she had started to kinda think about that.

- When the Sex Pistols came to America,

they didn't bring any girlfriends

and certainly Nancy wasn't allowed in.

The rest of the guys didn't like her.

Nancy was difficult to like.

She was always whining.

She was a very depressed and suicidal person,

a very angry person.

She was causing a lot of problems.

The fact that Sid was now on drugs was very difficult

for the band, and he wouldn't show up or he'd be late.

He was just acting like a junkie, which is not a good way

to work, and it's an impossible way to travel.

- The Sex Pistols were probably

the most inconsistent live band I ever saw.

Either they'd be the greatest band in the world

or they'd just be kind of a mediocre,

almost like a bar band playing Sex Pistols songs.

Sid, though, I think Sid was really putting his all

in every show 'cause he was not much of

a bass guitar player, but he was a great showman,

and he was delivering what the people wanted to see.

They wanted to see the outrageous Sex Pistols,

and he really delivered, I think, especially in Dallas.

- At that point, apparently we hung out enough that,

you know, I had a cigarette, we were sharing cigarettes,

and he'd lean over and kissed me,

and then I fell off the side, and I went to jump back up

and he leaned over and died,

just headbutted him in the face,

at which point he started bleeding profusely.

- And I went along with them.

I remember seeing 'em sitting in the airport.

I have a nice picture of him reading MAD Magazine

and everything seemed kinda normal

except he had this big hole in his arm.

And later we were back on the bus, I actually

have a picture of him holding up his arm

and showing this big cut that he had.

And nobody treated it, and nobody cared about it.

It was like, that was his problem.

- I used to cut myself before Sid.

It was what they call now self-harming,

Back then was called being stupid.

It was cutting yourself open and I've got this arm here,

you can see, if you get a closeup later,

you can see that it's covered in cigarette burns and cuts.

I used to put a cigarette on my arm and let it burn down.

That was amphetamine.

In a way, that inspired Sid to start cutting himself.

- And that was the other thing.

It's like when I met with them and I would talk

to Malcolm and some people.

They're like, "Just don't let him get high."

- So on the bus, Sid and I got kinda friendly.

It was interesting, we were talking a lot.

He was asking about Nancy.

I was kind of straight up about how she had told us

she was a dominatrix, and you know, that was her job,

and he seemed to accept that, and he seemed

to really love her, he really missed her a lot.

He really wished that she could come on the trip with me.

He seemed to have a special bond

and a special understanding between the two of them.

- Will you wake up, please?

- Sid really knew what he was doing

as far as his image was concerned.

He was a good actor.

- The Sex Pistols, I don't think

were ready for this huge audience.

They were a great club band, but they didn't have a show.

- It was packed.

I don't know how many people fit in that place,

Winterland, it was packed,

and it was a meltdown.

It imploded, big time, and it was really sad.

Sid got put into a situation where this band was already,

they'd already blown up, and he became the focal point,

and they encouraged him to be as damaged as possible,

like just fuck up all you want, who cares how you play,

just, and you know, I think that made

the rest of the guys a little upset.

It's like, well this is a circus

rather than a band now, you know.

All the attention is going, John loves it,

and all the attention is going to this guy

who's my friend who they're destroying.

Single-handedly, just letting him destroy

himself just for the sake of press,

attention.

- I don't even know why they went to Texas.

They went down south and did a tour, you know.

That should have psychologically

screwed them up, you know what I mean?

It would have been much better for them

if they would have came to New York

and did the circuit of only the punks on the scene.

But they're going down and playing bars

with cowboys and stuff, and that was odd,

but unique, but I think that put a heck of a lot

of stress on them and breaking them up.

- You know, this thing that they had was destroyed

and in a lot of ways, you know, as much as I adore,

and always will and always did, love Sid,

it was kind of the end of it, he killed it.

He couldn't do it.

They got a kid that wasn't ready and had no skills,

and all he wanted to do was be friends with everybody.

- The night the group split up,

Vicious was pulled off a plane at Kennedy airport,

the victim of a drug overdose.

- And I remember having this conversation with him early

in the morning where he was saying that the band broke up,

that Johnny had left and he wanted to be a solo act

or something, and that the Sex Pistols were over,

that he was on his way back to England,

but he had gotten stoned on the plane and passed out.

- I don't know you he saw any of the gigs,

but Sid was like really shelling it out

and John was being like, nothing.

- I've lived here since I was a student

and then Sid moved in after many people,

and you know, he was just a neighbor.

He used to sit outside his house sunbathing

and I used to say, "Oh, hi," and everything, you know,

"Do you need anything, milk or sugar," as one does

with neighbors in England, and he said, "Oh, some sugar."

And he was just a nice, nice, nice neighbor.

And then one night, it must have been, well, night,

morning, it must have been about 5 o'clock in the morning,

there was this awful tirade and shouting and everything.

- The rooks they had, the rows they had were,

everybody knew about it, you can hear about it, you know.

- The few times I met them when they were together,

they were fighting all the time.

- In a lot of ways, it was just one

of the common dynamics of their relationship

to go through almost like a kind of psychotherapy,

kind of process of bringing each other down

as much as possible either

in direct terms of

attacking each other or kind of both joining together to,

you're just going to every detail of this whole shit,

life was and how fucked, how fucked up it was, you know,

trying to support her habit.

We were just sick of sitting watching TV

and the bedroom went off and they started up going at the,

I forget what he had in his hand.

He hit her both, he had something in his hand

that drew blood, and it was a real,

yeah that was probably about the lowest point.

- She was always very domineering

and protective of him because she knew

everyone wanted her out and to take him away.

I think if there had been less energy

put into trying to get rid of her,

there may have been less damage done in the long run.

She wouldn't have, he wouldn't have like become

as protective of her and they wouldn't

have alienated them as much, and when you alienate people

at that age and you make them feel like that,

they're just gonna get more fucked up,

more high, and hate everybody more, you know?

- So Malcolm set me down one day

and he said, "Listen, you know Nancy."

I said, "Yeah, known her for a few years."

He said, "What can I do to get rid of her?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Well, I can give her money.

"I can give her a lot of money, I can give her drugs."

I said, "She gets lots of money, you know,

"from being a prostitute, she gets lots of drugs

"from being a prostitute, she doesn't need any of that.

"What she wants is what she's got in hanging out with Sid."

He said, "What can I do, how can I do it?

"How do I get rid of her?"

And I said, "Kill her."

He said, "What?"

And I said, "Kill her, that's the only way

"to get rid of Nancy, kill her."

- After we had played our shows,

they had caught their mattresses on fire,

probably nodding out or something like that.

The mattress caught on fire.

So Barb moved them down to Room 100.

- One night, Sid and Nancy came over

and we had beef burgundy, broccoli and potatoes.

You know, we sat around talking

and they were saying, "Wow, we want to show you something."

And Nancy and Sid went away and came back

with a jacket and this portfolio.

And they went to us and said, "Look,

"we used to look really good then.

"Look at us now, oh."

You know, and they were just, it was sad.

And they says, "Okay, we're gonna go now."

I think they said something about Rockets might be coming,

bringing us something, and we don't have anything,

and do you have any pot?

And I said, "No, I don't have any pot."

They say, "Okay, well, if you

"run across any, give us a call."

I said, "Yeah, okay."

Then they left.

- At around midnight, Sid and Nancy retired

to Room 100 where they inject Tuinols.

Apparently Sid is fast asleep by 1:00 AM.

Associate and bodyguard, Rockets Redglare

claims Nancy called him up around 1:30 AM,

asking him to bring Dilaudid and claiming

that she had $1400 to spend on drugs that night.

- I went to Max's and I left there,

and then I went to The Nursery.

I was there and when I was there, I developed a toothache,

so I went back to the Chelsea.

That was, to me I think, between two and three.

Kelly and I were there and smoked this joint,

some of it, and the phone rang and it was Nancy.

She says, "Oh, did you find any pot like I asked ya?"

"No, I didn't find anything."

She says, "Well, if you find something, please let me know.

"Sid, he's useless because he did some Dilaudids,

"and he's out."

There was a voice in the background

I didn't really recognize, but, a voice.

Sounded like a real voice as opposed to a TV voice.

You know, it's also over the Chelsea Hotel's phone system,

you know, so, who knows, really.

- I met this guy named Michael Morra who was kind of

the in-house dealer up at the Chelsea.

I was with Michael and we went to Sid and Nancy's room,

and I guess it must've been around 3:00 or 4:00 AM,

and Sid was passed out

on his bed on Tuinols,

dead to the world, and Michael

did a transaction with Nancy.

They owed Michael money. Nancy and Michael were arguing

and I was uncomfortable

and the two of us left.

Michael left with me and I'd asked him where'd they get

that money and he said that they had gotten a record deal.

We walked down the hall, and sometimes their door

would be open, and I'd been in their room

two or three times always with other people,

and on the night when I was with Michael,

this was the first time I'd been there

and it was just the four of us.

- That night, I had some interaction with Nancy.

She called and I went down to the room,

and it was after, I think, a show at Max's.

I remember she had a shopping bad

and pulled out some money from it.

Sid was passed out on the couch.

I mean, he was just out of it and I didn't stay very long.

There was another guy there whose name I just can't remember

other than it began with an S, Snake, Spider,

Skippy, Stevie, something like that.

- All of a sudden there was like a,

we heard steps and there was knock on the door,

but there wasn't really a knock on the door.

It was like a banging on the door that was

had a really scary vibe to it and Kelly says,

"Oh, should I open it and ask who it is?

And I said, "No," and I said,

"Shh, shh, no, no, no."

And we heard her, to me it sounded like a metal.

I always thought it was the sound of a knife.

It fell on the floor in front of my door.

- I think later on I got something and called

down to the room, and Nancy answered

and said that, no, they hooked up.

- Okay, Kenneth West was one of the bellmen there.

I found him to be a good person.

- Before the grand jury and under oath,

Kenneth West said that around 5:00 AM,

while responding to a complaint by the resident

in Room 228, he encountered a loud and unruly Sid Vicious

who confronted him physically.

Following the altercation, Sid was left

bleeding from the nose or mouth.

- He had said something to me about,

"Oh, he had a fight with the English guy," you know,

and I knew what he was talking about because it's Sid.

And if I was Sid, I wouldn't try to mess

with this guy, you know, 'cause he was really

kinda like in his prime, I mean, you know.

- 15 minutes later at 5:30 AM, a bloody Sid

staggers into another room of a resident of the hotel

who refused to be identified.

- The whole thing with that is tricky because

Sid used to get up around 5:00 no matter what

and go to the methadone clinic

and he was on time 'cause his subconscious knew he needed it

at that time, and it was 6 o'clock that he would go.

- Honey O'Roarke came home and said

there's blood on the, outside the door.

I said, "I don't know."

- Around 7:30 AM, Sid and Nancy's

next door neighbor, Very Mendelssohn hears moaning

and a woman's voice emanating from Room 100

who sounded like she was alone.

Vera told the press she didn't call anyone's name.

She was just moaning.

- Sid and Nancy always had a very viotile, loud arguments,

even the next door neighbor would say that she heard them

screaming and fighting and things thrown around.

She says on the night that it happened, there was no fight.

- She could hear, her windows were open, really,

because it's kinda thin walls there.

And her saying that she heard a woman moaning

and sound like she was alone.

I don't know what sounding alone sounds like,

but I think she's probably right about

hearing Nancy moaning probably,

'cause in that room you could hear that for sure.

You'd also hear everything else that happened.

- Sid woke up.

There was blood in the bed.

He thought he'd pissed himself.

This is what he said to the cops.

And he'd gone over and saw Nancy

slumped underneath the sink.

He went out and got his methadone.

So he comes back, he goes upstairs,

finds Nancy and she's not breathing.

He decided to wash her down, which I find quite unusual.

- At 9:30 AM an outside caller

reports to the front desk, "There's trouble in Room 100."

Herman Ramos, the desk man sends Charles the bellhop,

but Sid calls Ramos for help before the bellhop returns.

- Obviously at this time, you'd know

that Sid was an utter wreck.

You only have to look at the photographs.

His face was out here, you know, so by the time

anyone would have arrived and seeing him outside

flailing around like ssssssssss,

almost like the instant suspect immediately,

and you know how, he probably was.

- So when I got a call at the sovereigner's office

that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols

had killed his girlfriend over at the Chelsea Hotel,

I ran over there immediately with my cameras,

and there weren't too many cops around that I was able

to go right up to the floor where their apartment was

and then there was a cop at the door and he said,

"No, I can't let you in," and he said, "You wanna take

"pictures, there's no way."

I said, "Well, yeah, I'd like to," and he goes,

"No, but I'll let you in, but you can't take any pictures."

You can just look.

So I was pretty amazed at that.

That's not really protocol.

It would never happen today.

So he opened the door and I walked in the apartment

and it was just a total chaos.

There was trash, clothes, everywhere.

It smelled really bad.

It was too soon for it to smell from the decaying body,

but it was just a horrendous smell of the way they lived,

the garbage and whatever.

So then I looked to my right and down a long hallway,

I saw under the bathroom sink, Nancy's body.

She was dressed in a bra and panties, and had blood.

There was blood on her and on the floor.

And the cops said, "Okay, that's enough."

And I just went back outside the apartment.

So that was pretty shocking.

She was certainly dead, and I waited there in the hallway

for what's called the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

to arrive, which is basically the morgue.

- Someone knocked on the door and said,

"Come to the lobby, Nancy's dead, Sid killed her."

And we raced down to the lobby and Nancy was in a body bag.

Sid came out in handcuffs and we're saying,

"Sid, Sid, what happened?"

And he said, "I don't know, I don't know."

- There was a pandemonium.

Somebody in the hotel asked me

if I'd heard what happened

and I said, "No," and they said that Sid killed Nancy.

I go, "Really, well I was passed out when I saw him,"

and then a detective asked me if to stand over.

He wanted to talk to me and I just beat it out of there.

As a matter of fact,

the thing I remember most about the next day

is that I left Manhattan and went up to The Bronx

to stay with my old, tough, Italian Guido friends

because I was worried that the guy I saw

in that room knew I saw him.

- I went back to my room alone and shortly after

Michael, AKA Rockets Redglare, at the time,

he wouldn't called Rockets as far as,

I didn't know him as Rockets, he was Michael.

He knocked on my door and he had a lot of money

tied with a purple, rubber hairband,

which I'd seen when Nancy had the money.

It was a wad of money with a purple, rubber hairband.

- Then later we found out where Sid was under arrest

up at a precinct that, I forget the exact location,

but I went to that precinct.

There were a few TV cameras there

and I got pictures of Sid at what is commonly

known as the perp walk where they walk the perpetrator

who's under arrest out to the police car

and take them down to central booking.

And Sid looked disoriented.

He didn't seem to understand what was going on,

and they took him downtown,

and that was the last I saw of him.

- Sid worshiped Nancy.

The only way he'd killed her was if she told him to,

but I think if that happened, that would have stemmed

from a fight, and according to the police reports,

she died slowly, bled slowly because the knife

wasn't pushed in really far.

If Sid were to do it in a violent,

it would have gone through her.

He's a tall guy and long arms.

- There were these stores on 42nd Street

where you could go and you could buy switchblades.

They weren't, I don't know if they were just not illegal

or they were like, in the back room somewhere,

and you had to know what to ask for and so, yeah,

I remember Sid asking Stiv about where did he get it

because Stiv would play with it all the time in the room,

you know, opening and closing it,

and Sid was kind of fascinated

with this switchblade.

- Well, that knife, I don't think was the knife.

You know what I mean, there's a lot more knives around.

I guarantee you between Sid and Nancy that

they probably had five or six knives

and one in every suitcase or jacket pocket or whatever,

you know, they were into thinking they were tough.

You know, there's an old saying though, you carry a knife,

you generally get stabbed, you know?

- There was so many stories and suspects

floatin' around like in the underground and on the scene

that at the very least, there is no way that Sid

could ever be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.

- Maybe he did it in a blackout.

Maybe somebody came in the room.

Maybe Michael came in the room or somebody else.

After that happened, Michael had disappeared.

I think the police were looking for him to question him.

My big fear was that we were all gonna get in trouble

'cause we're all doing drugs, we're all partying,

but this was 1978, New York, you know.

Cops didn't care, they had their man.

- Everyone's well aware that he was their guard, right?

- Bodyguard.

- He was supposed to be looking out for them.

That means two things.

Make sure you're safe.

Make sure that you have drugs.

So he might not have been able to make sure

he's safe part together, but he was working for them,

copping, and he comes back, and then

has this scenario laid out and that's what he did.

- Rockets was a junkie, he was a hustler,

but he wasn't a murderer.

He's capable of walking in and taking money

off a table if somebody's laying there.

Most people in the Chelsea Hotel were.

- I do believe that Rockets was around

and I do believe he could have easily been the first person

on the scene, but I don't believe that either

that he did it or that he had it in him to do it.

He's not a killer-type.

- If Rockets would have been there

when Nancy was calling me for pot,

Nancy was like, "Oh yeah, so and so's here.

"Rockets is here," but she didn't say that.

So if he was there, he showed up later.

- You know, I have my suspicions,

and maybe I have formulated them.

I mean, the money was a big deal,

but I just kinda denied, you know, okay.

That's Nancy's money, it was getting creepy, you know.

I was wrestling with my conscience and all that,

but it wasn't until Michael came after me,

you know, for whatever reason,

unrequited love, I mean, he had this thing for me,

and which I now admit I was using

because he was the guy with the party favors,

but when he came after me and he tried to kill me,

then I knew he was capable of it.

- Skip Wayne, is that his real name, I don't know.

He claimed to be my manager.

Skip Wayne wanted to be my manager.

Skip Wayne was like a roadie hanger-out guy

so that he could sell his drugs.

- Yeah, it looks like him.

- Well, Skip is short for Skippy.

I mean it doesn't prove that it's the same person.

You know, and I'm not saying it,

but Skip, Skippy, you know.

I mean, Leon, Leonardo, you know.

It's like hmmmm, could be.

- If a drug dealer went down and was pissed off

and wanted to kill her, they would have killed her

like they kill anyone kills anybody.

They would have stabbed her once in the abdomen and left.

- Talking to a journalist, Ann Bardach,

Rockets Redglare placed another character on the scene,

one Steve Cincotti, also known as Steve C,

whom Redglare identified as being Sid

and Nancy's regular Quaalude and Tuinol dealer.

Rockets told Bardach that he saw Steve entering

the elevator just before 5:00 AM.

We've been unable to find anybody

who ever met or knew this character.

- I've lived on the first floor.

I used to sit in the lobby and just watch people,

and I knew almost everyone.

I don't remember any Steve C.

I don't, who to hell is that?

That's like this picture of Steve.

- There was a neighbor who told the press and police

that Sid came out saying, "I killed Nancy, I killed Nancy."

the way I heard it and around the hotel,

according to what the neighbor told other people

that it was more like a question, like, "I killed Nancy?"

- He'd confessed to a couple people on the scene,

one of them being Joe Stevens, who said,

this was apparently in private,

"Yeah, well, I didn't mean to do it,

"so it was a complete accident."

- But I think it was a pure accident.

I don't believe in the Rockets and the people coming

into the room and taking all this money.

I don't think that Sid had

all this money or anything like that.

I don't believe that Malcolm

had him popped off

or some heavy drugged dealers having popped off.

I don't believe in any of those conspiracies.

I think it was just a simple accident.

A quite understandable accident in some ways

in that smack milieu, you know I assert,

you could probably have got him off on manslaughter

or murder two or whatever they call it in America,

and he could possibly have been brought back to England.

And I think that it's sad it never got a chance

to come to that, but I mean, to lots of people

made lots of money with their conspiracy theories.

- You know, and then the thing I read

that they're charging him with the murder.

But from what I understood, you know,

she wanted to kill herself,

she wanted to do a double suicide,

you know what I'm saying, and that was it.

- Since then, he's lived

at the Chelsea Hotel performing infrequently.

Yesterday, police found him there, in Room 100,

and on the bathroom floor, they found

the 20-year old American girl he'd lived with for two years.

Sid Vicious reportedly admitted he'd stabbed

Nancy Laura Spungen to death,

and no one who knew him could believe it.

- Besides confessing

to the homicide detectives in charge, Sid also confessed

to journalist and photographer, Joe Stevens.

He explained how after his fight with the bellboy,

he returned to his room where he had an argument with Nancy.

According to Sid, she smacked him on the nose

just where Kenneth West had punched him

so Sid pulled out his knife to threaten her,

but Nancy leaned forward and was stabbed accidentally.

Without realizing the seriousness of the wound,

they both fell asleep, which made the hemorrhage fatal.

Sid claimed that he woke up and then

went to get his methadone, leaving Nancy unattended

for some hours before returning to the Chelsea,

and discovering her bloody corps on the bathroom floor.

Detective Thomas didn't think that was the case.

He said, "How the hell could she get from the bed

to the bathroom after losing that much blood?"

Later adding, "It's impossible."

The lack of hesitation wounds and the fact

that the knife had been withdrawn from her body

after inflicting the would indicated

she didn't commit suicide.

Nancy died from external and internal hemorrhaging,

caused by a one-inch wide incision in the lower abdomen,

a wound deep enough to rupture the mesenteric blood vessels.

- Vicious' former manager arrived today

from London and is trying to raise the money,

told News , " Sid may be an outrageous person,

"but he is no murderer.

* The life you live is the life you make

* There's no such thing as a cruel sake

* I'm gonna live

* The lifestyle I get

* And I'm gonna live my life

- Sid had a come out of his life

and when the, when Nancy died,

Sid had nobody there really to look after him of any sort

of togetherness with any sort of organization.

Malcolm took it upon himself, and a good lawyer

was Patty Hearst's lawyer, and this was one

of the most expensive lawyer's you can get probably,

and Malcolm was very much into bringing Virgin on

to pay for that as well as bringing in himself.

Malcolm's not the sort of cynical user that people think

he was, but you know, at the same time,

he could have a night.

- But from what I hear, his lawyers, they were prepared

to fight the case, and felt they had a good cause.

* I'm gonna live the lifestyle

- When the solicitor from

and he could get Sid bailed,

there was me, Sophie, and I can't remember who else

in the office, probably Bookie and stuff,

we just start sat saying, "No," you know he was doing

much better off in jail.

He's off the smack, he's straightening himself out.

He's away from all those people that would giving him smack.

Keep him in there.

And the solicitor's advice was once given the chance

of bail, it doesn't look great if you don't take it.

So that is when we came up with this thing that, okay,

get him bailed, he mustn't go to New York,

he mustn't go to parties, he's got to stay with his mother.

That was a bad move, wasn't it?

- I remember Stiv and I seeing him after he got out of jail

the first time, and how he felt,

and I mean, he cried a lot

about it, you know, looking at us and saying you know,

how can anybody think that I would do that, you know?

And saying maybe I, was I that fucked up?

Like, could I have done it and not even known that I did it?

- Malcolm managed to get Sid out of jail.

I remember seeing him a couple days after he got out.

He came to the the Academy of Music.

It was a concert Blondie was playing,

and so he was basically clean and sober

for the first time in a couple years.

And he was 21 and he was young, and he was healthy,

and he was alive and he was vibrant,

and he was just the nicest guy, you know.

And just standing next to him kinda thinking,

"Did you kill Nancy, did you actually stab Nancy?

"You know, your girlfriend that you loved so much?"

It just seemed inconceivable.

- She had given me her mother's phone number

in case anything happened to her,

and I called the mother and I said who I was

and she remembered who I was.

And she said, "Thank you for calling."

I said, "I would really like to come out to the funeral

"and maybe there's a couple of other people

"who would like to come, too."

And she said, "I would much rather you don't."

- Some weeks ago, Vicious tried

to commit suicide by cutting his wrists.

- He was put on like a semi-suicide watch

but the silly bastards left him in a room with a light bulb

so he reached up to the light bulb, cracked it open,

and started slicing himself open.

He was in Bellevue

and was instantly suicidal about everything.

Apparently, he wanted to rejoin Nancy.

He kept crying about it, "I miss Nancy."

- Very short time after Nancy died, he was hanging out

at Max's with this girl, Michelle Robison,

who was a really nice girl.

Her father was an attorney or something like that.

- It was so soon after Nancy, so it kinda leads you

to believe whoever it was, you know the major

love game that everyone thinks it was.

- I said to her, "Michelle, you know, the jury's still out.

"They don't even know if this guy is guilty or not.

"You know, you're hanging out

"with a potential murderer here.

"What are you doin', like, watch yourself."

Michelle went back and told him this and he came up to me

in Max's and face-to-face and said,

"Shut your freakin' mouth about me

"or you might find yourself in the ditch."

You know, so that just confirmed

all my feelings about little Sidney, you know.

- Then there was a second incident where Sid was involved

in the violence against Patty Smith's brother,

went back into jail.

* Would you like a knuckle sandwich

- When Sid was at our show, he stood right at the front

of the stage, and was staring intensely

at us during our performance.

At first, he started making these wild and goofy gestures

toward my guitarist/vocalist Karen Winter.

He was waving his hands and making faces,

and trying to get inside of her head,

sort of throw her off her game.

As the concert progressed, Sid took notice

of Skafish female drum roadie, Tara.

He made his way to Tara.

He kept flirting with her, and he kept pinching her.

Now Todd walked up to Sid, politely, very politely,

asked him to just wait til after the show was done

and then he could flirt with Tara because

he and Tara were watching the stage for us.

I observed from the stage that's exactly what happened.

Tara later confirmed it to me as well.

Todd was not aggressive, macho, cavemanish,

that's my woman, threatening, or intimidating

towards Sid Vicious in any way whatsoever.

That's when Sid Vicious, totally unprovoked

without any rhyme or reason whatsoever,

took the beer bottle he was holding in his hand

and smashed it over Todd Smith's face.

Blood was everywhere, glass was everywhere.

It was mayhem, it turned into a brawl.

Reacting immediately to this event, Jimmy Sanz,

my road manager and singer for the legendary

Shadows of Knight, rushed out from behind

the mixing board where he was doing sound.

He punched Sid Vicious, he grabbed him.

He strong-armed him, and he dragged him

through the club, threw him down the flight

of stairs that led up to Harrah's.

- Whatever went down, Sid ended up hitting him

and getting arrested again for violation of parole

and for assault or whatever and went back to jail.

* You study hard get the top grades in class

* Miss Lander's pet 'cause you never would sass

- Yeah, so we would go visit at Rikers Island.

I can't imagine how they treated him in there.

Like I know it wasn't good and he wasn't really fond

of talking about it, you know what I mean,

but it was not good.

* Not right with me

* I feel

But yeah, he's clean, comes out,

and we had been planning some kind

of dinner thing.

You know, I came a little bit after it started

because I was working at the punk store

and Jerry from the Misfits, you know, picked me up

and we went over there together,

so I would guess it was probably at 7 o'clock at night

or something, but I know that, I think Jerry Nolan

and different people had been there.

Sid was really happy.

He was just being himself,

and there was no camera and there was no audience,

and there was nothing, and he was out of that place

and he was happy that he was out of that place.

We were playing the Dolls album

and he was jumping around and laughing

and, you know, playing air guitar.

I always remember he was wearing this shirt,

and everything just seemed really great

and then there was a knock on the door

and it was Peter and the friend.

- Just before midnight, fashion photographer

Peter Gravelle, also known as Kodick,

arrives with a known DJ to the apartment on 63 Bank Street

with the purity of 80%, according to the coroner's lab.

The heroin Gravelle brings to the party

will prove to be fatal for Sid Vicious.

- So he, you know, stupidly just got high

the way he normally would.

It was really strong dope evidently,

which he was told in advance, which I guess could be

exciting, but you know ,

and he did too much, of course.

He was clean for five weeks

or whatever, and you can't just do that.

And he OD'd and that was just like, that was

my first experience with that.

Finally he wakes up

and it just became silent

and weird and you know, he was all like,

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

We all, after awhile, saw that he was okay, we left.

And then in the middle of the night we get a phone call,

and we went back,

and Sid was dead

- And you know, more confessionally,

I suspect, that his mother,

thinking, all Sid had to look forward to was the rest

of his life in the American penal system

which wouldn't have been very pretty.

She had been a smack addict herself.

Had she known, she would have known

that if she gave Sid his usual dose, he would be,

after him being detoxified, it would be a killer,

and I think it was this sort of element of going,

"Let him go out like this now."

- Sid got up in the middle of the night.

He wanted to get high again and it had been a long time

and it's exciting to get high.

She gave him just a little bit too,

and he probably just said, "Fuck you, you give me it,"

you know, 'cause that's what you do.

You know, she didn't shoot him up

and she didn't kill him,

and she didn't, you know,

it's the last thing that she wanted.

- I was devastated, I was so sad, oh, my God,

'cause I thought, you know, maybe now he'd make it.

You know, maybe he'd make it,

and then when I heard that, you know, his Mom had been there

and it was a party and he OD'd, I was just like...

- She actually got the dope that Sid died on

that she got him high and then he died.

I know his girlfriend was very upset about it.

He seemed almost on a new track without Nancy,

without, you know, Nancy was a very depressed,

very angry, very suicidal girl and to live with

that kind of a girlfriend was really bringing Sid down.

When Nancy was gone, he seemed to kind of open up

and blossom and become a person again.

He wasn't as depressed and he wasn't as angry.

He seemed to almost be ready for a second chance in life.

And then his own mother bought him the dope and he died,

and once he died, the police kind of

basically dropped the case.

He was never convicted of her murder,

but nobody ever pursued it further than, you know,

when Sid was dead, it was dropped and it was over

and they don't really care who killed either one of them.

- So now Ann is staying with us

and we were fully embroiled in everything that's happened.

The ceremony of which I have no recollection of

other than sitting there and just sort of looking around

at people I knew and then everyone dispersed

and then we sort of decided

that we would have to put Sid's ashes on Nancy's grave.

And we all drove very far to Connecticut

or wherever it was, that, Philadelphia, and you know,

we stayed at motels and we stopped at truck stops.

We stopped at one truck stop

and they went to the ladies' room,

and they were gonna look in the ashes, and like,

somehow I got the ashes open and, you know,

it's mostly hard, and I remember kinda knocking on it.

Oh, man, and there was some powder, just like,

I just saw this Skafish interview

where he snorted his father's ashes.

And the same thing, I was just like, fuck it, ,

you know, we should snort his ashes, you know what I mean?

And I did and I thought we all agreed to,

but then no one else did it.

So we got to this cemetery, it's a massive snow storm.

It is just completely insane, like,

I don't know how Ann just got over the fence in the dark.

You know, just a flashlight in the middle of the night

in a snowstorm,

just found the grave somehow, I don't know.

And you know, moved the snow off and got his ashes out

and got them on there

or whatever she did, she went alone.

She wanted to go alone.

- She achieved a lot because what she wanted,

at the end of the day, she became famous

as a punk, you know, Juliet, Romeo and Juliet.

And she would have liked nothing more.

And so if I had to die at 20 to do it, it's okay.

I could hear her.

- I liked Nancy.

I think a lot of Nancy's thing was

she was fighting tooth and nail her whole life

for some kind of recognition, for something

for people to like her, to care about her.

I mean, people do not become groupies and do what she does

because they don't want you to like 'em.

They are looking for someone to adore them.

She was a rough personality.

- But she burned down like a candle, you know, quick.

She lived fast and furious, and crazy.

- I think she was great,

but I felt bad for him, really, honestly.

- He was a child when he died, as much as he was a child

when he was a charming, sort of like, the old kid,

who started pogoing there at the 100 Club.

The only difference is he had become, you know,

he had fallen into a really sordid sort of milieu.

Sort of smack addicts and sort of crummy hotels,

end up used when he was crummy and horrid,

horrible and everything.

He was always tout, he became the caricature of punk,

the avatar of punk and everything.

And as such, he sort of guaranteed himself an immortality.

I think he'd probably be quite happy with it, really,

you know, if there is an afterlife,

and if Sid's up there looking down

or down there looking up, you know,

he's probably thinking, "You know, that was me.

"You know, I was punk."

- Sid could have been a superstar, I'm sure of it

because you know, you can see it in his personality.

You know, that's fantastic, but he fucked it up.

- Despite his personality, he could came across

as a lover, and he was,

there was something attractive about him

and so you know, even today,

people remember Sid more than anybody else.

- Sid was a character, he was a personality.

He was charismatic.

How talented was he?

I'm not gonna sit here and say he practiced playing

anything at home like guitar or bass or anything.

He just, he was fueled

solely by his personality,

which carried a lot of weight, it really did.

- Sid was a lovely character.

He was charming, he was witty, he was funny.

The girls loved him.

It was sad that things went in the way they did,

and then the girl that loved him, rather perhaps

didn't love him, but the girl he loved was Nancy.

Shoop!

That's it.

Pft! - Cut!

* I've been livin' in the night

* Can't see the day that I left

* Heart beatin' faster

* Burnin' with lust

* I can't sit here

* Searchin' for you, I got it

* It's time to know, I gotta scratch it

* Out in the streets

* It's down to you and me

* It's a jungle

* I'm on a fast track to hell

* A fast track to hell

* She came on a plane

* Felt a little insane

* Lookin' for some fun and a cheap thrill

* With legs up to there and lips that could kill

* She was third-degree murder in high heels

* She's got the fever like a hen needs a cock

* The girl is on fire, she just wants to rock

* Livin' in the city isn't very pretty

* It's a jungle

* I'm on a fast track to hell

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Lookin' for my baby

* Runnin' wild in red stillettos

* That's the way the story goes

* Friends are sayin' uh-oh, oh-no

* Lookin' for my baby

* Climbin' high and climbin' low low

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Headin' for the big, big bango

* Lookin' for my baby

* My baby, my baby

* Ooh, baby, baby

* I'm sorry for the things that I said

* Ooh, baby, baby

* I need to feel your arms around me in our bed

* Don't you know, darlin'

* Don't you realize

* That the only ones who get there

* Are the ones who really try

* And I try, and I try, and I try

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Crazy bitch, head to toe toe

* Think I found my baby

* Runnin' wild in red stilettos

* Kickin' off my red stilettos

* He ain't no boy

* Ain't no gutter toy

* He's in a rut

* With a subway slut

* Gasoline eyes right in her face

* Is it love go in sane

* Gutter past but he ain't fast

* The kid eats glass

* On concrete grass

* Amphetamine eyes, video sleaze

* It is love, he on his knees

* Oh, he ain't no punk

* Oh, he's in a funk

* Oh, he ain't no punk

* Who cares if he gets drunk

* He smokes cigarettes

* All down to the butt

* He's got the DTs

* Always struttin' his stuff

* He ain't no

* He likes cocaine

* It ain't his fault

* He's been poisoned by pain

* He wants to be Elvis or Iggy Pop