THE STORY OF SID AND NANCY

Originally an independent underground group, the late seventies band was owned by manager Malcolm McLaren. The 'Sex Pistols' sang of violence, anarchy, racism and abortion, they were angry and threatened to annihilate and shake the very core of modern music. One of the most notoriously macabre rock and roll stories to fly out of the British rock Scene in the late seventies. Banned in America for the bands sheer impact of 'danger and violence'Their diy ethics astounded the public and their performances released critical blasts of rage as well as muted respect from their devotees.

Loved and despised by critics everywhere the Sex Pistols threw rocks at the music industry with the sheer force of their music. They represented rebellion and self-destruction.

The Sex Pistols, made up of, Guitarist Steve Jones, Drummer Paul Cook, bassist Glen Mattlock and vocalist John Lydon (later known as Johnny Rotten).were at the time the most aggressive rock and roll the band that even threatened the british government with their controversial and confrontational lyrics.

Label E.M.I dropped the band after a public outcry of disgust over their first single 'Anarchy in the UK', and later Mattlock was fired before their second single 'God Save The Queen' released by Virgin and banned by the BBC.

But the real and unforgettable memoire of the Sex Pistols is the story of Sid Vicious (aka John Simon Richie). Vicious replaced bassist Mattlock in the band. He was a tough and rough looking street kid, shy deep down, and couldn't play his instrument or sing a note.

It was in 1977 when Vicious met nineteen year old Nancy Spungen at a friend's London flat. She had fled to England with a groupie desire to bed a Sex Pistol and found Sid to be easy meat. Having worked as a prostitute in London she believed she had all the necessary criteria to snag him.

They soon moved into a flat not far from Buckingham Palace and shared a bed on the dining room floor. A problematic child since birth, Nancy regularly abused drugs and had reportedly made many suicide attempts.

Everybody wanted to be with Sid, but unfortunately he came with Nancy," says Rooke, now a veterinary nurse on the southern coast of England. "She was unbelievably thick-skinned, one of the most unlikeable people I've ever met. Everybody could see through her except for Sid." The two were totally co-dependent.

"Sid didn't have any normal, ordinary relationships, and I think the sex part overtook him," says Rooke.

Predictably, Nancy's overbearing presence soon led to friction with the band. Lead singer John Lydon (then billed as Johnny Rotten) "would plead with him to get rid of her, but to Sid she was like a crutch.

Eventually Sid came to dislike everything except heroin and Nancy.

In 1977 they released one album and then headed to the US in January 1978 in the hope of completing a tour.

Sid was 'erratic', throughout his US performances and no one knew why. It seemed he missed Nancy. Sometimes he wouldn't eat at all. He'd drink heavy and take lots of drugs. Fed up, John flew back to Britain halfway through the tour.

It lasted fourteen days and Nancy joined Sid in New York.

The relationship turned a cornerstone after the couple moved into a Chelsea Hotel. "There was a violent episode four days before she died," says Nancy's mother. "She said he'd been hitting her. I spent the next days worrying. And then she didn't call. And never called again".On the morning of October 12, 1977, responding to a report of a domestic dispute, police entered their Chelsea Hotel room and found Nancy, clad in blood-soaked bra and panties, crumpled under the bathroom sink, dead of a single, deep stab wound to her abdomen.

Sid, in a drugged haze, was charged with her murder and released on $50,000 bail. In several telephone calls to Nancy's mother after his arrest, Sid "never said he was sorry," she recalls. "He never said anything about it happening at all." Ten days later, Sid attempted suicide, slashing the full length of his forearm with a knife and reportedly screaming, "I want to be with my Nancy! I want to be left alone!"

After Nancy's death, Beverley Sid's mother flew to Manhattan to be with her son who, despite a stint in rehab, was still nursing his drug habit. On Feb. 1, 1979, fearful that he would be arrested in a drug buy on the street, she bought a supply of heroin for him, and was with him in the Greenwich Village apartment of a friend that night while he injected it. Afterward, "I swear to God he appeared to have a pink aura around his whole body," she remembers. The next morning, when she brought him a cup of tea, "he was lying there quite peacefully. I shook him until I realized he was very cold and very dead."

Late one night, a few dayslater, Beverley climbed the wall to a cemetery outside Philadelphia and, against the wishes of the Spungen family, scattered her son's ashes in the snow over Nancy's grave.

Although authorities never officially determined whether Sid's death was by accident or design, Anne Beverley has little doubt.

As evidence, she offers the worn piece of paper on which Sid scrawled a poem, simply titled "Nancy," to his departed love:

"You were my little baby girl/And I knew all your fears/Such joy to hold you in my arms/And kiss away your tears/But now you're gone/There's only pain/And nothing I can do/And I don't want to live this life/If I can't live for you."

Two decades later the Sex Pistols imploded and a multitude of demos, repackaged albums and live shows were released on a variety of labels.

The Sex Pistols' only proper album has become one of those records that is far more talked and written about than listened to. Only a handful of rock & roll bands can genuinely claim to have changed the world, and only one of those can claim to have done it with such a tiny discography (though any number of retrospective albums have been issued since the band met their messy end, this was the only one released while they were still a going concern).

It is impossible that any serious fan of modern music is not familiar with at least the singles collected here ("Pretty Vacant", "Anarchy In The UK", "God Save The Queen"). Jamie Reid's lurid yellow-and-pink sleeve artwork is also an enduringly influential cultural artefact. Mostly, though, what should never be forgotten about Never Mind. . . is that when all the mischief and mayhem it inspired or caused has been stripped away, it is a truly great rock & roll album: guitars as angry and adrenalised as any ever recorded, killer tunes, and Johnny Rotten's inimitable voice--the definitive articulation of disgust. Altogether perfect. Every era, and every home, should have one. --Andrew Mueller

Track Listings

1. Holidays in the sun
2. Bodies
3. No feelings
4. Liar
5. God save the Queen
6. Problems
7. Seventeen
8. Anarchy in the UK
9. Submission
10. Pretty vacant
11. New York
12. EMI

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