Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are going
to try and do something that I think feels almost
impossible. We're going to try to look past one
of the most famous images in the history of pop
culture. It's an image you absolutely know. Oh,
for sure. You've seen it a thousand times. It's
on T -shirts, you know, worn by people who have
probably never even heard a single note of his
music. It's on posters in dorm rooms. If you
looked up the word punk in the dictionary. this
face would be there. It's the sneer, that curled
lip, the spiky black hair that looks like it
was cut with, I don't know, a lawnmower, maybe?
The padlock necklace. We are talking, of course,
about Sid Vicious. Born Simon John Ritchie. And
that's really the paradox I want to grapple with
today. Because on one hand, you have this global
icon of rebellion. He is the complete embodiment
of everything dark, decadent, nihilistic. Absolutely.
But on the other hand, if we're being totally
honest, And I know this might upset some of the
purists out there. If you actually look at his
musical contributions, well, they're practically
nonexistent. Minimal would be a very polite way
of putting it. But I think if you just dismiss
him as, you know, a mannequin or some kind of
marketing gimmick, you are missing. a much deeper,
much, much darker story. This isn't really a
story about music at all. It's a tragedy. It's
about a chaotic 21 -year -old kid who was basically
strapped into a rocket by the music industry
and just launched directly into a brick wall.
I love that image. A rocket into a brick wall.
It feels so accurate because the velocity of
his life was just insane. He died at 21. Most
people are just finishing college or figuring
out their first job at that age. and he had already
become a global superstar a suspected murderer
and a corpse the whole arc in just a few years
unbelievable jaw wobble who was one of his closest
friends growing up had a very specific phrase
for it he called sid a kamikaze pilot he said
the people around him the band the management
they strapped him in patted him on the head and
just sent him off to die That is so heavy. So
our mission today really is to figure out who
that pilot was. We want to find the human being
who's buried under all that leather and hair
gel. We have to talk about his mother, who is
a character straight out of a gothic horror novel,
and the toxic love affair with Nancy Spungen,
and of course the legal mess at the end. And
we have to look at the actual evidence, not just
the myths, but the police records, the biographies,
the accounts from people like John Lydon and
Steve Jones. Because when you strip away the
punk legend, What you're left with is a story
about really neglect, addiction, and a desperate
need to be someone, anyone other than Simon Ritchie.
So let's go back, way back, before the sex pistols,
before the heroin, before any of it. Who was
Simon Ritchie? Where does a kid like this even
come from? He comes from Lewsham, southeast London.
Born May 10th, 1957. And if you think the chaos
started when he joined the Sex Pistols, you'd
be wrong. The chaos was there from like the delivery
room. His father was a guardsman at Buckingham
Palace. See, that sounds so fancy. Guardsmen
at the palace. You picture stability, you know,
discipline, shiny uniforms. Well, it was a total
facade. His father was also a semi -pro trombone
player, which is an odd detail. But he left the
picture almost immediately, just vanished. He
provided zero financial support. So it was just
Simon and his mother and McDonald. She later
became Anne Beverly. And honestly, we cannot
understand Sid Vicious without first understanding
Anne Beverly. She is the architect of his entire
reality. I was reading about their time in Ibiza.
And this wasn't a normal mom and son go on holiday
kind of situation, was it? Not even close. This
was the late 1950s and early 60s. So Anne takes
Simon to Ibiza in Spain. Back then, Ibiza wasn't
the club and capital of the world it is today.
It was a hippie outpost, a very bohemian, kind
of lawless. A bit rough around the edges. Very.
And Anne wasn't working a nine to five. By most
accounts, she was selling marijuana just to get
by. So you have a toddler running around while
his mom is dueling weed to beatniks in Spain.
That's that's a wild image. Exactly. It was a
completely unregulated childhood. No structure,
no boundaries, nothing. Eventually, they moved
back to England, bouncing around Tunbridge Wells
in East London. But that instability just followed
them. And then. The drugs got harder. Right.
By 1973, when Simon is a teenager, Anne isn't
just a free -spirited bohemian anymore. She is
completely consumed by a heroin addiction. And
that is such a pivotal detail. His mother was
a heroin addict before he was. Yes. It was completely
normalized in his household. Friends from that
time claimed she was so checked out she didn't
even realize he was attending college. And this
leads to what I really consider the psychological
big bang of Sid Vicious' life. The moment that,
you could argue, broke him. The ultimatum. The
ultimatum. Simon turned 16. And just consumed
by her own demons and struggles, kicked him out.
But she didn't just say, you know, you need to
find your own place. She told him, and this is
a quote, it's either you or me and it's not going
to be me. I have got to try to preserve myself
and you just fuck off. It's either you or me.
I just can't imagine that level of rejection.
You're 16 years old and your only parent looks
you in the eye and basically says, I choose me.
You're disposable. It's absolutely devastating.
It creates this void inside you that you'll spend
the rest of your life desperately trying to fill.
And Simon's response was just heartbreakingly
simple. He said, I have not got anywhere to go.
And she effectively just said, I don't care.
That explains so much, though. It explains why
he latched on to John Lydon so tightly. It explains
why he couldn't let go of Nancy later. He was
just. terrified of being abandoned again absolutely
he was always looking for a protector for a family
and we know he was suffering while he was at
kingsway college around the same time he actually
told a counselor he was contemplating suicide
this wasn't just you know teenage angst this
was deep clinical distress but kingsway college
is also where he finds his tribe so to speak
this is where the whole cast of characters starts
to assemble yes enter the four johns which i
have to say sounds like a barbershop quartet
but it was actually this little gang of misfits
It really was. You had John Lydon, who would
soon become the infamous Johnny Rotten. You had
John Gray. You had John Wardle, who Sid later
nicknamed Jawobble because of his drunken pronunciation
of his name. And then you had Simon John Ritchie,
who was going by John Beverly at the time. So
what were they actually doing? Were they, like,
making music yet? Or just causing trouble? Not
really making music. They were just existing.
They were squatting in these derelict Victorian
houses in London. We really have to paint the
picture of London in the mid -70s. It wasn't
the wealthy, polished city you see today. It
was great. It was still bombed out in places.
It was filled with trash strikes and unemployment.
These kids were just... bored out of their minds.
Beck completely broke. Utterly destitute. Lydon
and Sid used to go busking in the subway stations,
but they couldn't play anything. Sid would have
a violin with one string or maybe a tambourine
and they would just scream Alice Cooper covers.
Wait, Alice Cooper? Not exactly punk rock. No,
but it was theatrical. They do I Love the Dead,
things like that. They sounded so unbelievably
horrible that people gave them money just to
make them stop. That's amazing. Their business
model was based on annoyance. Here's 50 pence.
Please just shut up. It was performance art,
really. But we have to address the name. Sid
Vicious. It sounds like a wrestling villain.
It sounds like a guy who carries a switchblade.
But the origin story is... Well, it's significantly
less intimidating. It is the great irony of his
entire life. It involves a hamster. A hamster!
You're kidding. No, John Layden had a pet hamster
named Sid. He named him after Sid Barrett from
Pink Floyd, you know, the original psychedelic
casualty. One day, this little hamster bit Simon
on the finger. Okay. And Simon, reacting to the
bite, just exclaimed, Sid is really vicious.
And that stuck from a hamster bite. Layden seized
on it immediately. Sid vicious. He just dubbed
him that right on the spot. But here is the absolute
key. Layden gave him that name as a total joke.
It was ironic. At the time, Simon was this sweet...
Kind of goofy, slightly dim kid. He wasn't a
tough guy at all. Calling him vicious was like
calling a giant guy tiny. That's fascinating.
So the whole persona, the whole identity that
would define him, it started as a joke. But then
he spent the rest of his very short life trying
to live up to a hamster's reputation. Exactly.
He grew into the name. Or maybe the name just
swallowed him whole. He started to armor himself
with this character. So we're in the pre -Pistols
era now. This is 1975, 1976. The punk scene is
just starting to bubble. You've got Malcolm McLaren
and Vivienne Westwood shop sex on the King's
Road. This is ground zero for the old -fashioned
side of it. The bondage pants, the safety pins.
And Sid is just, what, hanging out. He was a
fixture there. He was the ultimate fanboy. He
just soaked up the aesthetic. He was actually
trying to be a musician, to be fair. He formed
a band called the Flowers of Romance with Keith
Levine, who later went on to public image LTD.
He also played drums for Suzy and the Banshees
at their very first gig at the 100 Club. Was
he any good on drums? Or was it just noise? By
all accounts, it was a complete cacophony. I
think they played the Lord's Prayer for about
20 minutes straight. It was all about the impact,
not the skill. But there's a story involving
Chrissy Hynde around this time that shows just
how chaotic and directionless his life was. Chrissy
Hynde from The Pretenders. The very same. She
was an American expat in London trying to make
it in music, but she was facing deportation.
She needed a work permit to stay. So she came
up with a plan to marry Sid. A green card marriage,
basically. A British citizenship marriage, yeah.
And she offered him two pounds. Two pounds. That's
what the price was. a pint of beer. He sold his
bachelorhood for two pounds. He needed the money
for food or cigarettes or something. He agreed.
They actually went down to the registry office
to do it. And this is just classic Sid. The office
was closed because it was a bank holiday. They
couldn't get it done. So he was foiled by a bank
holiday. It's like a plot from a bad sitcom.
It is, but it shows his personality. He was just
a leaf in the wind, willing to go along with
absolutely anything. But he did have these moments
of intense, almost manic focus. I remember reading
about the Ramones album. This is a really crucial
anecdote, and I think Chrissy Hine told this
story in a documentary. The first Ramones album
came out. And it just changed everything. It
was fast, simple, all downstrokes on the bass.
Sid decided he wanted to play bass exactly like
D .D. Ramone, so he got a bunch of amphetamine
speed and stayed up for three days and nights
straight. Just playing along to the record over
and over. Non -stop, just grinding away at the
bass in his squat, trying to learn that rhythm.
And on one hand, you can look at that and say,
wow, that's incredible dedication. But on the
other hand, look at the method. Three days on
speed. That's not practice. That's a manic episode.
That is drug abuse masquerading as artistic discipline.
It sets the pattern for his whole life, doesn't
it? Everything he did had to be extreme. He couldn't
just, you know, take a lesson. He had to stay
up for 72 hours on meth. Precisely. And that
intensity, that willingness to self -destruct
is exactly what Malcolm McLaren was looking for.
Which brings us to February 1977. The sex pistols
are already notorious. Anarchy in the UK is out.
They've been on the Bill Grundy show. But they
have a problem. Their bass player, Glenn Matlock.
Glenn Matlock was the anomaly in the Sex Pistols.
He was a competent, even gifted musician. He
wrote a lot of the music. He was relatively sober.
And he liked the Beatles. And McLaren hated that.
McCream wasn't managing a band. He was managing
a revolution, or at least the appearance of one.
He wanted chaos. He wanted headlines. Matlock
was too, well, he was too safe. Too musical.
So McLaren manufactured this story that Matlock
was thrown out for liking the Beatles, and he
brought in Sid. But why Sid? If he couldn't play,
why him of all people? Because of the look. McLaren
said, and this is another famous quote, if Johnny
Rotten is the voice of punk, then vicious is
the attitude. Sid looked amazing. He was tall,
skinny, pale, covered in these little scars and
safety pins. He looked like a disaster waiting
to happen. He was the perfect visual. He was
a human billboard for the movement. Exactly.
But bringing him in changed the chemistry of
the band entirely. It shifted them from a, you
know, pretty good rock band into a traveling
circus of actual violence. Let's talk about that
violence, because I think there is a tendency
to romanticize it, to say, oh, that was just
punk rock. But when you look at the specifics
of what he did, it's actually quite disturbing.
It is. It's not performance art. Take the Nick
Kent incident. Nick Kent was a very prominent
music critic for the NME. He was at a show at
the 100 Club. Sid was there, high on speed, wearing
his usual gear. And he felt Kent was blocking
his view of the stage. Okay, so a normal person
would, what, tap him on the shoulder, say, excuse
me, can you move a bit? Sid pulled out a rusty
motorcycle chain that he kept in his pocket.
And he just whipped Kent across the head with
it. A rusted chain. That's practically a medieval
weapon. You could get tetanus just looking at
that. It opened up a huge gash on Kent's head.
Blood was everywhere. It wasn't a punk statement.
It was assault with a deadly weapon. And then
you have the incident at the damned concert.
Right. The glass throwing. He was drunk, high,
just thrashing around in the crowd. He threw
a glass at the stage, supposedly aiming for Dave
Vanyan, the singer of the damned. He missed.
The glass hit a pillar, shattered, and the shards
flew into the audience. A girl was blinded in
one eye. He blinded the fan. Yes, he went to
the Ashford Romand Center for that. And this
is where I really struggle with the poor, innocent
Sid narrative. Yes, he was troubled. Yes, he
was exploited. But he was also j***ed. genuinely
dangerous. He was hurting innocent people. That's
a really important distinction to make. It's
easy to see him as a victim of the industry,
and in many ways he was, but to that girl who
lost an eye, he's the villain of the story, full
stop. Absolutely. And the band, you know, Lydon,
Steve Jones, Paul Cook, they were watching this
happen. They saw him spiraling. But the chaos
sold records. The press loved it. Every single
time Sid hit someone, they got a front page story.
So he's in the band. They go into the studio
to record the album. Never mind the bollocks.
This is like the holy grail. rail of punk albums.
It's a landmark record. And Sid, he isn't even
on it. Barely. This is the great secret of the
Sex Pistols. When it came time to actually record
the bass parts, Sid was in the hospital with
hepatitis. From the drug use. Almost certainly
from dirty needles, yes. So he was laid up in
the hospital. Steve Jones, the guitarist, ended
up just playing on the bass parts on the record
he just overdubbed them himself so when you listen
to god save the queen or holidays in the sun
those iconic driving bass lines that's the guitars
playing so the icon of the band the guy on the
shirt isn't even playing the music he's famous
for He is a ghost on his own album. Now, to be
fair, he did try. He came out of the hospital
and tried to lay down a bass track for the song
Bodies, but he was so rusty and out of time that
they just turned his track way down in the mix
and used Jones' part anyway? There's always been
this rumor that at live shows they would just
unplug his amplifier. Is that true? Oh, it happened
frequently, especially early on. The sound engineers,
or sometimes even Steve Jones, would just cut
his feed to the PA system. So Sid would be up
there thrashing around, sweating, posing for
the cameras, thinking he was tearing the roof
off the place, and nobody could hear a single
note he was playing. Wow. That is so psychologically
devastating if you think about it. He's not a
musician. He's a prop. He's a mascot. Well, he
was a mascot who could bleed. That's what made
him valuable. And then, into this already incredibly
unstable mix, walks the ultimate catalyst, Nancy
Spungen. Nancy. If Seed was a bomb, Nancy was
the lit match. She was an American groupie who
came to London with the expletive goal of hooking
up with a sex pistol. She actually aimed for
Johnny Rotten first. She tried to get with Rotten.
I didn't know that. She did. And Rotten wanted
absolutely nothing to do with her. He found her
abrasive, loud, just... But Sid, Sid was lonely,
Sid was deeply insecure, and Sid was very easily
led. Can you describe her background a bit? Because
she gets villainized so much in the story, you
know, nauseating Nancy. But she was a pretty
damaged person herself. She really was. She had
severe mental health issues from a very young
age. She had been diagnosed with schizophrenia,
though you have to remember diagnoses back then
were tricky. She was a heroin addict. She was
a hustler. She had been a stripper, a prostitute,
a drug runner. She was a survivor, but a deeply
chaotic one. And when the two of them got together,
it just became this closed loop of destruction.
They called them the Romeo and Juliet of punk,
but it was strictly the tragedy part. It was
a profound codependency. Sid liked feeling needed.
He would play nursemaid to her when she was sick
from drugs. And Nancy liked having control. She
would procure the heroin and start to manage
his life. But it was incredibly violent, wasn't
it? Their relationship. Extremely. They fought
constantly. I mean, physical fights. Punching,
scratching, throwing things. They shared a bizarre
fascination with knives. But they were also completely
inseparable. And the rest of the band just hated
her. Why? Was it just because she was annoying
or was it something deeper? It was because she
was isolating Sid from them. She was whispering
in his ear that he was the real star, that the
band was holding him back. And more importantly,
she was accelerating his heroin use from a sort
of occasional thing to a full -blown daily habit.
It got so bad, Malcolm McLaren actually tried
to have her kidnapped. Kidnapped, for real. He
formulated a plan to grab her, shove her in a
car, and force her onto a plane back to New York,
just to get her away from Sid and the band. But
it never worked out. Sid would have never let
her go. So this toxic train wreck of a relationship
then heads to America. January 1978, the big
U .S. tour. The tour that killed the band. It
was an absolute disaster from day one. Warner
Brothers, their U .S. label, demanded that Sid
clean up before the tour. They didn't want a
junkie on the payroll, so they put him on methadone.
But methadone doesn't get you high. It just stops
you from getting sick from withdrawal. Exactly.
So he was irritable, he was in withdrawal, and
he was drinking very heavily to compensate. And
worst of all, from his perspective, Nancy was
banned from the tour. So he's alone, sick. angry
and in the foreign country and they booked them
into these cowboy bars in the deep south places
in texas and oklahoma mclaren wanted a culture
clash he wanted to see rednecks versus punks
he wanted a fight and sid delivered that fight
oh he did in dallas the tension was just unbearable
before the show backstage sid took a razor blade
and carved the words give me a fix into his bare
chest give me a fix yeah deep cuts bleeding down
his stomach And he went out on stage like that,
covered in blood and sweat. And he grabbed the
microphone and just screamed at the audience.
You bunch of redneck cowboy faggots. In 1978,
Texas, that is basically a suicide wish. The
crowd went berserk. They threw beer cans, bottles,
food, anything they could find. Sid was covered
in spit and blood. It wasn't a concert. It was
a riot that happened to have a soundtrack. And
that energy just completely drained everyone.
It couldn't have been sustainable. It broke them.
By the time they got to San Francisco for the
final show at the Winterland Ballroom, it was
all over. Sid's bass wasn't working half the
time. He was barely standing. Johnny Rotten looked
at the crowd, then looked at his band, and realized
the whole joke was over. That's when he delivered
that famous line. Ever get the feeling you've
been cheated? And he just walked off stage. Band
over. Just like that. But Sid's personal drama
was just... peaking, wasn't it? The band breaks
up and what does he do? He overdoses almost immediately.
On the plane or right before getting on it. He
went into a coma. When he woke up in the hospital
in New York, the doctor gave him a very, very
specific warning. He told him, your liver is
shot. If you don't quit drinking, you will be
dead in six months. Six months. That's a direct
warning. Sid died almost exactly a year later.
So Post Pistols, Sid is now in New York. Nancy
is effectively his manager, and they move into
the Chelsea Hotel. Room 100, on the first floor.
Now, the Chelsea Hotel is legendary. You know,
Bob Dylan lived there, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin.
But by 1978, what was it actually like? It was
a complete dive. It was decaying. The carpet
smelled of mildew and old smoke. It was not a
glamorous place anymore. And Room 100 became
a full -on drug den. Dealers coming in and out
at all hours. Nancy was trying to book gigs for
Sid at places like Max's Kansas City, but he
was just a total mess. I have to ask about the
My Way cover. Because that's his other big legacy
moment, isn't it? The one thing he did on his
own. It was recorded for the great rock and roll
Swindle movie. And it is, in my opinion, a masterpiece
of nihilism. He takes this Frank Sinatra anthem
of self -assurance and personal triumph and turns
it into a violent, sneering joke. In the video,
he pulls out a handgun and shoots the audience.
It just sums up his entire philosophy. Burn it
all down. But back at the Chelsea, reality is
setting in. They're running out of money. They're
calling Nancy's parents in Pennsylvania, begging
for cash. Nancy is telling people she has kidney
failure just to get sympathy money. They were
drowning. And then we get to October 11th, 1978,
the last night of Nancy's life. Walk us through
it. What do we know? There was a small party
in room 100, a few friends, a few dealers coming
and going. Sid took a massive amount of 2 -in
-1. Can you explain Tuna for a second? It's not
a drug we hear about much anymore. It's a barbiturate,
a heavy downer. It was known on the street as
a rainbow because the capsule was half blue,
half orange. It is a very, very heavy sedative.
It basically just shuts your brain off. And Sid
took about 30 of them. 30. One or two would put
a normal person to sleep. 30 should stop your
heart. It knocked him out cold. He was completely
comatose on the bed for hours. And sometime during
the early morning hours of October 12th, Nancy
Spungen was stabbed in the bathroom. A single
stab wound. One wound to the abdomen. She bled
to death on the bathroom floor. The knife was
identified as a Jaguar K -11 hunting knife. And
Nancy had actually bought it for Sid a few days
prior on 42nd Street. So this is the central
mystery. Sid wakes up the next morning, finds
her body, and calls the front desk. The police
arrive. What does he tell them? He was hysterical
and still heavily drugged. His statements were
all over the map. First, he apparently confessed,
saying something like, I killed her because I'm
a dirty dog. Then he recanted and said, I never
meant to hurt her. Then he tried to claim, she
must have fallen on the knife. And finally he
just settled on, I don't remember. And honestly,
if you've taken 30 tunels, I don't remember is
probably the most truthful statement of the bunch.
That's the core of the defense's argument. How
could a man who is completely comatose stand
up, get a knife, stab someone with precision,
and then pass out again without a single memory
of it? So what are the other theories? Because
Malcolm McLaren swore up and down that Sid was
innocent. McLaren's theory, and it does have
its supporters, is the robbery theory. There
was a lot of cash in that room earlier in the
night. Sid had just been paid for a gig at Max's.
When the police arrived, the money was gone.
So a dealer or some other thief comes in. Finds.
Sid passed out on the bed. Nancy is in the bathroom.
She catches them stealing the money. They stab
her and run. It's a plausible scenario. Are there
any specific names attached to this theory? Any
suspects? The most prominent name that always
comes up is a guy named Rockets Redglare. He
was a Lower East Side character, a drug dealer,
a part -time actor. You might have seen him in
the movie Big. He was at the apartment that night.
He was the one who supplied the tunnels. Some
people claim he admitted to the murder years
later on his deathbed, but it's all hearsay.
There was also another guy named Neon Leon who
lived down the hall and was found with some acid
leather gear later on. But the police didn't
really investigate these other people. Not seriously.
They had the boyfriend, they had the murder weapon
that belonged to him, and they had a confession.
However shaky, for them, it was case closed.
So Sid gets arrested. He's charged with second
-degree murder. But somehow he makes bail. Virgin
Records, Richard Branson's company, put up the
money. $50 ,000. They got him out. But Sid was
just... He was completely broken. And this is
where the story just becomes a slow -motion car
crash. He's out on bail for killing the woman
he loved, and he immediately tries to join her.
He tried to commit suicide just days later. He
smashed a light bulb in his hotel room and used
the jagged glass to slash his arms. He was rushed
to Bellevue Hospital, the psychiatric wing. And
even after that, he wasn't done with the violence?
No. Once he healed up, he was back out in the
clubs. In December, he was at a club called Hurrah.
He gets into an altercation with Todd Smith.
That's Patti Smith's brother. Apparently, Sid
was flirting with Todd's girlfriend. Todd told
him to stop. And Sid smashed a bottle and jammed
it into Todd's face. Well, he's out on bail for
murder. It's just unbelievable. It's pathological
self -destruction. The judge, understandably,
revoked his bail. He was sent to Rikers Island.
And Rikers is a notoriously tough place. Yeah.
Especially for a skinny British punk rocker.
It was hell for him. But in a strange way, it
also saved his life, at least for a little while.
He was forced to detox. No heroin, no alcohol.
He spent about seven weeks there. And when he
came out on February 1st, 1979, he was clean.
He had gained weight. He actually looked healthy
for the first time in years. February 1st, the
day before he dies. His bail was reinstated.
He was released from Rikers. His mother, Ann,
was in New York by then to look after him. And
his new girlfriend, an actress named Michelle
Robinson, hosted a small gathering at her apartment
on Bank Street in Greenwich Village to celebrate
his release. But the very first thing Sid wanted
when he got there was heroin. After being clean
for almost two months, his tolerance would be
at zero. Exactly. And this is the danger zone
for every single addict. A dose that would have
just gotten him high before is now lethal. He
asked a friend... a photographer named Peter
Gravel, to go score for him. Gravel brought back
some heroin. And his mother. And Beverly. She's
there at the party. Does she try to stop him?
This is the most chilling part of the entire
story for me. She didn't stop him. Some accounts
even say she helped him administer it later in
the night when he wanted more. She told people
at the party, oh, he's fine. He knows what he's
doing. That's not just negligence. That's monstrous.
It is. So Sid took a hit. He nodded off on the
couch. Everyone just thought he was sleeping
it off. Michelle Robinson and his mother, Ann,
eventually went to bed. And the next morning?
The next morning, February 2nd, Ann went to wake
him up. He was cold. He had overdosed in his
sleep. He was dead at 21. Just four months after
Nancy. Gone. Both of them. There's this story
about a suicide note. A death pact. Yes. Ann
Beverly produced a piece of paper a few days
after his death. She claimed she found it in
the pocket of his leather jacket. It read, we
had a death pact and I have to keep my half of
the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby.
Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle
boots. Goodbye. That sounds very cinematic. Do
you buy it? Is it real? I'm deeply skeptical.
It just sounds a little too perfect, doesn't
it? A bit too Hollywood ending. Anne Beverly
had a vested interest in making this look like
a romantic tragedy rather than what it probably
was. A gritty, sad, accidental overdose. If it
was a suicide pact, it's Romeo and Juliet. If
it's just an overdose, he's just another junkie
who died on an apartment floor. And he didn't
get his wish. He wasn't buried next to Nancy.
No. Nancy was Jewish. She was buried in a Jewish
cemetery in Pennsylvania. Her family wanted absolutely
nothing to do with Sid. They blamed him, correctly
or not, for her death. So Sid was cremated. But
there's a legend about the ashes, isn't there?
The legend says that Ann Beverly traveled to
Pennsylvania, found the cemetery, and secretly
scattered Sid's ashes over Nancy's grave in the
middle of the night. So they were reunited in
death against the family's wishes. So even his
funeral arrangements ended up being an act of
trespassing. It fits the story perfectly, doesn't
it? I want to end on a slightly lighter note,
if that's even possible with this story, before
we wrap up. There's an anecdote involving Freddie
Mercury that I think just perfectly encapsulates
who Sid really was. Oh, this is a classic. It's
1977. Queen and the Sex Pistols are both recording
in the same studio complex. Wessex Studios in
London. Queen is in one room recording News of
the World. The pistols are in another recording
bollocks. Two completely different universes
colliding. Totally. So Sid, drunk, wanders into
the control room where Freddie Mercury is sitting
at the piano. And Sid sneers in his best punk
voice and says, Oi, Freddie, have you succeeded
in bringing ballet to the masses yet? He was
mocking a quote Freddie had given in an interview.
Just trying to be the tough guy, trying to get
a rise out of him. And Freddie, who was much
stronger than he looked, just stood up very calmly.
He looked at Sid and said, Ah, Simon Ferocious.
He deliberately got the name wrong. Simon Ferocious.
And then he grabbed Sid by the lapels of his
leather jacket and physically marched him out
of the room like he was a naughty schoolboy.
Simon Ferocious. I love that. And Sid was apparently
terrified. He didn't know what to do. It just
shows that when he was confronted by a real personality,
by real talent and confidence, his whole act
just crumbled into nothing. But that is the perfect
summary of his entire life, really. Yeah. A lost
boy in a costume. Exactly. So we've looked at
the mom, the hamster, the music, the murder.
When you step back from all of it, what is the
takeaway? Why do we still care about Sid Vicious
40 plus years later? I think we care because
he represents the ultimate limit of rock and
roll. He is what happens when you take the live
fast, die young slogan to its most literal, ugly
conclusion. He was a creation. He was a suit
of armor that Simon Ritchie put on to survive
his childhood. But in the end, the armor just
ended up crushing him. He was the face of punk.
But he was also its first and most famous casualty.
He was the sacrificial lamb for the whole movement.
And the mystery of Nancy's death. It will never
be solved. Legally, the case died with him. Was
it a drug -fueled murder? Was it a botched suicide
pact? Was it a robbery gone wrong? We will simply
never know. But the lifestyle they lived guaranteed
that one or both of them wasn't making it out
of that room alive. So here's a final provocative
thought for you to chew on. If Sid hadn't died
that night, Let's just say he survived the overdose.
He goes to rehab. He eventually does his time
for the Todd Smith assault. What does a 40 -year
-old Sid Vicious look like? Does he become a
reality TV star like Ozzy? Does he work at a
gas station? Or does he just fade away? It's
so hard to imagine, isn't it? He was so perfectly
designed for destruction. I'm not sure the person,
Simon Ritchie, could have ever survived the character
Sid Vicious. I think one of them had to go. That
is a haunting thought. Simon Ritchie couldn't
survive Sid Vicious. No, I don't think he could.
We're going to leave it there. If you want to
understand the chaos, go listen to Nevermind
the Bollocks. But when you hear that roaring
sound, just remember, the bass player on the
album is the guitarist, and the guy on the t
-shirt is a ghost. Thanks for diving deep with
us.