sid and nancy
For better or worse, many young people identify with the tragic lives of Sid and Nancy. Their story is part Romeo and Juliet, part Venus in fur, part punk rock tragedy, but mostly a waste of potential, youth and human life. Sid Vicious was 21 when he died; Nancy Spungen was 20 years old. Their short relationship was plagued by violence, drug abuse, and psychological deterioration.
Sid and Nancy are also two of the few famous musicians that are actually scary. Despite all the over-commercialization of punk fashion and alienated mockery, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious still look…well…vicious. These are not people you laugh in the face at, unless you want to get hit with a chain or a broken beer bottle. For young people living in an air-conditioned nightmare, this kind of brutality, even if it’s self-destructive, is somewhat refreshing.
Sid and Nancy have become more myth than fact. The influence of this myth stretches from the “heroin chic” phenomenon to Kinderwhore and Courtney Love. To most people, they are “a tabloid grotesque, sandwiched between ’77 Son of Sam and ’80 assassination of John Lennon.” But the couple’s chemistry and defiance, set against the backdrop of late 1970s New York City, may seem appealing to some aggressively self-destructive young people.
To others, Nancy Spungen is a Yoko Ono to the punk rock movement, or “Nauseating Nancy” as she was called at the time. No one really knows what happened the night/morning she died, but some people have gone as far as to say that she got her comeuppance from her.
Well, almost everyone in the early punk movement had mental problems. Neither Sid nor Nancy are unique in that regard. But why did this young couple become iconic, and why did their tragic end also put an end to the first wave of punk rock?
I remember hearing an amazingly mediocre song on the radio (so mediocre I can’t even remember what it sounded like) where the singer half whispered, half sang “Girl, you and me are like Sid and Nancy.” Like it’s the sexiest thing in the world. Expressed in simple language, he was saying something along the lines of “Girl, you and I are like two very young, deranged, codependent drug addicts.” Just what every girl wants to hear from her boyfriend.
In the fall of 1978, Sid and Nancy were living at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, then a hotel full of junkies and “scavengers.” In order to earn money to score, Sid and Nancy would sometimes give “exclusive interviews” to the tabloids, fueling their myth while they were still alive. The Sex Pistols had disbanded and no one really knew where, if anywhere, Sid was going after that.
“The press portrayed Sid and Nancy as Romeo and Juliet clad in black leather, roaring towards hell,” according to Spungen’s mother. And they were more than happy (okay, happy is the wrong word) to live up to this image. For all his arrogance, Vicious’s options were dwindling. He didn’t have a record deal. No one queued up to play with him. He and Nancy were “going down the bathroom as a couple,” so much so that even heavy-handed drug addicts weren’t hanging out with them.
The image of punk was already in decline. Many people saw Sid as a punk rock torchbearer; he had dropped it by any stretch of the imagination. The move had gone from a vibrant artistic statement to a sensationalist joke.
If punk was a joke, it wasn’t very funny. Today one can see watered down versions of her look at the mall. The “punk” leather jacket has become a must-have accessory for any mild hipster. “Sid and Nancy” is remembered less for what it is than for what we want it to be: a punk rock “Romeo and Juliet” with all the romance and none of the tragedy.
Nancy Spungen died early on October 12 from a stab wound to the abdomen. No one knows for sure if she committed suicide, Sid murdered her, or if she was the victim of a drug deal gone bad. With her, and with Sid’s suicide/overdose a few months later, much of punk’s promise also died.
The last days of this couple were later made into a movie starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. This movie, Sid and Nancy, may not be entirely accurate, but it does a good job of showing the shrinking horizons of a long-term drug addict.
Sid and Nancy are still relevant today. Drug addiction and abusive relationships have not yet disappeared. Artists like Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty have had to live out their addictions in the glare of new media, where any cell phone video can instantly ruin a reputation. 1970 New York is gone, never to return. It is up to us to find or create something new.
The full version of this article appears in Enjoy Your Style magazine.