Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (47 page)
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Authors: Pamela Des Barres
BOOK: Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon
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They were supposed to be bad boys, but after a row at a nightclub in which an insulted Sid charged somebody with a broken bottle, and a friend of Rotten’s made death threats, A&M dropped the Pistols, destroying all the newly pressed “God Save the Queen” singles. At that point the group was given nothing more than a fifteen-pound weekly wage raise, and while the obstinate Malcolm tried to round up another record deal, Sid was on the loose, scoring bags of heroin with Nancy. When he wound up in the hospital for a month, sick with hepatitis, nobody came to visit except for “his Nancy.” The loving couple were creating their own insulated, private junkie world where everybody else was a trespasser. Sid signed the Virgin recording contract from his hospital bed, and “God Save the Queen” sold an amazing 150,000 copies in five days. “There is no future!” Rotten squalled murderously. “No future for you, no future for me, no future for you!”
PUNISH THE PUNKS! raged the headline in the
Sunday Mirror.
Shocking, disturbing, and subversive—accused of everything from conspiracy to communism—the Pistol boys were treated as though they weren’t even human beings. Both Johnny and Paul had been accosted on the street and beaten up badly, but despite the national vitriolic dissension, newly bred punks thronged the King’s Road wearing their leather jackets, bondage trousers, and shredded, graffiti’d T-shirts, leaking amphetamine violence with every step of their heavy black boots and agreeing with the Pistols that everything was indeed “pretty vacant” and “no fun.” The album
Never Mind the Bollocks (Here’s the Sex Pistols),
which came out in October of 1977, went straight to number one in the U.K. despite being banned by Boots, Woolworth’s, and W H. Smith. Raging success aside, the Sex Pistols would never record together again.
Sunday Mirror.
Shocking, disturbing, and subversive—accused of everything from conspiracy to communism—the Pistol boys were treated as though they weren’t even human beings. Both Johnny and Paul had been accosted on the street and beaten up badly, but despite the national vitriolic dissension, newly bred punks thronged the King’s Road wearing their leather jackets, bondage trousers, and shredded, graffiti’d T-shirts, leaking amphetamine violence with every step of their heavy black boots and agreeing with the Pistols that everything was indeed “pretty vacant” and “no fun.” The album
Never Mind the Bollocks (Here’s the Sex Pistols),
which came out in October of 1977, went straight to number one in the U.K. despite being banned by Boots, Woolworth’s, and W H. Smith. Raging success aside, the Sex Pistols would never record together again.
Discomania was sweeping the States. John Travolta’s white suit was copied in polyester and sold at shopping malls from coast to coast. The Bee Gees topped the U.S. charts with the croony ballad “How Deep Is Your Love.” Still, Malcolm was determined to overthrow America with his band of terrifying punks and, after signing the Pistols to Warner Bros. Records in the United States, booked a tour excluding Los Angeles and New York, cities he loathed, choosing Atlanta, Georgia, for the Pistols’ first show. Nancy wasn’t allowed on the trip, and Sid wasn’t amused, disappearing into the deep South underworld after the opening gig, searching for a fix. He missed the plane to Memphis, but was rounded up by a roadie the next afternoon, only to get promptly lost in the city where Elvis sleeps. When he finally turned up, just in time to make the show (on what would have been Elvis’s forty-third birthday), his bloody
chest newly carved with the words “I Wanna Fix,” Sid was greeted with open hostility by his three band mates. By the third U.S. date, nobody was speaking to the naughty bass player, who was half-kicking his habit, nodding on Valiums. In the bus en route to Austin, he cut a seven-inch gash into his left arm, saying, “Do you want to see what I do when I’m happy?” The wound got infected, he wouldn’t bathe, and the bus was crawling with Sid’s crabs.
chest newly carved with the words “I Wanna Fix,” Sid was greeted with open hostility by his three band mates. By the third U.S. date, nobody was speaking to the naughty bass player, who was half-kicking his habit, nodding on Valiums. In the bus en route to Austin, he cut a seven-inch gash into his left arm, saying, “Do you want to see what I do when I’m happy?” The wound got infected, he wouldn’t bathe, and the bus was crawling with Sid’s crabs.
At the next show in San Antonio, after a hunchbacked Johnny berated his audience (“All you cowboys are fuckin’ faggots”), Sid smashed his bass over a photographer’s head, bled all over the stage, and made a halfhearted attempt to dodge the barrage of hurtling cans and bottles. In Baton Rouge he had sex on top of the bar with a fleshy, Spandex-clad babe while flashbulbs popped. In Dallas Sid punched holes in the hotel wall with a set of brass knuckles. In the middle of the night somewhere in Middle America, as Sid sat in a coffee shop having his usual rare steak and runny eggs, a big ol’ trucker taunted him, “If you’re so vicious, can you do this?,” putting a cigarette out on his hand. Barely glancing at the man, Sid said, “Yeah,” and cut his own hand so badly that blood poured into his plate of food as he ate it. In another version of the story, Malcolm says that Sid bled on the
trucker’s
steak and was hurled twenty-five yards into the side of the tour bus. In Tulsa roadies had to rescue a girl from Sid’s room after he vomited on her and had a diarrhea attack during a romantic blow job. Things were very grave. In San Francisco Rotten sang, “I’m an abortion,” then, slipping into his speaking voice, said, “What does that make you!” He announced he was quitting the Sex Pistols that same night.
trucker’s
steak and was hurled twenty-five yards into the side of the tour bus. In Tulsa roadies had to rescue a girl from Sid’s room after he vomited on her and had a diarrhea attack during a romantic blow job. Things were very grave. In San Francisco Rotten sang, “I’m an abortion,” then, slipping into his speaking voice, said, “What does that make you!” He announced he was quitting the Sex Pistols that same night.
Sid turned blue and collapsed on the corner of Haight and Ashbury after mainlining on a scummy mattress on somebody’s floor. He slipped into a drug-induced coma on a plane headed for New York and spent a few days in Jamaica Hospital, where photographer Roberta Bayley called him. He told her it was his basic nature to fuck up badly. She told him that his basic nature would get him in a lot of trouble, to which he responded, “My basic nature is going to kill me in six months.” He wasn’t far off.
In less than two years the Sex Pistols, the most influential band in over a decade, were over. Even though Malcolm was busy finishing a film about the group, John Lydon became a recluse, only appearing briefly in
The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle
before starting another band, PiL—Public Image, Ltd.—where he continued to vent his unique brand of wretchedness. Steve and Paul worked on
Swindle
in Rio de Janeiro, eventually forming their own band, the Professionals. Malcolm flew Sid to Paris, where he did his bits for the film, including his pathetic and ferocious thrash bleating of “My Way,” soon to become a punk classic. (He refused to record the song unless some of his own lyrics could be used: “I ducked the blows/I shot it up / and killed a cat.”
The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle
before starting another band, PiL—Public Image, Ltd.—where he continued to vent his unique brand of wretchedness. Steve and Paul worked on
Swindle
in Rio de Janeiro, eventually forming their own band, the Professionals. Malcolm flew Sid to Paris, where he did his bits for the film, including his pathetic and ferocious thrash bleating of “My Way,” soon to become a punk classic. (He refused to record the song unless some of his own lyrics could be used: “I ducked the blows/I shot it up / and killed a cat.”
Holed up in London’s heroin hell, Sid and Nancy bickered constantly, becoming sicker and more dependent on each other daily. It was during this time
that Lech Kowalski filmed the couple for his appropriately titled documentary,
DOA.
Lying in bed, entirely stoned, the two are attempting an interview, but Sid keeps nodding off in mid-word. Nancy tries to arouse him repeatedly, whining and yowling, but he’s nodding hard. He continually fondles a hunting knife, and actually burns her with a cigarette at one point. Nancy seems oddly proud of who they are. “Sid and Nancy,” she moons as if they were already dead. “We were partners in crime, we helped each other out.” The partners went on short-term methadone cures but were mostly adrift and pitiful. Determined to live up to his name at the Speakeasy club one frantic night, Sid got into another fight, this time with a marine who severed a nerve in Sid’s right eye so severely that he could no longer open it fully. The droopy eye went well with his sneering pirate’s leer.
that Lech Kowalski filmed the couple for his appropriately titled documentary,
DOA.
Lying in bed, entirely stoned, the two are attempting an interview, but Sid keeps nodding off in mid-word. Nancy tries to arouse him repeatedly, whining and yowling, but he’s nodding hard. He continually fondles a hunting knife, and actually burns her with a cigarette at one point. Nancy seems oddly proud of who they are. “Sid and Nancy,” she moons as if they were already dead. “We were partners in crime, we helped each other out.” The partners went on short-term methadone cures but were mostly adrift and pitiful. Determined to live up to his name at the Speakeasy club one frantic night, Sid got into another fight, this time with a marine who severed a nerve in Sid’s right eye so severely that he could no longer open it fully. The droopy eye went well with his sneering pirate’s leer.
After burning bridge after bridge in London, the pair moved to New York, checking into the infamous Chelsea Hotel, where they planned on getting clean and maybe even getting married, but the couple’s fatal reputation preceded them. Nancy, always bruised and battered because she provoked Sid into beating on her, egged him into confrontations. Sid got into constant fights, even at the Spring Street methadone clinic. But he still wanted to be a star. With Nancy as his “manager,” Sid played a few gigs with some of the New York Dolls and even had meager hopes of a solo record deal. But the American music industry wasn’t interested in a broken-down Pistol with a habit. It was a bad time. That September Sid said, “The world has put us under house arrest.”
To recuperate one more time, Sid and Nancy went to spend a week with Nancy’s parents in Philadelphia. In Deborah Spungen’s harrowing account about her daughter’s sad, short life,
And I Don’t Want to Live This Life,
she describes the couple’s arrival at the train station: “She looked like a Holocaust victim … . Her skin was a translucent bluish-white. Her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets and had black circles under them. Her hair was bleached white and along the hairline there were yellowish bruises and sores and scabs … . Behind her lurked Sid … his spiky hair stood straight up on his head. He, too, was bluish-white and painfully thin … . There was a total absence of life to them. It was as if the rest of the world were in color and they were in black and white.” Oblivious to the gaping stares, Nancy ran to embrace her mother, proudly introducing her to Sid. “He stuck out his hand,” Deborah reported. “I shook it. It was wet and limp, a boy’s hand. He was a boy, shy and more than a little confused by the strange surroundings. ‘Allo, Mum,’ he said quietly.” Thus began a traumatic week in suburbia. The lovebirds constantly swigged out of their methadone bottle, popped heavy downers like Tuinals and Dilaudids (Elvis’s drug of choice), and watched cartoons, groping each other and dropping lit cigarettes on the family sofa. Deborah plucked stitches out of her daughter’s ear to avoid a scene at the local hospital. In one of their fights, Sid had actually torn off Nancy’s ear, but she kept that information
from her tragically concerned mother. He had also dangled Nancy out a seventh-story window by her ankles, but she didn’t tell her mother about that episode, either. When a forlorn Sid asked Deborah if she could help him find a plastic surgeon for his eye, she said she would try. “Thank you,” he said, “that’d be very nice of you. I don’t like my eye, you know. I got it in a fight. People always want to fight with me. Teachers. Policemen. Teddys. Everybody. I don’t want to, but they do.” Before she left for New York, Nancy once again told her mother that she was going to die very soon, before her twenty-first birthday, “in a blaze of glory.”
And I Don’t Want to Live This Life,
she describes the couple’s arrival at the train station: “She looked like a Holocaust victim … . Her skin was a translucent bluish-white. Her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets and had black circles under them. Her hair was bleached white and along the hairline there were yellowish bruises and sores and scabs … . Behind her lurked Sid … his spiky hair stood straight up on his head. He, too, was bluish-white and painfully thin … . There was a total absence of life to them. It was as if the rest of the world were in color and they were in black and white.” Oblivious to the gaping stares, Nancy ran to embrace her mother, proudly introducing her to Sid. “He stuck out his hand,” Deborah reported. “I shook it. It was wet and limp, a boy’s hand. He was a boy, shy and more than a little confused by the strange surroundings. ‘Allo, Mum,’ he said quietly.” Thus began a traumatic week in suburbia. The lovebirds constantly swigged out of their methadone bottle, popped heavy downers like Tuinals and Dilaudids (Elvis’s drug of choice), and watched cartoons, groping each other and dropping lit cigarettes on the family sofa. Deborah plucked stitches out of her daughter’s ear to avoid a scene at the local hospital. In one of their fights, Sid had actually torn off Nancy’s ear, but she kept that information
from her tragically concerned mother. He had also dangled Nancy out a seventh-story window by her ankles, but she didn’t tell her mother about that episode, either. When a forlorn Sid asked Deborah if she could help him find a plastic surgeon for his eye, she said she would try. “Thank you,” he said, “that’d be very nice of you. I don’t like my eye, you know. I got it in a fight. People always want to fight with me. Teachers. Policemen. Teddys. Everybody. I don’t want to, but they do.” Before she left for New York, Nancy once again told her mother that she was going to die very soon, before her twenty-first birthday, “in a blaze of glory.”
Back in the Chelsea, Sid and Nancy set their bed on fire and were moved to Room 100.
On October 11, 1979, Sid got some Pistols money and Nancy wanted Dilaudid, ordering forty of the pills from dealer Rockets Redglare at about 1:30 A.M., which he was unable to get. He brought the couple a small amount of the drug, and Nancy gave him a few hundred dollars to find more. The pair then went to see a guitarist down the hall, Neon Leon, looking for pot. According to Leon, Sid showed him a five-inch knife that Nancy had bought him that day for protection. Then another dealer, Steve Cincotti, arrived at Room 100 between four and five A.M. with Tuinal.
The next morning Sid woke up to find his bloody valentine under the sink.
But what had actually happened? Had Sid killed Nancy in another one of their violent stoned-out fights? Could it have been an angry young dealer? Drugged-out thieves? Rockets Redglare told police that after Nancy gave him the money for Dilaudid, she still had several hundred left. Where was the money? Perhaps it was a screwed-up suicide pact gone awry? Said a friend at the Chelsea, “They were both really depressed and talked about dying the last few weeks.” Another friend said the couple had a longstanding agreement that if one died, the other would follow.
Somehow Malcolm McLaren raised Sid’s fifty thousand dollars’ bail, and after a grim, nightmarish few days, kicking cold turkey on Rikers Island, Sid was cut loose and hidden from the press at a welfare hotel, the Saville. To raise funds for Sid’s defense (and stir up some more controversy), McLaren sold T-shirts with Sid wearing G.I. Joe clothes, shouting the words “I’m Alive, She’s Dead, I’m Yours.” Sid’s mother, Anne Beverley, arrived in New York to provide some comfort for her little boy, reportedly selling her story to the
New York Post
for ten thousand dollars.
New York Post
for ten thousand dollars.
October 17, the same day Sid was released, Deborah Spungen buried her daughter Nancy, wearing her green prom dress. Sid was released too late to attend Nancy’s funeral, and he was mortified. On the twenty-second, Sid, almost catatonic, attempted suicide during unbearable withdrawal symptoms. Anguished over the death of Nancy, he butchered himself so badly that he was taken to Bellevue psychiatric hospital for observation.
That night, right after Sid’s slash fest, Anne called Malcolm, and he arrived
with a friend, Joe Stevens, who happened to have a tape recorder in his bag. Malcolm called an ambulance, and while they waited, Stevens turned on the recorder and asked Sid what had happened in Room 100. He answered, “You know how the Dead Boys [Stiv Bators’s band] poke each other with the knives through the leather jackets? Nancy slapped me in the nose just after I’d been punched out by the bellhop … and I took out the knife and said, ‘Do that again and I’m going to take your fucking head off.’ And she stuck her belly right in front of my knife. She didn’t know. I didn’t know that we’d done anything really bad. She crashed out on one bed, I crashed out on the other.”
with a friend, Joe Stevens, who happened to have a tape recorder in his bag. Malcolm called an ambulance, and while they waited, Stevens turned on the recorder and asked Sid what had happened in Room 100. He answered, “You know how the Dead Boys [Stiv Bators’s band] poke each other with the knives through the leather jackets? Nancy slapped me in the nose just after I’d been punched out by the bellhop … and I took out the knife and said, ‘Do that again and I’m going to take your fucking head off.’ And she stuck her belly right in front of my knife. She didn’t know. I didn’t know that we’d done anything really bad. She crashed out on one bed, I crashed out on the other.”
In his guilty torment, Sid began to write to Deborah Spungen. In one of his letters he enclosed a poem he had written for his Nancy.
With genuine wide-eyed innocence, Sid describes Nancy as “just a poor baby, desperate for love,” and tells how he was faithful to her. Sid touchingly asks Nancy’s mom if he could see her before he dies, since she was “the only one who understood.” The poem Sid enclosed is entitled “Nancy” and begins “You were my little baby girl.” His life without her is now nothing but pain, Sid laments in the poem, and if he can’t live it for Nancy, Sid insists, “I don’t want to live this life.”
Sid plunged deeper into drugs and despair, awaiting his court date, set for February 1, 1979. There would be another scrape with the law, when Todd Smith, singer Patti Smith’s brother, threw a few punches at Sid for allegedly molesting his girlfriend. Sid retaliated with a broken bottle. Todd had to get stitches for a head wound, and Sid wound up kicking junk again, spending Christmas on Rikers Island.
On February 1, Sid’s lawyer, James Merberg, made such a convincing plea that Sid was out a day ahead of schedule. Waiting for him was his adoring mother, who had already purchased some heroin for her adored son. After his mum prepared spaghetti for Sid and a few others, he went into the bedroom to shoot up. Already warned by the dealer that the heroin was “close to 100 percent pure,” Sid flushed pink and floated around precariously, but survived. Ma Vicious tucked the rest of the junk in her back pocket for safekeeping, but when everybody crashed out, Sid found the packet and, according to friend Joe Stevens, “shot a whole load” and died.
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