Intuitive Music

25 years ago today on the 12th of October 1978, Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. It happened at New York’s Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan where Sid Vicious and his girlfriend were living in Room 100.

Nancy Spungen -known as “Nauseating Nancy”- was born on February 27, 1958, and had been raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She started getting psychiatric treatment at the early age of 4 due to her violent behaviour. At the age of 11 Nancy attacked her mother with a hammer because she didn’t take her to visit a museum and she started getting involved in drugs at 13, becoming a heroin addict in a couple of years. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic at the age of 17. Her parents asked her to leave home, and she started working as a prostitute.

During the time that the couple spent together in New York, Nancy starting working as Sid’s manager and got him a few gigs at the popular Max’s Kansas City club in Manhattan. They also tried to quit their drug habits by enrolling at the Spring Street Methadone Clinic, but Sid Vicious was frequently beaten by other drug-addicts while they got also addicted to methadone in addition to the other drugs.

The rows and physical violence between Sid and Nancy became usual business as their bodies full of scars would demonstrate. Vicious owned a collection of knives because he was scared when he was out in the streets getting drugs. It was the same morning of Nancy’s death that Nancy gave Sid as a gift, a 5-inch folding hunting knife with a jaguar carved in the handle. The night before, the couple’s friend, Rockets Redglare, got a phone call from Nancy asking him to bring her some Dilaudid and hypodermic needles. Redglare popped into the hotel and found them high on the sedative Tuinal. He told them that he was unable to find any Dilaudid and about an hour later he left the hotel.

During the rest of the night several room guests called the front desk to complain about the noise from Room 100. At 9.30 in the morning, after having received an anonymous call from outside the hotel reporting about troubles in the Room 100, the clerk sent a bellboy to check it out and got another call from the room asking for help. When the bellboy entered Room 100 he found the body of Nancy Spungen laying on the floor of the bathroom in a pool of blood. Her body was facing-up on the floor under the sink and she was wearing only a black bra and panties. An ambulance arrived with a police escort and, after the confirmation of Nancy’s death, police found drugs and a blood-stained Jaguar K-11 folding knife.

When police arrived at 10.45 a.m Sid Vicious was in the hallway crying with bruises in his face, indicating that he had just been beaten in a row. Vicous was reported to have said: “I killed her…I can’t live without her”, “She must have fallen on the knife.” When the police officers tried to arrest him, he resisted and was put in handcuffs. Sid Vicious was taken to the 3rd Homicide Division on 51st Street where he confessed to the murder of his girlfriend. He allegedly said: “I did it because I’m a dirty dog”. At 5:20 p.m. Nancy Spungen’s body was removed from the Chelsea Hotel in a green body bag. Sid Vicious was charged with 2nd degree homicide in the death of Nancy Spungen.

The court never got to determine if Sid Vicious was guilty or innocent of Nancy Spungen’s death. Some theories point to the possibilty of a suicide pact that Sid didn’t take to the end. Other theories point a possible robbery that ended tragically, especially after Rockets Redglare claimed that Nancy had a big amount of money in cash in the room, but the next day police found no money. Also a local dealer was seen at the hotel about the hour of the murder. Sex Pistols’ singer Johnny Rotten never believed in Vicious’ guilt.

The story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen has become one of the most turbulent, misterious, and romantic stories in the history of pop music. There is also a legend circulating about how the Chelsea Hotel is haunted by the ghosts of famous guests such as Mark Twain, Janis Joplin, and Sid and Nancy. Other illustrious guests in the hotel were Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Jane Fonda, and Bob Dylan. The story of this tragedy was depicted in 1986 by director Alex Cox in the movie “Sid and Nancy”.