| New York City’s finest came for him 25 years ago this October 12th. The headlines in the United Kingdom shouted the news from the rooftops: "Sid Vicious kills Nancy." It made Sid a poster boy for the punk world and over the next three months, he would be arrested, sent to Riker’s Island, released on bail, attempt suicide and finally, die of a drug overdose. This cemented his place in pop history, and all by the age of 21.
Over the last quarter century, the image of this self-destructive duo has embedded itself as a symbol of tragic romance – sort of an anti-Romeo and Juliet – due largely to from Alex Cox’s film Sid & Nancy. Cox’s film was so popular, that its version of events is the one that most people remember. However 25 years after the fact, investigators are not so sure things happened the way Cox depicted them.
In the movie and the legend, Sid and Nancy find themselves alone and depressed in New York City, unable to turn their lives around, their dreams of restarting Sid’s career dying. Their daily lives are a vicious cycle of finding money, scoring drugs and getting high, punctuated by the occasional gig. The in-between times are spent fighting as Sid talks about cleaning up and going back to London.
Their final days together find them broke and depressed, suffering from withdrawal and arguing over who ate the last piece of solid food in their apartment. After much anxiety, they land some drugs and get high. Coming down, Nancy falls into a fit of depression and gets Sid to make a suicide pact. They fight some more, as Nancy tries to berate and bludgeon Sid into staying with her forever. Sid finally stabs Nancy and then passes out. When he awakes, Nancy is dead and he is on his way to becoming an icon.
When the affair first broke, Rolling Stone magazine offered two credible alternatives to the now standard story. Both of these versions centre on Sid receiving substantial royalty cheques (either $3,000 or $14,000), allowing the two to embark on a flamboyant shopping spree, culminating in a crowded late-night drug party back at their Chelsea Hotel apartment. Both stories maintain that Sid passed out early while Nancy was later visited and stabbed by one of the party members.
According to one story, Rolling Stone reported that Chelsea Hotel resident Neon Leon was discovered to have several of Sid’s personal items stashed in his room, and so was a possible suspect. Among the items were Sid’s favourite leather jacket, a Sex Pistols gold record and a hunting knife that Sid had bought earlier that day. One partygoer, Rockets Redglare, the couple’s Dialudid dealer, recalled seeing Neon Leon at the party. Leon claimed that Sid and Nancy came by around 3 a.m. and gave him the items, but Redglare, who maintains that he was with the couple until 5 a.m., remembers no such thing, although he did claim that another drug dealer, Steve Cincotti, arrived as he left. Cincotti died a few weeks later in an unrelated incident.
We will probably never know for sure who killed Nancy. Cincotti is dead, Redglare and Leon are gone and Sid and Nancy are dead, perhaps buried beside each other as Sid had asked in his suicide note. All we have left is conflicting reports and a movie about the agony of love.
What you choose to believe has more to do with your sense of poetry than the truth. Those who feel that punk and the Sex Pistols were part of an exciting and vibrant period, filled with colourful but damaged characters who turned everyday life into art, will continue to believe in the self-destruction of Sid and Nancy. People who insist that the early punks were just normal individuals will likely find it easier to consider the possibility that Nancy was simply a victim of a routine robbery. |
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