Dysfunctional Pair - Nancy and Sid

    I've been wanting to do a piece of dark, moody art for quite some time.  Trouble was, I couldn't come up with the right subject until I watched a documentary on the legendary hard man of punk rock--Sid Vicious.  After combing through numerous photos, I finally found one of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious sitting and chatting in what appeared to be the waiting area of a subway station.  With the pair is a duffle bag and Sid's bass guitar.  This photo I then translated into a pic in my style which I now submit to DeviantART as an example, in my opinion, of two young people living a totally dysfunctional and self-destructive life.  A life which ended in the tragic death of both persons.

    Sid Vicious was born John Simon Ritchie in May of 1957 in London's lower east end.  He was the only child of his mother, Anne.  Sid's father had abandoned the family when his son was only two years old.  Anne Ritchie had been a lifelong drug addict up to the time of Sid's death in 1979.  John Ritchie, a shy and introverted boy at the beginning of his life was soon using drugs with his mother.  The drug they used at that time was speed.  Without a father figure, John Ritchie clung close to his mother who acted more like a buddy than a mother.  Still, it seems young John was looking for an identity of his own.  In 1976, he achieved that identity with the coming of the punk rock fad which took most of England's youth by storm with it's anarchistic displays and ear-splitting music.  John Ritchie began hanging out with the punk crowd at London's various punk clubs and clothing shops and soon began taking on the trappings of the punk scene, ratting out his hair, wearing a padlock and chain around his neck and adopting a seemingly nihilistic attitude towards everything and everybody.  Then came the emergence of a new and soon to be famous band, the Sex Pistols.  And John Ritchie would be their biggest fan and groupie.  Soon, he formed a friendship with the band's lead singer, John Lyden, better known as Johnny Rotten (a nickname given to him for his rotten teeth).  Before long, John Ritchie acquired a nickname - Sid Vicious, though not from any vicious or antisocial attitudes on his part.  Johnny Rotten bestowed that name on Sid in honor of his pet hamster named Vicious.  When the Sex Pistols original bass player, Glen Matlock, quit the group, Sid was asked to join the band as it's new bass player in spite of the fact that Sid had had no musical training nor any discernable talent in music whatsoever.

    Sid could hardly believe his good fortune.  First, he was merely a hanger-on with the band he idolized.  Now, he was IN the band, and what was more, the crowds, mostly girls, were clamoring to see HIM!  The Sex Pistols would quickly become the front men of the punk rock fad, and Sid Vicious it's most visible member.  Their two biggest hits, "Anarchy in the UK," and "Pretty Vacant" were chart toppers and helped punk to become a fad in America as well as in Europe.  As the new front man for punk, Sid tried to live up to the "vicious" part of his name, once attacking a rock music critic with a bicycle chain because he'd given the Sex Pistols a bad write-up.  The Sex Pistols concerts were often bloody side shows with Sid deliberately slashing himself with broken beer bottles.  Like many in the music business, Sid was using drugs frequently, although his mother was not the one who got him addicted to heroin.  That blame would fall on the other woman in his life - a groupie from America named Nancy Spungen.  Unlike Sid, who grew up poor, Nancy lived a decent middle class childhood.  She was born in February of 1958 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  However, from her earliest childhood, Nancy evidenced serious mental and emotional problems which her parents were unable to cope with.  These problems led to fights and frequent absences from school which culminated in Nancy hanging with a rough crowd.   Unknown to her parents and teachers, Nancy had been a heroin addict since the age of 14.  After flunking out of college and getting fired from her job on her very first day, Nancy ran away from home and was soon supporting herself by dealing drugs and working occasionally as a stripper.  She managed to save enough money to travel to England as a groupie with guitarist Johnny Thunder's entourage where she would soon realize her goal: to bed a Sex Pistol.  And the man she set her sights on was Sid Vicious.  Not long after Sid became enamored with Nancy, the Sex Pistols band started to fall apart.  And, like the Beatles with Yoko Ono, the members of the Sex Pistols blamed Nancy.  But Sid truly loved her and would not hear of getting rid of her, despite her obvious heroin addiction and her general skankiness.  Her outrageous, often violent behavior in public earned her the nickname "Nauseating Nancy" from the British press.  And yet, Sid Vicious went along with Nancy getting him to start using heroin since he saw it as part of rock 'n roll "cool" (think Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground).

    Not long after the Sex Pistols broke up following their disastrous USA tour, Sid and Nancy went to New York and took up residence in the run down Chelsea Hotel where they spent their days getting high on heroin and their nights visiting New York's punk clubs and clothing shops.  During this time, Nancy was claiming to be Sid's new manager.  But all was not bliss with these two.  There were frequent arguments which led to violent fights.  It was alleged that during one such fight, Sid had struck Nancy with his bass guitar.  Then in November of 1978, the police were called to the Chelsea.  The caller claimed to have heard blood-curdling screams coming from the room occupied by Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.  Three New York city patrolmen arrived and entered Sid and Nancy's room.  Sid wasn't in the room, but the cops found Nancy lying on the bathroom floor, clad only in her bra and panties, her head underneath the sink, dead from a stab wound in the stomach.  The murder weapon, Sid's 5" switchblade knife, was still protruding from her belly.  Ironically the knife was a gift from Nancy to Sid.  While one officer stayed in the room to secure the crime scene for the detectives who would soon arrive, the other two began a floor-to-floor search for Sid Vicious.  They didn't have to look far, for Sid came staggering around the corner, his mind totally fogged out on drugs and his t-shirt spattered with blood.  When questioned by the officers, Sid claimed to have no knowledge about what had just happened to Nancy.  He admitted to taking not only heroin but also Quaaludes and various barbiturates.  The cops then announced that he was under arrest.  Sid claimed his innocence and resisted, taking a swing at one of the officers.  In those pre-Rodney King days and before the advent of personal video cameras, the police were free to use any sort of force to make an arrest that they saw fit.  Sid was knocked to the floor, punched, stomped and clubbed senseless and finally handcuffed.  As Sid was escorted to the waiting police car, he still resisted, screaming for Nancy as the one of the cops thumped him on the back of the head with a leather blackjack.

    Sid Vicious would spend the next three months in Rikers Island jail waiting for bail to be raised and for his lawyers to work on his defense.  During that time, he was denied heroin and had to quit cold turkey, enduring the excruciating pains of withdrawal.  On top of that, Sid was the victim of abuse from jail guards who beat him and threw him into solitary if he mouthed off to them and from aggressive inmates known as "wolves" who beat and raped Sid when he refused to become their "punk" or "bitch."   Finally, Sid was granted a bail hearing.  Bail was set and paid and Sid was given a date for his upcoming trial for Nancy Spungen's murder.  Waiting for Sid as he emerged from the courthouse was his mother, Anne, and a close friend, Peter Kodik.  Sid was desperate for heroin and in a strange act of motherly love, Anne and Peter got him some.  At a party celebrating Sid's release from jail, Sid shot up not one, but two packets of high grade heroin, an extremely dangerous thing to do for someone who had only just gotten clean of the drug.  Throughout that time, Sid openly talked of craving death, saying things like "I want to be with my Nancy."  Her death and the knowledge that he may have been responsible haunted Sid and plunged him into a deep depression.   And the thought of possibly going back to prison terrified him.  Before the party that would be his last, Sid had slashed his arm from the wrist to the elbow and was involuntarily committed to Bellevue Psychiatric hospital.  Then in February of 1979, that same evening after what would be Sid Vicious' last party broke up, Sid got his wish as the overdose of heroin slowed down his heart and he succumbed.  John Simon Ritchie, aka Sid Vicious was just 21.  In short, this was a sad end for two very sad people. (medium: pen and ink, ink wash, colored pens).