Original subtitles

LADY: Sid Vicious, who's real name is John Simon Ritchie,

was arraigned today on charges of murder.

He said he felt sick.

His manager was told that bailing him out

pending trial would be extremely difficult.

He's an alien, he's not employed.

And he's given to violent outbursts of temper.

But his manager said, and I quote,

"Underneath that tough exterior,

"there was a real nice guy."

[ WHEN I DIE PLAYING]

* Yes, I've been without Been down and out

* Out on a limb With nowhere to go

* I was told it would be One less thing on my mind

* Not to worry about All the paying out

* The piles of bills And final demands

* They'd all be sorted When I die

* I was going off the rails No matter how I tried

* If all else fails failed And part of me just died *

Sid Vicious will not have to stand trial

for the murder of a girlfriend at the Chelsea Hotel.

Sid is no longer vicious, he's dead.

His nude body found in a Greenwich Village apartment.

Spoon and syringe nearby.

* Then my luck came in I got a lucky win

* Hundreds of thousands And thousands of friends

* Had no more Worries for a time

LADY REPORTER: 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.

* Can't take it with you When you die

* I was back on happy trails I didn't have to try *

MALE REPORTER: Sid Vicious was awaiting trial

for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

It was a murder so horrific in detail,

only a very sick mind could have lived with the reality.

The police had no doubt about the murderer.

"We have the figurative smoking gun", they said.

[ SICK CITY SOMETIMES PLAYING]

* It's a complicated day

* Busy people on their way

I've always felt that Sid didn't kill Nancy.

Sid thought he did it.

He actually confessed

to Joe Stevens that he thought he did it.

DON: The last time I saw them,

Sid's got this knife about yeah long,

and he's sort of sticking Nancy with it.

Just gently but, you know, she's like, "Ow, Sid, that hurt."

So, I was like, "Sid, be careful, someone's gonna get hurt.

I think he did it, in a moment of madness.

Which Sid obviously won't remember because of what he was on.

* Sick city sometimes

* Sick city in your mind

* Sick city sometimes

* Sick city Left you way behind *

If you've ever been a heroin addict,

and live with a girlfriend that was also a heroin addict,

it's hard, I think, for most people to understand

the dynamic of how much they lived it.

It doesn't matter how much you love somebody.

That all goes out the window

when there's drugs involved.

I'm gonna be very honest here,

I was sucked into heroin thing myself.

* Sick city sometimes

* Sick city in your mind

* Sick city sometimes

KRIS: Probably more fighting would go on between the couple,

because I would've gone out to go rat

someone's ass to the cops and then,

creamed off a bit on the way home for themselves.

STURGIS: If there's one bag,

and they both need that one bag to get straight,

because you're sick,

somebody could get hurt.

KRIS: You get sneaky, devious with the one you love,

but you love them to bits, but you'd still steal their drugs.

Um, this did go on with Sid and Nancy.

And both young, and narcotics were involved.

A lethal combination.

KRIS: What he was on, he could easily had, you know,

it really could have happened that way.

* Sick city sometimes

* Sick city in your mind

* Sick city sometimes

They were both in the nod.

Having been in a few myself, I'd say he had one of them.

I mean, it was just a bit worse than usual.

He wasn't aware of what was happening,

woke up, she was dead.

This is like a nightmare,

this is like right out of the Twilight Zone episode.

You wake up, there's a knife, a pool of blood,

and you're girlfriend's in the bathroom,

stabbed to death.

Well, anybody's gonna think, "What did I do last night?"

It was too easy just to blame Sid in the beginning,

and not follow the case up.

I mean, it's amazing when we think back now,

that the case wasn't followed up,

most of it. [MUMBLING]

Everybody just assumed that he was guilty.

Police didn't give a fuck.

When he died, they went on like, "That's tidy."

Boom, who gives a fuck?

That's how junkies will just kill themselves, and...

Who gives a fuck?

One thing I know for sure is he certainly didn't do it.

Sid never, would never have done that.

And I know that in my heart of hearts.

[LIE IN BED PLAYING]

* Lying on the floor

* Dreams in your head

* Is there anymore

* Reasons to be dead

* When I-I-I...

* Lie in bed

NARRATOR: In the evidence photos,

there's a large TV about two feet in front of the door,

which may or may not impede entrance.

There are mattresses around the room

for at least three people.

There's a very clear blood-stained hand print on one of them.

And yet in the police file there is no mention of this.

And for the record,

the bed that Sid was passed out on,

isn't the one with the hand print.

According to the police evidence file,

there were only four of Sid's fingerprints

in the entire room.

Nancy was stabbed once in the abdomen,

and it took her around three hours to pass out,

and bleed to death.

Which means that after she was stabbed,

she would have been capable of getting to the room door,

screaming for help.

So, why did she decide

to make her way to the bathroom

to certain death?

In all the NYPD police reports and statements

the murder weapon, the Jaguar K-11 hunting knife,

is left on top of an open suitcase next to the door.

Wiped clean of any fingerprints or traces of blood.

ALAN: Detective Kilroy was one of the arresting officers

when Sid was arrested.

I think, he was never convinced

it was more than just some mad, junkie murder.

As far as he was concerned, it was a smoking gun case.

He'd walked in.

He'd found his killer.

Uh, Sid had "guilty-man" written all over him.

Even though they had to slap him around and get him,

something like conscious to read him his rights.

NARRATOR: In the police report there's an account

of Sid's response to questioning on the scene.

It's full of contradictions.

First, he states he didn't know what happened to Nancy,

claiming he didn't stab her.

Sid also claims that he took Tuinal

and slept the night through.

He then confesses to the murder,

saying that they had an argument.

Finally, he tells police it must have been an accident.

Sid also explains to the police,

that when he initially found Nancy in the bathroom,

she was still breathing.

And, after washing blood from her,

he went to the clinic to get her methadone.

He called the police on his return.

PETER: Sid was oblivious to it all.

I mean, he even got up in the morning,

and went to the methadone clinic.

That had to be in the early morning, I think,

the methadone clinic opens at 6:00 or something like that.

He got his methadone and came back

before he realized that she was dead.

That's how, sort of, far-removed he was.

[PEOPLE WHISPERING]

[GAVEL STRIKING]

STEVE: Malcolm was there.

His mother was there.

And, um, he got bailed.

Pretty soon after,

he got bailed out, I remember seeing him, um,

down at Max's Kansas City

that particular night that he actually got out.

There was a little back-slapping,

and, "Nice to see you Sid," and all this from everybody.

Obviously, from the way he acted over those days,

uh, seemed getting him into trouble again.

He obviously wasn't in a good state.

POLICE: What would you like to have now?

I'd like to have fun.

What sort of fun?

Any kind of fun, just fun.

That is my object in life.

Are you having fun at the moment?

You kidding?

I'm not having fun at all.

Where would you like to be?

Under the ground.

Are you serious?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it was, you know,

silly just to let him out on the streets,

and, "Where's he gonna go?"

He's gonna go looking for drugs,

he's gonna, you know, go to the night clubs,

and hang out in places

where people are just going to encourage him

to get into some more trouble.

[PEOPLE SHOUTING]

[BOTTLE SMASHING]

Yeah, we decided to go out. Sid wanted to go out.

I mean, it was about... We had to get out.

He was stir-crazy.

So we went... Decided to go to Hurrah's.

I mean, it was empty and there was a band playing

really, really loud.

There's a scuffle to my right,

and I'm like, "What's going on?"

Sid out of nowhere,

I mean, completely out of context with everything,

smashes the glass on this guy's face.

There's glass flying and Peter's going, "Oh, fuck."

I grab him and we drag him out.

And we're just running.

And we're running out into the street,

I mean, people are chasing us, screaming, shouting.

I'm like, "What the fuck happened?"

You know, "Sid just broke a freaking glass in..."

We didn't know who it was.

Patti Smith's brother, of course.

From what people told me,

I know Patti Smith's brother was a buffoon

and probably deserved anything that happened to him.

That guy was just some drunk moron

who, you know, it was the straw that broke the camel's back, I think.

It's stupid, but a 21-year-old crazy boy,

does something and he goes back to jail.

He didn't think about that.

End of it.

So much for protecting Sid. [LAUGHING]

But he was like that,

he could go off at any moment around,

and that was the thing, it was a little bit...

You were always like, "Oh, let's go out,

"oh, what's gonna happen now."

Vicious is in a detention cell at the Manhattan Criminal Court building

waiting for friends to post $50,000 bail.

Sid was due in court on the first of February.

Um, a really good lawyer had been hired by now,

James Merberg.

At the expense of Virgin Records

and the deal that Malcolm had done

for an album that they were gonna record.

What no one understood is just how good Merberg was.

The assumption that glittered in his management office was

that it would take at least until the 3rd or 4th of February,

to get Sid released on the new bail

that Virgin had posted for him.

Merberg goes in there,

in the morning on the first and by lunchtime

it's all wrapped up and done and dusted.

And so, Sid is released

into the waiting arms of

his mother, Anne Beverley,

and his new girlfriend, Michelle Robinson.

I happened to know Michelle Robinson since long before, um, Sid...

She was around in the days

when I was working with David Bowie.

ALAN: She had a big fixation on Sid for a long time

and she knew Nancy

from before Nancy went to England.

The new girlfriend, you know, that was quick.

Um, very quickly that one.

But, you know, he needed somebody.

He needed that sort of emotional prop.

And she fit the bill.

She was a little bit like

the old brand of groupies.

She always dressed candid.

In those days, kind of in a semi-SNM kind of way.

Lot of leather, lot of high heels,

lot of hair, huge amounts of make-up.

She was very glamorous.

She had a very, very aggressive personality.

And Sid was like the prize.

No matter what condition, he was Sid Vicious.

He was the trophy.

And they wanted him.

Ultimately if he would've, you know, not met his

untimely demise,

that was a good situation for him.

It really was.

We thought he was getting out that day and, um...

We were going to wait and see if he was getting out,

and then have a party. [LAUGHING]

Whee!

I'd gone down to the courthouse with, um, Terry Ork.

Somebody comes up to me, he goes,"Oh, you appeal today."

He goes... I didn't recognize the person.

He goes... He says,

"You're friend's gonna be getting out in a minute."

You know, we're friends of Sid.

So, he says, "If you go downstairs,

"he should coming out in the next half hour."

I think his mother... I bumped into his mother next.

And within like 5-10 minutes, there was Sid.

After that, then we, you know, were out the door,

were out the back door of the courthouse

on to the streets.

ALAN: During interviews with Sid's mother for my book,

she made it plainly obvious

that both herself and Malcolm

had talked to him regarding a possible future.

But he seemed to be stuck in a mantra

regarding joining his Nancy.

[ EARLY GRAVE PLAYING]

* To the man

* To the man

* Of an early grave

So, you know, like any junkie,

uh, you know, he wanted to get high.

You know what I mean, that's the first...

Your first thought always.

What a great time to get high when you're clean.

PETER: I think his mother picked up some drugs for Sid

and Sid's like, "Have you got them, you've got them?"

And anyway we go to the hotel...

We go to this place where Anne's staying

and he does the drugs and of course they are absolutely rubbish.

At this point, you know, Sid had asked me,

"Oh, can you get me anything, can you get me anything?"

I'm in a bit of two minds about what to do.

So anyway I say, "I'll see what I can do."

I had other things I had to do that day.

I was, at that point, living with, uh,

two French hookers,

who were actually heroin dealers up on 15th street.

But they came out, he came out with Peter,

looking to score.

And after the fiasco at Hurrah

with the pain and the glasses...

I think... I just...

My whole thing... We knew he was coming over.

It was like we talked. There was a whole bunch of us like,

"Let's not sell him anything."

So, the usual channels were, um, I would...

New people were probably dealing in it.

Um, nobody really wanted to, um, get involved.

We had some shit, but we decided not to give him any.

So, he came over looking for that.

And we said, "No, Sid, we're looking for ourselves."

I don't think we did a very convincing job.

'Cause I could tell.

He hung his head and went, "All right, guys." And left.

And that was the last time I saw him alive.

At that time I felt like I was doing him a favor.

But then now I wish I'd said,

"Now come and see what'll I do."

You know, now I feel like I made a mistake then.

And that's when Peter was dispatched

by Anne, with Anne's money,

to go and get some more drugs for Sid.

PETER: Somehow I got in touch with this woman,

who I didn't know at all.

And somebody had given me her as a contact.

I went down to see her.

And I got what I'd been asked to pick up.

ALAN: The things, what did come back with Peter,

was beyond good.

It was, you know, I think...

It said it was 98% proof or something.

Which is too pure for the human body

in any state basically.

About two days later,

I tried to get in touch with this woman again,

and, uh, this woman had disappeared.

She was no longer

at the place where I'd met her, at the apartment I'd met her.

And was nowhere to be found, really.

I never saw her again.

[PEOPLE CHATTERING]

Oh, my God!

Oh, my...

REPORTER: Donna Floria lived just across the hall

from the apartment in which the singer died.

But she would not say whether she was among the eight people

who attended last night's party for Sid Vicious.

I was invited to that...

"Party."

Which wasn't really a party, it was just a few people.

There weren't even that many people.

Michelle asked if I could get heroin.

I was like, "I'm not a dealer."

You know, "No, I don't know."

"Well, you're invited anyway, come.

"You know, Sid's out," and da-da, da-da, da...

And, I said,

"Nah, too exhausting for me."

Yeah, it was me and, like, my best friend

and there was Jerry Only from the Misfits.

Um, and Eileen, three of us.

And then just Michelle and Anne and Sid, that was it.

MAN: Who was in the flat when you got back?

Just, uh, Sid's mother, Sid and Michelle

And I went to the apartment probably at about...

I would say no earlier than about 7:00

and no later than about 8:30.

No one came in, they came by.

You know, to make deliveries, but they didn't come in.

I don't know what they said, but...

I was there until about 1:32 in the morning.

HOWIE: None of us had ever mentioned Peter Kodick's name,

I always left that out because

I didn't know where he is or what trouble he was in.

I didn't want to make his life miserable,

and just in case, you know.

ALAN: Twenty-nine and three-quarter years later.

That's 63 Bank street.

HOWIE: Weirdsville.

I remember it a little differently.

It doesn't resemble.

HOWIE: I thought this was...

I think the living room came more up to here maybe.

The living room was right up next to the kitchen.

ALAN: It was like a small...

What would you call it, probably like bed steps.

Um, the apartment in New York.

And there was a big... There was a couch going along here.

And nothing here.

'Cause I remember when those guys came through the door,

you could see them from sitting here, you know.

PETER: There is, what you call a front room,

with a kitchen in it.

And a bathroom, that was it.

[GASPS] Wow!

This is the same.

Wow!

I mean, basically small, small bedroom.

She had a bed where her and Sid were lying.

Very, very weird.

I mean, it's so similar 'cause it's really dark.

And I remember it being really dark and, uh...

This is all very, very similar.

REPORTER: The police say they were told by the victim's girlfriend

that his last hours were spent looking towards the future.

HOWIE: He was just in really amazing spirits.

PETER: We were laughing at certain things.

Malcolm had sent him a list of the songs

that he wanted him to do for the album.

I knew there was the ones that The Clash ended up doing,

like, "I fought the law and the law won," and, uh...

I remember one that was on... It was YMCA,

which we thought, highly unusual, and a bit amusing.

And we were going through the list, laughing at that.

HOWIE: He was really happy to see everybody

and talking and we were listening to New York Dolls records

and he was jumping around playing air guitar,

being funny and telling jokes and...

It was really an incredible thing for me

to see the real side of him.

He was talking about going upstate,

clearing his name up,

doing this record and...

He had a lot on his shoulders,

but it was pretty positive.

INTERVIEWER: Another distinction you have is being the other person,

who did the same stuff

the night that he OD'd. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

And, I OD'd that night also. Did that come from...

Did that come from your regular dealer?

No, it was a friend of ours,

uh, that flew in from England.

Soon as I shot this dope, man, it was fucking strong.

I knew it as soon as I shot it.

I walked out of the bathroom, I said, "I think this is it."

And Sheila just said... I heard Sheila going,

"Don't die in my apartment."

I said, "Shut the fuck up."

And next thing I knew, it was four hours later.

I wouldn't say it was his fault.

He told you it was strong.

Yes, he did. Mm-hmm.

And he didn't hold a gun to my head.

I took it.

I took it with a smile on my face.

About 12:00 Sid Vicious shot up some heroin,

and he had a reaction to it,

which he came out of about 45 minutes later.

And then about 2:00, he laid down

to go to sleep.

He'd taken too much.

He sort of passed out.

We revived him.

And then it was a good few hours, I was there after.

And by the time I left, he was okay.

HOWIE: I remember that it became a real bummer

and we left for a while.

Sid had asked me if there was anymore,

and I told him, "No, there's not any left."

I said, "It's all gone, you've done it all."

And what was left I gave to his mother.

And I told her, like,

"No way give him anymore of this tonight.

"You know, give him this tomorrow."

The significance of detoxification

is that if a drug user detoxifies

and uses the same dose he was used to,

it can be lethal.

So the detoxification program

takes the drug user off the drug,

but also removes whatever tolerance

or immunity he has for the drug.

Then the phone rang,

it was Pam Brown.

And...

She asked me if I saw the news.

I said, "Nah, I didn't see very much."

And she said, " Sid died."

I knew it was the same dope,

and then I found out that's what it was.

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

My first reaction was,

"hot shot."

Well, they got a batch

that I think was particularly good.

LEEE: The stories now told

are that it was heroin that was just too pure.

But then that was also a very common way

of hot shoting someone.

REPORTER: All I know for now

is that he'd been asleep with companion Michelle Robinson

at the time of his death.

She's an unemployed actress

who was hustled away from the scene

along with the victim's mother.

The whole idea, his mother gave him something,

I don't believe that.

I don't believe that.

The only people who can say the God's honest truth

about what went on in Bank Street that night,

one is Sid, and he's dead,

one is Anne, and she's dead, and one is Michelle,

and she doesn't even answer to that name anymore.

Whether he took more,

whether there were other things like pills involved,

God alone knows. But we know he'd overdosed once that night,

he OD'd finally somewhere in the night,

and the next morning, Sid Vicious was dead.

HOWIE: I was here once,

for six or seven hours, ever in my life.

Thirty years ago. With this thing

that happened here that impacted my entire life,

I could never touch it.

You know what I mean.

And now, I'm standing in it.

So, that's really, really odd.

NARRATOR: The day after Sid's death, his mother, Anne Beverly,

found this note in the pocket of her son's jeans.

It seems to point to a death pact

between Sid and Nancy

which apparently had existed since the previous summer.

It was meant to happen.

Nancy always said she'd die before she was 21.

I think I was the... What they now call a "self harmer".

In them days it was called stupid.

I think it was an inspiration to Sid as well.

And of course, he had to do bigger

and better and went further.

The last major British magazine interview

the pair of them did

was for the Record Mirror.

That was March-April '78.

They were already telling people

they'd got a suicide pact.

Nancy, by all accounts, had been telling people,

before she even came to England,

that she'd never make 21.

STEVE: There was always a sort of faintness,

a sort of acceptance, you know, "Live fast die young,"

and he wasn't going to see very much old age.

She definitely had like that thing.

I think she just brought him into it.

Like death wish.

I remember going into the kitchen one day,

and Nancy was there with her hand over a bowl.

She cut her wrist.

Eating her ice cream.

"Okay, all right, Nancy. What are you doing?"

"Sid doesn't love me anymore."

"All right, I'll come back. I'm just gonna put the kettle on."

You know, it was just total play-acting.

The philosophical answer

and probably the only answer I can give you

with any authority is Nancy killed Nancy.

HOWIE: I kinda feel like the most logical conclusion to me

is that she just did it herself

as some kind of, you know...

That's what people like that do, you know.

Like teenagers who cut themselves, you know.

NEON: I lost a friend.

Person that I'd known for a long time.

Drug addiction's a disease.

It's like being mad at somebody for having cancer.

You know, it's like, it's a disease.

[ TERMINAL PLAYING]

NARRATOR: With the death of Sid Vicious, NYPD closed the case

believing he was the murderer.

No further investigation has ever taken place.

But the police all treated this like, "Who cares,

"it's just another dead junkie.

"You know, we got better things to do with our time."

And this guy's name was Vicious.

Um, you know, he was supposedly violent,

You know, of course, he killed his girlfriend.

They never thought twice about it.

Nobody ever followed up on it.

It's like Sid got out, Sid OD'd and end of story?

Is that really what happened?

Is that, just, you know...

Might as well just leave it at that, who cares.

ALAN: Anne Beverly was a character.

Anne Beverly was very Bohemian.

I first was introduced to her in 1984.

And we talked about doing a book

about her son.

And then Alex Cox's movie came along, Sid and Nancy,

which played two significant roles.

It postponed the book for about three or four years.

And it allowed me and Anne to get closer,

and for her to tell me an awful lot more about Sid.

[ TERMINAL PLAYING]

GEORGE: The fact that Sid's mother killed herself

the same year that the Sex Pistols re-formed

is probably a coincidence.

ALAN: You know, we all woke up one morning

and we had a letter in the post.

David Ross, Sid's cousin had a letter

that had a check in it for ten grand

to organize a funeral.

Whether she was carrying some kind of guilt over the years,

um, regarding her role, in his death or not,

is very debatable.

And my letter, basically, was very down,

did not say anything final.

Didn't say she'd done what she'd done.

But was very, very down.

And then at the bottom end of it, it kind of said to me,

"Do me a favor and make sure that one day the world knows

that whatever else my son was, he was not a murderer."

[ FAST TRACK TO HELL PLAYING]

* Out in the streets

* It's down to you and me

* It's a jungle

* I'm on a fast track to hell

So this is the house where Nancy grew up.

Behind me.

Uh, as you can see it's quite a lovely place,

which is a bit of a big difference

between the dreary lane flat

where Sid and his mother spent their early years together.

There was only cold water there, and no warmth.

Uh,

they're poles apart, yet they're linked forever.

Nancy in Philadelphia was an upper middle class,

Jewish, rock and roll fanatic.

STEVE: He had that thing, he was charming, witty.

He was full of wonder.

People really were in tune with him.

And he had charisma for days and days and days.

She was one of the super-groupies

of Philadelphia at that time.

And they were the people who knew Aerosmith

and stuff like that.

They could get you backstage.

I just genuinely liked him.

I mean, there was just something about John.

Nothing pretentious.

I mean, he would not have been one of my friends if it'd been the case.

I mean, there were a lot of punk hangers on

I really didn't give tosses about, to be honest with you.

I didn't really hang out with them at all.

VIVIANE: You know, Sid was really clever.

He had a great brain

and the way he wore Nazi insignia

and Swastikas was completely to dilute the meaning of it.

You know, and people never got that about him.

He was clever and he understood concept.

[STATIC]

SID: Well, I'm not stupid, you know,

and this is why I fool people.

I act like a complete dummy you know.

"Oh, Sid Vicious, duh!"

But in actual fact, they underestimate me so much

that they find out that I fooled them completely.

[STATIC]

When I first met John Beverly,

yes, I could see him living a long and full life.

When Beverly became Vicious,

you knew that he was not going to make 22.

EDWARD: And, I went to this audition,

and we were all sitting in the stalls,

you know, waiting for stuff to happen.

And, um, Sid and Nancy entered.

So, there was a bit of a stir, naturally.

"Oh, Sid, Sid and Nancy."

And then Sid, at one point, turned round and said,

"Why don't you lot all fuck off."

And one of the auditioners said, "Bollocks."

Well, you know, as he would, as he would.

And he suddenly went into a fury.

He said, "What, you say, 'Bollocks' to me."

And he got out of his, uh, stupor,

and charged back,

and started laying into this bloke.

So, there was this bloke

being attacked by presumably his hero,

trying to fend him off.

About half an hour later, him and this bloke

were sitting next to each other, chatting quite friendly.

And Sid said,

"Yeah, it's a good way to make friends by having a fight."

And you know, they were the best of buddies by then.

When Sid and I used to hang out, we used to go out in the evenings.

We often ended up in physical trouble and fights.

That was before he was called Sid Vicious.

And it was this sort of escalation of,

"Oh, we've come home again

"and Sid's got into trouble again."

He liked to fight.

He couldn't have one. He couldn't fight sleep.

But he... [LAUGHING] He gave that, you know, out.

It's not that he was particularly aggressive,

but he wouldn't take any nonsense from anyone.

When someone says something stupid, you just tell them it's stupid.

Actually, it got to the point

where he'd take his belt off and wrap it round his hand

and just whack people with the buckle.

I don't know where that came from

'cause he wasn't actually a physically aggressive guy.

We're sitting in the Speakeasy

and Paul Weller is coming in with his wife.

If Sid had just waited a second and asked me,

I would have told him that Paul Weller can well look after himself.

His dad John was an ex-boxer and all that.

Sid's gone out like a lunatic with the boots flying.

Paul Weller's cracked him a few punches.

But he had a glass in his hand, at the time, Paul,

and it cut Sid on the face.

There was a bit of screaming, I jumped in between them.

And Sid's there, he's cut, he's got a glass in his face.

And Paul and his wife, I apologized to them and they went off.

And I said, "Sid, why did you attack him like that?"

He said, "Because he said that we nicked In The City,

and Holidays In The Sun."

I said, "Well, you did." [LAUGHING]

MARK: One night I went round and saw Sid,

and there was a cat that was in the flat.

And, for no

reason he decided,

to put a noose around the cat

and hang it up,

in front of me.

And,

it didn't last long,

as far as

ticks on the clock, but it seemed like an eternity.

And...

The cat was struggling,

and...

Tried to get away, but obviously couldn't.

It was whining.

It was absolutely fighting to get away.

And just before

it's passed away,

it urinated and defecated

right on his feet.

And Sid was holding it in front of me.

I utterly regret not stopping him doing that.

Why he did that, I don't know.

Um, I have no idea.

It's the most disgusting thing that I've ever seen in my life.

And if I could have my life all over again...

That is the biggest regret... I would stop him from doing that.

It was horrible.

Finally put the cat in a plastic bag,

and took it to the bin downstairs.

It was horrible.

He was always like that.

He just took everything to the nth degree

and he didn't care where it took him.

I guess he knew that one day the person he hit, or the thing he did

would be the end.

He was willing to take it to the edge, he was willing to take it that far.

I don't know why or where that came from.

But he was like that always.

He was the guy that never saw

a red light, as they say.

Everything was always green.

MAN: However, dangerous? However, dangerous.

Do you feel if he had never met you, he might be alive today?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Heck, you know.

You might get run over by a car. I don't know.

But Sid, I suppose, would, at the very best, be called...

Uh, could be called amoral.

He just didn't really have a concept of what was good and what was bad.

Certainly not for him, but for other people as well.

Sid especially didn't know who himself was, anyway,

'cause he was too young.

I think the thing about Sid and his upbringing,

he just wanted someone to love.

You know, seems to be fairly obvious.

No father figure, you know,

moved around from pillar to post.

Mama being the Bohemian, never settled.

You know, people like that tend to make a fool of themselves

or dress up strange.

Anything to get attention and be liked.

When I met Anne for the first time,

it was almost like, "Ah, that's the explanation."

Beverly couldn't look after herself, let alone look after Sid.

I never liked her. I mean, it was quite clear to me

where his problems lay and it was with her.

I always felt there was a bit of an agenda there.

Well, ugh, kill me for thinking that, but I did.

PETER: What I know about Beverly...

What Sid told me was, you know, they used to go to Morocco

and then they would go back into Spain.

And she used to sort of stuff,

um, hash, blocks of hash down Sid's trousers.

I mean, if you got caught in Spain at that time

with even a joint under Franco,

you could go to prison, for, you know, 14 years.

So, it was pretty dangerous, but probably lucrative.

Yeah, if we went around to Sid's flat,

you know, the high rise where Anne lived,

we could just do drugs in front of her

whatever way we wanted.

Beverly was the type of person that if she arrived somewhere,

it'd be like... Sid'll be like, "Oh, God, it's my mom.

"Let's hide, you know, hope she doesn't see us."

So, I don't think there was any particularly close bond there.

I remember when Sid and I went to see The Pistols at The Screen On The Green.

And I had this little vintage dress on

that Sid had sort of cut really short and ripped up, made it look fantastic.

I mean, you know, he was a great girlie mate in many ways.

And we watched the Pistols, and we thought, "Oh."

We said to each other, "What's the point,

"what's the point of carrying on.

"They say all, they're everything we want to be.

"There's no point being in a band."

We just felt like giving up at the end of that gig.

It was such a fantastic show.

GLEN: When did Sid become one of our number one fans?

I don't know that he did or not.

I think he was just number one hanging round after John.

I think that was a bit of a double act

and then John was busy doing something else and Sid wasn't.

So...

There was nothing else going on in London at that time.

So, we were where the action was.

So, he came and shared his mayhem.

It is interesting to me that John did bring Sid in

to, like, supposedly be his ally in the band and then goes...

But actually, instantly, he realized that he was gonna overshadow John.

Because of the way he looked, the way he was.

The styles of people like

Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, and Led Zeppelin

were a million miles away from this street kid.

So, he needed to go back to the clubs

and I think that's why some scuzzy little bar like CBGB's

was where you could create a brand new scene.

Dory Hamilton, and this girl Sharon, Honi O'Rourke,

who went on to be my bass player,

and Nancy, they were all friends.

You know, there were different kind of groupies in the scene.

There were groupies who just wanted to hang out with famous people

or were just kind of nice girls who you could have sex with

or, like, friendly.

But then you had the Nancy type.

She wanted to marry a rockstar and be a rockstar's wife.

But usually girls like that

hook-up with a boyfriend pretty quickly.

Nancy didn't have a boyfriend.

Because no one could stand being with her for more than one evening.

She was just really repulsive.

KEITH: Nancy came on the scene, right,

and, like, she could've been 18,

she might've been 20, I don't know.

But, fuck, she's like,

so old, you know.

I just mean, like,

she's just seen too much, she's seen so much.

The other people who were very on to the scene,

like Gill Hagenson, the bartenders at Max's and CBGB's and things,

all kind of said, "Stay away from her."

She was a drug dealer and she was a prostitute.

And she was really bad news.

And when someone is called "really bad news,"

when you have Dee Dee Ramone's carny

going around breaking bottles over people's heads,

that's really bad news.

Right, I mean, I thought she was like 27, you know.

Anyway, and young, I mean, that's what... "She was only 27."

So there you go, I didn't even know she was 20!

This woman had years of experience,

at manipulation, intimidation,

and, of course, you fuck everybody as well.

You know, God love her...

If she couldn't get it free, she'd have sex.

She asked me on numerous occasions.

It's how Nancy operated.

She would go get the drugs so she could get laid.

The first time I met Nancy,

she was being shagged in the toilet

by somebody.

[LAUGHING] Not Sid, no.

[LAUGHING]

But someone very close to him . [LAUGHING]

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

DON: Before The Heartbreakers, Nancy came over,

at The Roxy in London.

It was speed in the toilets upstairs

and weed in the basement downstairs.

And as I said before, we had beer to wash it down.

You know, in those days you could have had a wheelbarrow load of cocaine,

rock-on, you were doing really well.

You had that much heroin,

the stigma that that carried.

You know, people were like, "Whoa."

You know, didn't wanna know.

[ROCK BAND PLAYING]

It wasn't street, it was pseudo-glamourous.

New York infiltrated the London punk scene and brought

one of the worst aspects of New York with it.

Why on earth, people think

this band, The Heartbreakers,

Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan,

who couldn't tie their shoes in the morning,

could orchestrate the downfall

of British youth by importing heroin

into the British isles is beyond me.

And no one noticed Keith Moon and Keith Richards,

in and out of hospitals...

They were English and they were stoned junkies,

real stoned junkies in England.

GLEN: You know, to me The Heartbreakers

would be regarded the best punk band.

There was something about them

like this cultural kind of arrogance, good song, look great.

And we watched them, totally gobsmacked.

And then they came down into the audience

to say hello after they'd done their 20-minutes.

And I said to Jerry Nolan,

"I really like that song Chinese Rock.

"What's that all about then?"

He looks at me like I was an idiot

and he says, "Heroin, boy."

Oh, right.

Hadn't even come into anybody's consciousness until then.

By the time The Heatbreakers and Nancy arrived,

it was the new thing, you know, they almost made it cool.

STEVE: Johnny and Jerry needed

to find someone they could hang out with.

It was an English kid, the first English kid.

This guy is cool.

Now, it's in the nature,

the unfortunate nature of a junkie

to not want to be alone in their,

uh, addiction.

I'm in their camp now. I'm probably the first kid

who did smack with these guys from New York.

'Cause they don't speed.

There's no doubt, that they turned a lot of people onto heroin.

And that really did have a major impact on the Punk rock scene

and almost wiped out the first chapter of it.

And he was like rolling up his leg every now and again

and he was showing everybody all his needle marks.

He says, "Oh, God.

"This foot has gone numb now, I can't use this foot anymore."

And his whole body was absolutely covered with marks.

KRIS: Sid developed his persona when he became a Pistol.

I know the image

and the requirements of living up to it.

Did go to his head sometimes.

LEEE: The name Sid Vicious was the most amazing

creation in the world.

It's like Hollywood stars,

you know, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable,

those people didn't know how to deal with

who they suddenly had to be.

And had to be all the time.

They didn't get to

only be it when the cameras were on

or only till someone said, "Now you can go home now,

"and just be yourself."

KRIS: But this was exacerbated by drugs,

which stoked, you know, his reasoning, innocence,

all went out the window and he became Sid Vicious.

[ PRETTY DOPE FIEND PLAYING]

* Lookin' for A pretty dope fiend *

And I remember one day,

she was with me at Honi O'Rourke's placed at the Chelsea Hotel.

And she says, "Wow, guys, you know,

"I'm going to London, man.

"'Cause The Heartbreakers are gonna be playing there."

Nancy turned up in London

when she did, because she had a thing for Jerry Nolan.

KRIS: The story is with a guitar,

but I don't know why she'd be giving Jerry a guitar

because he was a drummer.

Nolan was a drummer.

This really beautiful pink, left-handed

Fender Esquire with all the knobs on it were offset dice.

Really flash kind of... Not very punk, but...

He couldn't play it, but, um...

She brought it over for him. "Hey..."

But he knew she was bad news, just gave her the bum's rush.

I used to go back to The Heartbreakers' flat quite a lot.

Anyway, we walked in,

and there was just this incredibly loud woman there.

Neil said it was my birthday

and she just started going about her birthday.

Everyone was just zonked out on smack.

And we'd sort of turn the lights out and sort of sitting down.

And suddenly there's this presence in the room.

Here's Jerry Nolan.

And fully-clothed, mohair jumper, the whole lot.

And he got into bed beside me.

So, I was stuck in the middle of Neil and Jerry.

And he just said that he wasn't being weird or anything,

but, you know, he was really...

There was no way he was gonna be on his own,

with Nancy on the loose.

She came up to me, Nancy,

came up, from behind, put her hand on my shoulder,

and said, "Hi, where's Jerry?"

First words out of her mouth.

And I said, "You will not see Jerry,

"I won't let you near Jerry.

"If I have to lock Jerry up in a room

"and not let him out of it, I won't let you near Jerry.

"Do you understand?"

And she just said, "Oh, okay," and wandered away.

That was it.

I think my first introduction

to Nancy was hearing this neighing, whining sound

from the background, over my dub records I was playing.

'Cause she was loud.

See, Jerry very much used her.

Jerry...

Jerry... If someone could supply Jerry with drugs,

or with money or with a place to stay,

or a ride to the bar,

they were his girlfriend.

And because obviously no one knew her,

no one knew this story was a whole heap of lies.

What it did is it opened a lot of doors for her,

got her into McLaren Westwood empire.

He got her into the Speakeasy.

We'd go to the Roxy as a kind of,

um, watering hole.

And there's this girl staggering about with a very high voice.

Um...

There were a couple of Heartbreakers there

and they were avoiding her like the plague.

She was going around asking everyone for a cigarette.

And she spotted Sid.

And made a beeline. And that was it.

He started talking to her. She was all over him.

We'd never met American women before.

And so, initially, it was quite a giggle.

Saw her on the arm of Sid

and I thought,

"Oh, my God, if there were ever a perfect target

for Nancy Spungen."

Sid was very innocent, gullible, whatever you wanna call it, naive.

She probably blew him off his feet.

What amazes me, is that how over the years,

it's become a Romeo and Juliet story.

And it's been kinda romanticized.

But he really loved this person.

He loved her more than he loved his music.

VIVIANE: Bit by bit, as he got together with Nancy,

and then he became, you know, very caring

and caught up in her world and trying to make her happy.

ALAN: Whispering in his ear,

she taught him things no one had ever taught him

and she showed him a bit of love.

They were sensitive people

and they seemed to get along very well.

In fact, they were always holding one another in my office.

You sort of sense

that there was a great affection between them.

Maybe they were right for each other.

Maybe, whatever it is

she brought to the table, he needed.

Sid was really shy.

He was really shy with girls.

I never ever saw him chat up a girl.

I mean, a girl would have to come to Sid.

He wasn't interested in sex.

So if girls, they would throw themselves at him,

and he wasn't interested.

He was quite possibly a virgin before he met Nancy.

He needed a strong, forward woman

to, you know, to go to bed with him.

Otherwise, he would never make the move.

And she made the move.

She would really, sort of like, bolster his ego.

In a way that I thought was really

what you're supposed to do if you're boy and girlfriend.

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

but Sid was really shining out.

JONES: And I think, if you had that in the background,

then I don't think it was quite as tragic,

as we're all sort of being led to believe.

How many people loved The Beatles and hated Yoko?

Automatically.

It's like Yoko all of a sudden had power.

And The Beatles, and John and she was controlling John.

Well, maybe John wanted to be controlled.

Maybe John needed her.

When someone's in love, what can you do, you know.

If it's the bird or the band,

usually the bird wins.

The Pistols came to America.

They came to America, they came to tour.

By the time they announced their tour,

I knew I had to find a way to get on that tour.

STEVE: Been a long time, Sid, when he went to America

on the tour with the Pistols,

you know, he asked me and Barry to look after Nancy.

So we had the job of making sure she was all right.

He was away with The Pistols in America.

He'd be ringing back, "Viv, can you make sure you've seen Nancy.

"She says no one wants to talk to her.

"No one wants to speak to her.

"Everyone hates her. It's breaking my heart."

You know, he was still worried in the States,

because she'd be ringing him up, giving him an earful all the time.

No one really wanted Nancy around.

They told her, "Nance, it's because of Sid."

And she did get to that the point,

where she was persona non grata around most people's places.

We ended up setting up a party in Bob Gruen's room.

And, sure enough, everybody except for Johnny

from The Pistols showed up.

And Sid walked in,

kinda in the middle of the party,

with this tall blond woman.

We're all kinda like, "Oh, that's good for Sid.

"He picked up the best-looking girl from the gig."

One time he called up,

and was her telling how he'd been with a transvestite.

She had a very deep voice.

And Sid was pretty upfront.

He's like, "Well, here now.

"Am I gonna suck your cock or your cunt?"

And she said, "Cunt."[HOARSELY]

And everybody's like... [MIMICKING VIBRATING]

You know, "What the..."

It, you know... That's a man's voice.

"Sid, what are you doing over there, you know,

"on the road in America for the first time.

"We can only imagine."

He was telling her about

this transvestite

he'd ended up with and...

Her reaction was, "Well, all right, Sid,

as long as you're not fucking any girls, you know."

[LAUGHING] Which I thought was funny.

There were three or four real hardcore Pistols fans from LA.

Um, of which one is the famous Hellin Killer.

HELLIN: When Sid came out,

and he came right up to us.

It's like,"Look, people that I can talk to."

He was just like any kid like anywhere that we would run into.

And he came running up, and he was like,

"Hey," and he starts talking to us.

He's like, "Are you coming to the show?"

And I'm like, "We've got tickets."

And he grabbed the tickets out of my hand,

and he grabbed us and we went back in.

And he goes, "Give them their money back.

"They're on my guest list."

And that was my initial meeting of Sid.

So she kinda became Sid's companion

on tour for that last US tour.

I remember in Dallas, he called her

and he was on the phone with her.

He's like, "I met this girl and it's really great."

And I was like really terrified

because what I heard of Nancy and what I thought of Nancy.

What everyone said was just what an incredible nightmare she was.

"Oh, she's gonna kill you if she ever finds out about you."

I was just like, "Why are you even mentioning that I exist to her?"

It was kind of frightening to me.

But he was like in love with her.

[ UP FOR THE CRACK PLAYING]

* So many times I've waited

* Too many times sedated

* So many times elated

JOHN: The Sex Pistols were fighting with each other.

Malcolm was not speaking with Johnny.

Johnny was not speaking to Malcolm.

Um, nobody could find Sid.

He was hanging out with some groupies, taking drugs.

We were in the bathroom.

He's like, "I'm gonna do this." I'm like, "No, don't do it."

He's like, "I'm gonna do it."

And I'm like, "Okay, there's nothing I can do."

And sitting on the edge of the bathtub,

Sid shot his steroids.

And fell directly back into the bathtub.

I've got Sid in the worst situation I've ever seen.

And these kids are just kinda looking at him.

Almost dead, turning blue. I got him on his feet,

walked him around.

Stuff I've never had to do with anybody ever.

He was responding.

He was groaning, but he was in a semi-coma.

But his circulation returned.

It was working, you know.

I was really fearing it won't.

And here's the beauty of Sid.

The doctor shows up, gives him the Narcan,

whatever is they give you when you OD on heroin.

Sid sits up,

fixes his hair, stands up,

and looks around and goes, "What?"

And that was it. That was like nothing happened.

SID: The Sex Pistols are finished.

There could never be a replacement for John Rotten.

Sometimes it upsets me so much that I cry about it.

Because that band stood for so, so much.

It stood for so much, like freedom of youth and speech

and it was very revolutionary.

I guess a junkie only needs a rap to justify his life,

and a means to get that rap.

Once he was kicked out of the Pistols,

he was kind of lost

and up for absolutely anything.

Porno, playing with anybody.

I mean, they were just like desperate junkies.

Really sad, it has to be said.

Hey, do you wanna make a pornographic movie?

Give us a hundred pounds.

I remember she came up to me and said, "Hi, Steve.

"Would you like to watch me and Sid have sex for 20 pounds?"

I went, "You'd have to pay me a lot more than that, Nancy.

"I tell you, honestly, I couldn't think of nothing worse

"than watching you and him having sex?"

She even hit on me one time.

I had to get her a spliff to get her off my back.

Not literally, folks.

There was also a rumor that Sid did as well.

You know, that he gave himself to make money.

Do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?

Yeah, could you?

Yes, I'll make you a cup of coffee.

I just took a suitcase, got on a plane and went to London.

And I was on King's Road,

and some kids came out and they're like,

"So, Sid's in the store right there.

"Boy, why don't you go and say hi."

And I'm like, "Okay."

And I walked in and he turned around

and it was like we had just seen each other five minutes ago.

And at that point, he's like, "You have to come over and meet Nancy."

To be really honest, Nancy was so nice

and wonderful to me, when I met her.

And, then she goes, "You need to stay here with us,

"if you're not really staying anywhere."

They actually spent a lot of time in bed in their room,

in front of the TV, in their underwear, high on fucking heroin.

We would go to the chip shop, come back,

watch TV, do our hair, you know.

They stayed home a lot.

You know, there wasn't a lot of fighting.

There wasn't a lot of arguing.

I think the whole time I was there,

there was like one argument fight.

There was kind of a lot of whining on Nancy's part,

but I think she was just very whiny.

Girlfriend at the time used to make clothes

and she used to kinda hang out there.

And say that she was always trying to let her jeans out a bit more.

'Cause she was putting on weight

and putting on weight and putting on weight.

Those jeans had these, sort of, different shade of blue V's in the back.

There was apparently animosity between Nancy and Sid's mom.

And while I was living there,

like, a couple of times they went out,

and they were like, "If she comes by..."

Nancy, "If she comes by, don't let her in the house."

And one night she did come by.

She was, "I just wanted to drop some things off for Sid."

And she gave me a big bag of jujubes

and a big bag of syringes.

This was mom's present or whatever,

care package for Sid.

And I was just like, "Wow."

Malcolm, um, held the purse strings as regards money.

So, Sid needed money because he had a drug habit.

So he was always dependent upon that.

And Malcolm was never forthcoming with any great amounts of money.

SID: It's here to signify,

the flow of air around the chair, you know.

Trying to be all artistic and impress us

and we were laughing our heads off.

"You are an idiot."

I hate Malcolm.

Obviously, Malcolm was really concentrating on Sid.

And Nancy was really getting in the way of Maclcolm's plans.

What Nancy was doing was deciding

that she was going to be Sid's manager.

So, Malcolm did his word of mouth thing,

which I thought was hilarious.

SID: My girlfriend manages me.

I just wanna get another band together and tour.

The reality was, on paper and on contract with the lawyers,

Malcolm McLaren was still Sid's manager.

In retrospect, maybe, there was a lot more humor to the whole thing,

than I was able to really enjoy at the time.

SID: I don't know whether so many songs sung...

I don't know whether he'll have enough faith in it.

But she's damn smart.

Damn smart. She's been a lot around the music business

since she was 13 and she knows a lot of guys

and she can pull a lot of weight.

I was really surprised that Glen and him

were really good friends.

When Glen first came over, I was like, "Go figure."

The one guy, that, you know, he replaced in the band,

is the one guy who's there for him.

When I was sitting there in the pub next to him,

and he said, " What's all this about we don't get on?"

I said "I don't know. We're sitting here in a pub, aren't we?"

And he said, "Yeah."

And he said, "How can we prove to people?"

I said, "I don't know. I don't know if I'm bothered about proving to people."

He said, "No, no, we should."

I said, "How about doing a gig then?"

He went, "That's a good idea. Who can we get?"

We went through who we could get

and we got Steve New of the Rich Kids

and Rat Scabies, just old mates.

And put a band together. And we called it the Vicious White Kids.

Sid Vicious, I was still just about

in the Rich Kids and Steve was in...

Rat Scabies was actually not in the band at that stage.

He had a band called The White Cats.

It was kind of funny though

'cause, I don't know, I just found Sid a little bit slow, really.

He said, "We've got Steve on guitar,

"and Rat on drums.

"Who's gonna play bass?"

He said, "You're a bass player and I'm a bass player.

"Who's gonna play bass?"

I said, "I'll put it this way, Sid,

"I'm certainly not gonna sing."

He went, "Oh. Who's gonna sing then?"

I said, "You can sing."

"Who's gonna play bass?"

That was the greatest show.

Everyone was there.

[ TIME OF YOUR LIFE PLAYING]

* Time, time, time...

I think Debbie Harry was there, everyone was there.

That was an amazing show.

And had he been able to continue to pull that off

when he got to New York,

who knows what would have happened.

There you go, then we started rehearsing.

We did our one number,

and Sid comes up to me afterwards.

And he says, "Well, it's like you can play bass

"all the way for a song without stopping."

At that time it did enable a lot kids

who hadn't seen Sid Vicious on stage

to actually go.

Since the rehearsal... We went for our first rehearsal,

everything had been cleared out by the band who had it before.

Apart from this Fender Mustang bass guitar, it was just sitting there.

His eyes lit up.

He went, "I'm having that for my honey."

You know, um, Nancy.

We rehearsed and we drove home.

Next day we got up to our rehearsal.

And they say, "Okay, have a good gig. Take the equipment.

"But you can't take the equipment

"until you give us the bass back."

"What bass?"

"The bass that Sid walked out with last night."

"No, we didn't have a bass."

"Everybody seen you, Sid."

We put a phone call in to Nancy, you know.

We arranged that, "Well, the bass was coming."

You know, we could be loading up.

But we had to sit there waiting for it to turn up.

Of course, in the meantime, Nancy's painted it

with black emulsion.

Hadn't even taken the strings off or anything like that.

And arrives in a cab in a black dripping bag.

So we gave it to the guy, but it's still dripping wet.

You know, but we just went.

But the whole idea of it was obviously to raise enough funds

to send Sid over to New York and, you know...

It could have been a lot of things.

It could be to get away from Malcolm.

Maybe to get some control over his career himself,

if he knew what he was doing.

But, um, I think there was also some legal problems,

they had over here at the time too.

There was a young, fairly up-and-coming

and promising record producer called John Shepcock.

He was in his early 20s.

Um, and he was a heroin addict too.

And he went down to Pindock Mews one night.

And himself, Sid and Nancy

had this kind of nod out on heroin.

And what tells you about the state they were in,

is the next morning they woke up,

and genuinely did not know

they were lying next to the dead body of John Shepcock.

And what Anne Beverly told me, is later she said,

then they knew they had to go.

Because the police were already harassing them for so many things,

and now, suddenly they're waking up with a dead body in their bed.

The way I remember that whole thing

of Sid and Nancy hooking up

and then her pretending to be his "manager"

and going to New York...

I have to say, that things were moving so fast by that time

that we didn't give a shit.

SID: Things aren't getting any easier.

It's probably getting worse and worse.

I hate this country and everything to do with it.

You know, the punk rock thing

had taken off and it had momentum.

And, no Sid, no Nancy or any of that stuff could really stop it.

So, we didn't really think twice about it.

SID: I want to go live somewhere else.

So, I mean we have no plans whatsoever.

We just live today solely existentialist like Jean-Paul Sartre.

His entire, you know, roots

and everything that he was obsessed with,

was in New York as well.

It was cool. New York was cool.

"Let's go to New York." "It sounds good."

"We can play at Max's, we can make money." "Yeah, okay, bro."

"We'll launch our career from there."

His obsession, with, you know, The New York Dolls

and the whole New York

punk rock and pre-punk rock scene...

You know, between the two of them,

where else... That's where they had to go.

They were so excited.

They were like, "We're going to America,

"and we are gonna just

"take over."

As opposed to, "We're going to America

"and it's going to eat us."

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

HOWIE: On the one hand I think they came,

so she could show-off

and get back at everyone.

'Cause I don't think that many people liked her when she left.

New York reacted to the return

of Nancy

pretty much like you would expect.

She was like some, I guess, third rate, whatever,

chick from New York who never got paid any attention as she came back.

It's almost like a high school thing, you know.

This is all about her.

You know what I mean, this was not about him.

This was about her. For her. You know what I mean.

She was doing that thing,

you know, when you pull up

to your high school reunion in a Rolls Royce.

You know, that's where she was at.

One year in England.

She came back with Sid,

and she had the thickest Cockney accent

in the world, you know.

It's like, you know what...

The day before she had it,

she had like this... I don't know, like,

Philadelphia, you know... She grew up in Philadelphia.

Felt kinda like the client's Nancy.

It's almost like those Americans who come back with British accents.

So, she came back with a British boyfriend

and British money and British fame.

And all of which was wildly phony.

ELLIOT: She was Nancy, you know, she was running around.

She was like Mrs. Sid Vicious.

So, yes, everyone, everyone really despised her.

Sid Vicious was barely big on the underground in America.

You know, The Pistols hadn't actually sold any units,

they'd already split up.

It would be ten years later before their album went Platinum in America.

So, when he arrived,

he would've been famous within his click of people.

I'm talking about a very basic underground fame.

People would throw shit at us in the streets.

You know, Sid Vicious was not a rockstar

except among that circle of people.

As for the landmark Chelsea Hotel,

it is more used to names like Dylan Thomas,

and Bob Dylan than that of Sid Vicious.

The Chelsea hotel was a, uh...

A fancy low-life

[LAUGHING]

nightmare with a hefty history.

But it's mystique was that so many artists,

from Andy Warhol to Muhammad Ali...

It was a place where the it people would feel comfortable.

NEON: Dylan Thomas to Bob Dylan,

all these brilliant artists were there at some period of time.

I first moved into the Chelsea in 1975.

And I lived there on and off until '81.

NEON: You're allowed to do things

you wouldn't be able to do in other hotels.

You can take the bed apart.

You can throw the bed out. You can put it in the hallway.

It was an extremely dingy, dark place.

You can paint the walls each week a different color.

Hang what you want on it, nail What you want up on it.

The rooms were anything but attractive.

How dingy your room was or how posh your room was,

was up to you, not the hotel.

LEEE: They were so available at the Chelsea Hotel.

Everyone knew where they were.

And everyone knew when they had drugs.

There was no screening at the front desk.

People just in and out.

And every drug dealer wanted to sell them something

because, "Yeah, they've got money and they're famous."

STEVE: The Chelsea Hotel, I think, was also kind of a...

Maybe not the greatest move for them

because you had a lot of characters in there.

Rockets Redglare, and these sleazy fuckers

who just wanted to be, sort of, in there with Sid,

and obviously, you know...

Wanting to rub shoulders

with this icon, you know.

So, immediately they fell in with all the creeps.

And maybe I should say "us creeps." [LAUGHING]

NEON: And there was this blond there at the reception,

kinda stumbling.

Surrounded all these pound notes and US notes on the floor.

And the guy behind the reception looking really irritated.

Like, "Ugh, God!"

And me and Honi O' Rourke

went and said, "You could meet her."

And it was Nancy.

She had like a big bruise on the side of her head.

She's says, "Oh, wow, look what happened to me.

"We were at Johnny Rotten's place or something, somebody OD'd."

Something, and she was hit with a bat or something.

We had to leave.

"Oh, okay.

"Ah, you want to meet Sid!"

We got him on to methadone.

It was one of the first things we did because he was not well.

He came with a massive habit from London,

the heroin in London is much stronger than it was New York,

so that was the problem.

So, that wasn't holding him.

I mean, these are the problems you have when you travel.

ALAN: I mean, when they arrived in America,

we must remember

there was a fairly substantial lump of money due to them

from the cover of the song My Way.

But of course, they were two very desperate heroin addicts.

Waiting around for money

was not particularly on the agenda on a daily basis.

She had to have money readily available.

ESTHER: Sid and Jerry were good friends.

And Jerry suggested they get a band,

and so they did.

Um, it's gonna be Sid, Jerry Nolan

and Arthur Kane from The Dolls

and Steve Dior from Jerry's new group The Idols.

ESTHER: They were gonna have Johnny Thunders play with them.

But he wasn't very skilled, you know.

So, eventually my brother played with them.

We finally decided we were gonna do it.

Nancy negotiated.

Actually, Jerry Nolan negotiated to be honest with you.

It was good deal.

Do two shows a night, it was a Thursday night,

two shows, six fellows in.

I think the place held about...

You could cram 2,000 in there upstairs.

I remember, Brenda, she was booking things to have Sid play in Max's.

I mean, she got a big advance

I think from Tommy Dean Mills, Tommy Dean,

who is the new owner for Mickey Ruskin.

So, I think that's pretty good,

although she didn't have any power.

I couldn't go in there and say, "Okay, give me all this money."

You know, and they say, "Yeah."

And I haven't even played note?

And not many people in this scene could do that.

It was a cool show.

He was happy at sound check and everything.

Where Steve Dior... We're all around, we're doing the sound check.

He was just a little too stoned by the time showtime rolled around.

HOWIE: It was very exciting and packed.

And it sucked.

You know, just like you would expect.

It didn't suck... I mean, he was just so fucked up.

First night, he gets wasted.

And I said, "Sid, get stoned after the show, please.

"Do a good show and let's all have a good time after."

Things didn't go well at that show.

The crowd was a bit nasty at the moment.

Sid could barely stand up,

he kinda picked up where he left off in San Francisco.

And was nodding out on stage.

It was a success because it was packed.

There were lines around the block.

I know they were making quite good money during the gigs.

They could do Max's

and Sid himself would pocket

probably about three or four thousand dollars easily.

I got good money for those shows.

And it was pocket money for Sid.

It was pocket money for all those people,

anybody who played in that band.

It was good money for.

[POLICE RADIO CRACKLING]

ALAN: Leading up to the death of Nancy,

things on the New York underground,

and this could be because heroin

was getting harder to find on a daily basis,

did seem to get a lot more scuzzy.

The Dead Boys drummer was famously stabbed

outside a taxi rank at 4:00 in the morning.

And a lot of the people on the underground

were arming themselves.

You know, it's quite well documented,

that people like Dee Dee Ramone and Steve Bates

weren't just buying knives,

they were telling other people to buy knives.

Because there was obviously something going very wrong,

on the scuzzy side of Manhattan if you like.

There shouldn't be too much doubt,

uh, in anyone's mind

that the tension between them

was coming to a head.

Don't drop it on me again!

For anyone that wonders

at what might have happened on the 12th,

I think that you need to start with those shows.

You know, she'd gotten really kinda pushy.

And a degree of arrogance which was a disguise, I think,

for insecurities

that were going on with her and Sid and their relationship.

I think maybe it was Nancy,

who called up Honi O'Rourke, right.

And, uh, says, "Oh, Sid and I are gonna come by."

At the time, I don't know, it was before 12:00,

several hours before 12:00.

And they came to the room,

and Nancy had a portfolio

of like press clippings. And we ate.

They were kinda depressed.

* She's got some Nasty habits... *

NEON: And they started going through the pictures.

And he's like, "Remember that day

"and now look at us.

"Look, we're all fucked up."

It wasn't even exactly feeling sorry for themselves.

It was like, "Where are we?

"Wow, are we ever gonna get the glory days back?"

I mean, the one thing we need to understand about

October the 12th, the night that Nancy died,

there was no heroin about.

And that's what leads us back to the Dilaudid and the Tuinal

and various capsules and pills that were brought in for them

by various people that night.

They left. This is maybe around 12:00.

Close to it.

And then I went out.

You can imagine, you know,

Sid and Nancy were clucking like chickens.

They were coming down cold Turkey.

Which was the worst way to come off drugs.

This is why they were having a party

and buying a lot of drugs.

VICTOR: I had gotten in just after midnight,

he called and said they were, you know, looking

for something to relax with.

And then I went with Kelly.

Uh, I think Leon wanted to bring them

to the room to get the brownie points.

But Kelly insisted and insisted that I go with her.

* Really loves to party

* She never wants to leave...

It was just Sid there that I remember.

Nancy, she just gave us the money.

Uh, we left.

Someone came over and told me there was a party at Sid's

and asked me if I was going.

I didn't really wanna be there.

You didn't know it was going to be an important night,

it was just another night out in New York.

Then, around 2:00 or something, 3:00,

I had a violent tooth ache and a stomach ache.

Well, it's 19 years ago um...

But I know I don't go out before midnight.

And I know Max's closes at 4:00.

Probably somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00.

So, I went home.

And then was seeking some type of medication like a joint.

Right, and there was a dancer,

who lived on another floor.

hanging out with a friend of mine, uh,

Pepe Valentine, he was from a group called Squirrels.

Now, he is Victor Colicchio

and a girl named Kelly Garrett.

And I called her up and asked her,

"Oh, do you have a joint, I got a tooth ache and stuff."

She came down.

Neon claims to have been in the room with Kelly

and no last name residents of room 301

where he received a call from Nancy asking for pot at 4:00 a.m.

Nancy called me.

Wanted to know if I had a joint.

She talked about Sid.

I said, "How is he?"

And she says, "Oh, he's done a couple of Dilaudids.

"And he is out of it

"and he's useless."

There was another voice in the background and it wasn't Sid.

I couldn't tell who it was,

but there was somebody else in the room.

And she says, "Okay, well,

"call if you hear about something."

I said, "Yeah, of course." Right.

It was I'd say between 4:00 and 5:00,

that they came, that they called up.

Kelly came down to the room,

by the time I got dressed and got down to the room...

We knocked on the door

and she opened the door partially.

Uh, Sid was out of it, out of it.

Uh, and there was a guy in the room,

who I believe always his name to be,

I would say Snakey, Spidey,

Skippy, I just remembered...

You know, a "S" and "E" in the name. I didn't pay attention.

And he was there and they already had enough.

Sid was passed out.

And that was the last time I saw either one of them.

So, I walked in, you know, scanned around the room.

Sid was passed out on the bed, passed out.

WOMAN: Did he move at all while you were there? No.

Never said anything?

Said anything?

No.

I was familiar with his condition.

He wasn't sane, he probably wasn't even dreaming.

But someone said, uh, he had about 30 Tuinals.

ALAN: Basically, like Dilaudid, it's the kind of drug

that's given to cancer patients

to block out everything.

WOMAN: What are the likelihoods that someone

who had eaten 30 Tuinals would get up

in an hour, in a couple of hours and...

There is no possibility.

There is none.

Everybody who was at that party,

told me how Sid was so stoned,

he could not have lifted that knife,

much less stabbed somebody with it.

Now, 30 Tuinal, you know, boys and girls, will kill you.

It's not the kind of experiment you wanna try just to be like Sid Vicious.

It will kill you. It'll fell a tree.

Now, whether he ate 30

or whether he ate three, I don't know.

But, I knew people who could do 30 Tuinals.

You know.

I was one of them.

'Cause when I saw him and I know the amount of Tuinals he took...

And...

I just can't see him killing and going back to sleep

and there was just a lot of it that didn't make sense.

I know for a fact there are people

who went into that room that night that Nancy died.

And when they told their stories years later,

they said, "Talk about the shock

"when we woke up the next morning, Nancy was dead.

"When we left the Chelsea that night,

"we thought we're looking at the late Sid Vicious.

A while later,

there's like a knocking on the door.

No, pounding is more, you know... And it was so scary.

And then there was a sound, to me it sounded like metal,

hitting the floor. And some mumbling.

And, silence.

Honi O' Rourke came back around 6:00 or something

and said that there's some blood outside the door.

The thing that really struck me though

was why no one had ever talked to any of the people

who were actually there.

That there were so many people in The Chelsea,

they were in that room that night.

And that none of these people

seemed to have told anyone their story.

As a matter of fact, in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel,

the next morning, when all the press,

and everybody was there,

there were newspaper people all over the place,

I did approach one detective.

I don't remember his name,

but he wasn't interested at all in anything that I had to say.

And the knife was left here on the suitcase?

This is interesting. I've got a better picture.

Yeah, look at that. That's clean.

No blood, no fingerprints, nothing.

VICTOR: I can't see Sid wiping it.

And I can't see him, uh,

placing it there.

MALCOLM: And I think that

the mitigating circumstances were such,

as told to me by the lawyer that was representing him,

if there were no fingerprints on this particular knife,

then we would obviously have a very good case.

ALAN: Sergeant Houseman, I think, looked

into the whole thing a bit deeper.

And he suggested,

that had there been more time and more digging done,

it's just possible there may have been a different outcome

when the whole thing got to court.

I know the police wanted to speak to six people,

they never told me the names of those people,

but I know that in the police file,

there is at least one page

where six names have been wiped out.

VICTOR: These names, the fingerprints must have been on record.

In order for my name to be on here,

I would have to give the cops my fingerprint.

So, it indicates to me

that these people had previous criminal records,

otherwise, their fingerprints wouldn't be on file.

ALAN: I just think it was one of those scenarios,

where if they had a little bit more time,

they may have done more with it.

Right after this thing happened,

everybody in New York was suspicious,

because the stories came out

that no money was found in the room.

And people who'd been at the party

saw her flashing a lot money around.

NARRATOR: In the weeks leading up to Nancy's murder,

Sid had played lucrative gigs at Max's Kansas City.

And finally, been paid his royalties on the sales of My Way.

Paid in cash for both.

Whatever else happened in room 100 that night,

are we also supposed to believe

that all this money simply vanished?

Yet during the night,

the room had been accessed by drug dealers, junkies,

band members and by NYPD.

ALAN: The NYPD had no clue there was any missing money.

It's only when various witnesses

started giving their statements

and talking about Nancy dropping 100-dollar bills

in the corridor of the Chelsea.

I remember following Nancy through the lobby,

picking up her money

because she was always dropping 100-dollar bills behind her.

I felt like Nancy had lost some of her street smarts.

And picking those up, "Nancy, put these away.

"This is, you know, remember New York city." [LAUGHING]

NEON: The old Nancy, right,

would've never been in a lobby of a hotel,

with thousands of pounds.

In New York?

What!

We were like, "Put your money away. What are you doing?

"Don't want people to see that."

"Are you, you know... That's nuts!"

And you know, "Oh, fuck you."

I mean, she always had about three grand on her.

Yeah, some people

might suspect the cops have taken it.

But, uh, um,

I would think it would've...

I don't think it was a motive in the killing,

but, uh,

it was an opportunity.

WOMAN: Sid? Yeah.

What did he tell you? He told me that,

he saw the drawer where they kept their money was open.

And, it was missing.

And then he went into the bathroom, she was under the sink.

Oh.

And she was all bloody.

Somebody came in the room,

stabbed Nancy, took the money and left.

That seemed like a pretty normal story to me.

You know that if you knew Nancy,

if she caught someone robbing her money, she would attack.

There's talk of a party in the room.

I can't see it as being much of a party

because we know already that Sid was out cold

before the night was too old.

There were people in and out of there.

ALAN: There wasn't that many people hanging around and staying.

HOWIE: And I think they were the same people

over and over again.

We know that some people said that some "drug dealer"

from the Chelsea Hotel had been in there at that time.

Rockets Redglare, he was another

self-seeking nutso.

Uh, wonderful person, by the way.

But, uh, crazy.

I remember running into Rockets on Avenue Way.

I remember exactly where it was,

just by the street.

He'd sort of linked arms with me and leaned on me

and he was a tremendously big guy.

Told me, "I'm writing a book.

"And there's gonna be some very interesting facts

"that are gonna come out."

And I kind of had a feeling. I knew where he was heading,

where he was going with this.

And I let him go

and he starts saying, "I did it."

And I didn't really have to say, "What did you do, Rockets?"

He was talking about, you know, the book

and he was gonna let people know that he was the man.

There were rumors that it was Rockets Redglare.

But as I said, he was the first one insisting it wasn't Sid.

And I don't think someone who committed a murder

would look to clear Sid.

Um, also he was a meal...

Sid was Rocket's meal ticket at the time.

And I don't think he would jeopardize,

and he also like the notoriety of hanging out with Sid.

So, he definitely... When he knew the spotlight was on him,

he would, uh... He would spin a tale or two.

I'm going, "Hello, I'm Kathleen Wirt.

"I'm making a movie about Sid Vicious.

"I'm proving he didn't kill Nancy."

"Hello, I'm Kathleen Wirt. I'm making a movie..." You know.

And finally, I just said this offhand to this one girl.

And she goes, "Oh, my God. I know he didn't."

She goes, "That Michael guy was crazy."

We're having a meal before the gig.

And this kid was sitting with Nancy,

blond hair kid.

And I said,

"Your boyfriend lived at the Chelsea in 1978?"

She said, "Yeah." And I said, "Was he a junkie?"

And she goes, "Oh, yeah."

And I said to Sid, you know,

"Who is that?"

And he says, "Oh, that's Michael.

"Nancy really likes him."

She said that he lived on the sixth floor.

And that there was a group of actors that lived up there

that partied sometimes with Sid and Nancy.

Would go down to this first floor,

and that he was a part of this group of people.

You're kind a young, you know, maybe cute.

Maybe Nancy was cute... I don't know.

I don't know what kind of relationship they had.

Sid didn't really seem to mind at all.

So, I was like, "Okay."

And apparently he was there the night

that she was murdered.

NED: [SPEAKING]

This kid, um...

Definitely that the police wanted to find this guy,

very anxious to find this guy.

I felt that they thought, they knew

that this is the guy that did it.

As far as I was concerned,

I couldn't tell them a lot about this guy.

It was another guy who just appeared on the scene all of a sudden.

Michael had come upstairs,

after this had happened.

Sometime early in the morning.

WRIT: To everyone in the room,

when he said that Sid had killed her,

that no one believed him.

And that he had shown up with all of this cash,

tied up with Nancy's purple hair tie.

And they all identified this guy to the police supposedly.

Which is why I always thought that if someone got hold of the police file,

that his name would be in there.

They closed the book,

I think 'cause nothing ever came out about it.

Because nothing ever came out about this guy Michael.

Who he was, and...

But I do have a drawing I did of this guy.

I drew a picture of him

from memory.

'Cause I've never seen a document.

But I did a sketch of what I believe is this guy...

What I remember him looking like.

This is the guy that I think did it.

Michael.

NARRATOR: Every witness who visited Sid and Nancy

on the night of Nancy's death,

claims that Sid was out cold on Tuinal for seven hours.

This is backed up by Bellevue Hospital records.

There are fingerprints in the room

of six people known to the NYPD.

Yet, there is no police record of any of them

ever being questioned.

The murder weapon is wiped clean

of blood and fingerprints.

How did this happen?

A large amount of money simply disappears overnight.

How? Where to?

Who is Michael?

And why do so many people believe

he was involved in the murder?

In more than 30 years since Nancy's death,

none of these questions

have ever been satisfactorily answered.

[STATIC]

[ SOUL SURVIVOR PLAYING]

* I'm a soul survivor

* And I live in a world of tack

* Whatever they say it just Rolls right across my back

I actually saw The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle the other day.

It was funny watching Sid do

My Way and C'Mon Everybody.

You realize that he was and could have been a really great funk man.

But, hey, wasn't to be.

You know, he had a fantastic look.

He had the best image of all the punks at that time.

You know, he's still an icon.

JONES: The fact that 30 years later,

I can still sort of still go into a comic shop,

and still see him and buy a doll.

Uh, it's just, just is quite extraordinary.

KRIS: I recently had a recklessly

extravagant time in New York.

And I went to CBGB's as well

and there was a Bob Gruen exhibition there.

And Sid figures prominently throughout it all

as being the face of punk.

If he didn't die, I'd dare say he could have been playing at Vegas,

you know, might be

running through rock and roll numbers,

a few Sex Pistols numbers and a couple of Sinatras.

It's always the same, isn't it?

If you die that young, that tragically

in such a sensational spotlight like that,

um, you're almost sort of like in amber.

It's happened to so many people.

You can see it all from James Dean, Marilyn Monroe.

I've never met anybody like him.

I probably never will meet anyone like him again.

One unique character.

[ SOUL SURVIVOR PLAYING]

* And yesterday's flowers Will be placed upon your head

* So come on, come on Come on, come on

* Let's roll Through rings of fire

* Come on, come on Come on, come on

* Let's light This flames' desire

* So come on, come on Come on, come on

* Let's light this flaming fire

* So come on, come on Come on, come on

* Soul survivor

* Soul survivor

* Soul survivor