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NANCY SPUNGEN
1958-1978 |
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Love Me, Kill Me... ___________________________________________________________________________ by Deborah Spungen, 1983 
 
 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  The almost unbelievable story of the love-death relationship of Sid Vicious and his girl friend Nancy Spungen- as witnessed by the Victim's mother. "THERE'S REALLY a lot goin' on here, Mom. Music. People. I'm meeting a lot of people." It was a transatlantic phone call from my twenty-year-old daughter, Nancy. In the spring of 1976 she had gone to London to visit. She had just spent a traumatic eighteen months away from home, living in New York City, where she had hung out in the rock music scene- her first love- and taken too many drugs, including heroin. Nancy had been emotionally disturbed since birth. She had spent over one fifth of her life in a school for disturbed children. She had also been committed for brief periods to several mental institutions. For years my husband, Frank, and I had had little control over her. Visits with too many psychiatrists had not helped. In the end, there was nothing to be done but let Nancy go, let her lead her own life. "You know who I met at a party last night?" she continued excitedly. "You won't believe it." "Who?" "Sid Vicious!" "Who?" "Sid Vicious!" "Who's he?" "A punk rocker. He's with the Sex Pistols, Mom." "Who are the Sex Pistols?" "They're the biggest band in England. They're great. The best." "Oh." "He's nice. Really nice. I really like him. I think he likes me, too." "What kind of name is that, Sid Vicious?" "I met Johnny, too." "Johnny?" "Johnny Rotten. The singer." "He's with the Sex Pistols, too?" "Uh-huh." "That's very nice." I had learned long ago not to cross Nancy. My objections had no impact on her. In fact, they only served to fuel her ever present anger. I paid no further attention at that time to the subject of punk music or to the musician Sid Vicious. I assumed he was just another of her fleeting attachments. There was no reason then to think otherwise. Within two weeks Nancy was, it appeared, back on heroin. She denied it, but on the phone her voice was slurred. She was paranoid and didn't make a lot of sense. And she was out of money. "I can't stay with my friends no more, Mom. They don't like me. Don't want me there. They hate me." "So where are you staying?" "On the street. In a car. Your Nancy's sleepin' in a car. And I got no food. Nothing to eat. No money, Mom." "You're back on." "No, it isn't that." "Nancy, don't lie to me." "I'm not." "You told me never to trust a junkie." "I'm your daughter." "Even my daughter." "I'm not on junk. I swear. It's just that... that nobody likes me. And I'm sleepin' in a car. No place. No food. I need money, please. The money from my certificate. Send me some of it. There's a thousand left, isn't there? Please, Mom. Please." "Maybe you should think about coming home." "No! I won't! I'm not ready!" "But you're not hacking it over there." "I'm okay. I just need money. I just need... I need spring. It's so cold here." I told her I'd have to think about it. I agonized over it. I felt more helpless than ever before. She was so vulnerable, so incapable of taking care of herself. And so far away. As far as I know, she had no regular place to live until midsommer, when she phoned to inform me that she and Sid were moving in with his mother. "Sid?" I asked, not placing the name. "From the Sex Pistols, Mom. Sid Vicious. He's the biggest rock star in the world. And he's all mine. Isn't that great?" "So you two are...?" "We've been crashing at people's flats for a couple of weeks but it's no good." I heard a man's voice in the background. Then Nancy said, "Here, Mom. Sid wants to say something." There was a rustling and a man with a heavy English accent said, "Hello, Mum." "Hello,Sid," I said. "How are ya?" He had a flat, placid- sounding voice. "Fine. How are you?" "Fine. Your daughter looks so pretty. I bought her shoes." "That's nice." "And fancy underwear." "That's very nice, Sid," I said. "Sid?" "Yes, Mum?" "Could I speak to Nancy again?" "Yeah, sure. Okay. But could you send us money? For Nancy?" "I'll talk to her about that." "Oh, okay. Here's Nancy. Nice talking to you, Mum." "Nice talking to you, Sid." "Bye, Mum." "Good-bye, Sid." Nancy got back on. "Isn't he great?" "He sounds very pleasant." "Oh, he is. He's a very nice lad, Mum." Nancy was starting to pick up an English accent. "With that name," I said, "you'd expect he'd be, I don't know, kind of rough." "Oh, no. That's just for the act. He's nothing like what the papers say. That's all made up. Would your daughter go out with someone like that?" I decided then and there to find out what the papers said about the Sex Pistols." "Is he on heroin?" "No." "Are you?" "Yeah, but I'm going on meth again. Sid wants me to. See how good he is. Can you send me some money? So we can get settled? Sid's broke, too." "If he's such a big success why doesn't he have any money?" "I think they're holding out on him." I told her I'd think about it. I ended up sending her fifty dollars. The Sex Pistols' first album, Anarchy in the U.K., was released in England in November 1976. The group first came to the attention of the mainstream British public a few days after its release because of an appearance on a national television talk show. Its host, Bill Grundy, asked them to say something outrageous to the viewing public. The obliged by letting loose with a string of snarled obscenities, resulting in front-page news the next day, as well as the suspension of Grundy. By the time Nancy arrived in London four months later, the Sex Pistols were the biggest sensation in England. It was only natural that she would like the Sex Pistols, want to be involved with them. They were angry and violent. They were the newest thing on the musical horizon, the next step past the underground New York punk scene. They were celebrities. Later, when she herself would become a punk celebrity, journalists would characterize her as a girl who took to punk because it was a repudiation of middle-class life. Not so. Nancy loved being middle-class. She was making no social statement. It was simply the music that attracted Nancy to punk. Always, it was the music. It was her flame. All she wanted was to get close to it. As close as possible. Nancy and Sid stayed with his mother for less than two months. She and Nancy apparently didn't get along. So Nancy and Sid moved into a hotel. Nancy phoned me from her new place of residence. From her calls, I learned that she was becoming exposed to the violence that surrounded the Sex Pistols. "I got beat up, Mom," she moaned. "My nose is broken somethin' 'orrible. It's all over my face. It hurts." "Who did it?" I asked. "The Teddys. They don't like us." "Who are the Teddys?" "Assholes who hate punks. They attacked us on the street. They gave me two black eyes, too. Sid got knifed. But we're okay. And I'll be ready for 'em next time. Sid bought me a truncheon." Two weeks later she phoned to say she and Sid had moved to a different hotel. When I asked why, she replied that the manager of the hotel had asked them to leave. "Sid got mad," she explained, "and dangled me out the window. I was screaming at him to let me back in and I guess it pissed off the people in the hotel." "Are you okay?" I asked. What else could I say? "Oh, yeah. It was nothing. He was just upset. They got into another reportedly violent quarrel in a different London hotel room at the end of November. Again, Nancy's screams brought the manager. This time the British press was also alerted. The papers reported that the manager went up to Nancy and Sid's room to find a blodd-stained bed, a near-naked Sid bleeding from cuts on his arms, and broken glass all over the carpet. There was a bottle of pills on the nightstand. A police enquiry was launched. A second problem also arose to doom Nancy and Sid's life together: Sid's career. The Sex Pistols were an overpromoted, talentless outfit, and after the novelty of their outrageousness had worn thin, the group disbanded. Sid tried a solo act in London. He cut a single called "My Way," but it failed to take off. "Im managing Sid's career now, Mum," Nancy told me over the phone. "He's gonna be even bigger as a solo. He'll do better in the States, I figure," she declared firmly. "So we're comin' back for good. End of August or so. As soon as we get to New York, I'll bring Sid down to meet the whole family. We'll stay for a while. Won't that be great?" Nancy was coming home. The prospect stirred bad memories. Not memories of the public Nancy, the punk Nancy, but memories of our private Nancy, the one we'd grown up with. That experience was far more frightening than anything I'd ever read about the punks. Frank and I were at the Trenton, N.J., station when the train pulled up. Commuters spilled out of the doors and shoved their way across the platform to the escalators. I craned my neck in search of my Nancy. I couldn't spot her. Then the air was pierced by "Mum!" It was Nancy's voice. My eyes sought her out and found her. I was not prepared for how much she'd deteriorated- even from when I'd seen her on TV. She looked like a Holocaust victim. She was much thinner. 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. She wore a black leather jacket with a torn, filthy T-shirt under it, tight black jeans, and spiked heels. Around her neck was a charm necklace- silver charms of gargoyles and snakes. She looked like the walking dead. Behind her lurked Sid, I say "lurked" because he was at least a foot taller than her, and his spiky hair stood straight up on his head. He, too, was bluish white and painfully thin. He wore a black leather jacket, black jeans, black motorcycle boots, and a matching black leather collar and cuffs with pointed metal studs. Frank and I just stood there, gaping at them. We weren't alone. Everyone, but everyone, on the platform was staring at them. They stood out as much as if they'd just arrived from another planet. 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. They were totally oblivious of the scene they were causing. Nancy came toward me and I toward her. We met halfway and embraced. "My mum!" she cried as she held me tight. "My mum." But it wasn't my Nancy I held in my arms. I felt as if I were holding a stranger. I wanted my Nancy back. But my Nancy was gone. A sob welled up in my throat. "Mum," she said, "this is Sid. Sid, this is my mum, isn't she beautiful? Just like I told you." He stuck out his hand. 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. "Hello, Sid," I said. He wasn't so evil-looking once you got used to the sight of him. It was partly his drooping eye that made him appear so malevolent. His presence, however, was not malevolent. It was subdued. My impression was that he simply wasn't very bright. At home I barbecued a steak and served it with corn on the cob, salad, and garlic toast. We ate outside on the patio, under our green-and-white-striped awning, seated around our glass-topped wrought-iron table with its six matching wrought-iron chairs. Nancy's teenage brother, David, and sister, Suzy, watched as she cut Sid's meat for him. Apparently Nancy always did. Then he dug in. He ate ravenously for a few minuets, his face in his plate. "Fuckin' good food," he said. "Fuckin' good, Debbie. Never have I had a meal like this. Never. Used to be I lived in a place with rats. Had to tie the food up in bags. High up, so they couldn't get at it. Never have I had a meal like this." to be continued... _____________________________________________________________________________________________ © Deborah Spungen 1983 |
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