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NANCY SPUNGEN
1958-1978 |
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Weird scenes at the Chelsea Hotel... ___________________________________________________________________________ by Stina Lindberg for Melody Maker, October 1978 
The Chelsea was a rather appropriate setting for the events of last week, which culminated in the arrest of Sid Vicious on a charge of murdering his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. When Swedish writer Stina Lindberg stayed there a couple of weeks ago, she was not surprised to find Sid and Nancy as fellow guests. Naturally, she sought an interview... SID VICIOUS. Ex-Sex Pistol. Nancy Spungen, his girl friend. There's no mistaking Sid's black, spiky hair and his bovverboy aura. I only see the back of Nancy's head. She looks like an old woman. Hunchbacked. Tufts of almost white hair stick out from underneath her beret. Her coat is an ancient, ankle-length article. It's a Saturday, September 31. I spot them in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel on West 23d Street in New York. If you find yourself living at the same hotel as Sid Vicious, if you're a journalist and you like the new wave, you're an idiot not to try to talk to him. But it feels weird. The same evening, I see Sid play with ex-members of the New York Dolls at Max's Kansas City, haven of New York punks. Sid screams, makes faces, and spits. Grabs himself between the legs, doesn't look at the audience at all. They're all awkward on stage, the volume is insupportable, and the music is lousy. The paing audience is less than warm. The only ones enjoying the show are three pale peroxide blondes with fire-engine red lipstick sitting on the stage moving with the music. They're with the guys in the band. Sid seems to want to pack it in after three numbers, and splits. Nancy runs after him and brings him back. He spits, makes another face and starts playing again. He doesn't get through to the audience, and his half-hearted spasms just look pathetic. A lone, doped-out Japanese bops away frantically, but the rest of the audience is frozen. Sid is not a great musician, nor is he a genuine stage personality. Sid is a 21-year-old Englishman enlarged to the size of a Colossus by the mass media. Poor bastard. I ring Sid's room repeatedly to try for that interview. Finally he answers and agrees to talk to me the same evening. At nine p.m. I knock on his door. Room 100, one flight up at the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel is the first New York building to have a cultural preservation order stamped on it. Brendan Behan, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol and many other artists and musicians have lived here. These days, there's a motley blend of prostitutes, pop musicians, near-destitute pensioners, French film teams and tourists. The door is yanked open. Nancy all but drags me into the room. Sid leaps up from the bed. He's wearing orange overalls and a chain around his neck. He checks me out nervously, then runs about the room, digging in his clothes and bags. Nancy, dressed in a black net leotard and black leather trousers, holds my arm, hard, and babbles: "What are we going to do? We don't know a thing. We just got to New York and don't know the score. Is five too much?" Sid searches nervously for something. The room is both bare and disordered. There's a big bed with a TV at the foot of it. A desk, a table, a chair. Two or three gold records are propped against the wall, and there are suitcases on the floor. Sid and Nancy have just changed rooms. The mattress caught fire in the other one. Suddenly I get it. They think I'm a dealer. God. I swallow, then explain who I am. Sid explodes a groan and throws himself onto the bed. "Fuck," sighs Nancy. She lets go my arm and lies down with Sid. The TV drones on at maximum volume. I sit on the edge of the bed, laughing at the absurdity of everything. Sid points out that there's nothing to laugh at. I turn on my tape recorder. "What do you think of New York?" "Very democratic. Do pretty much what you want. Not that you'd probably do anything much, but that's beside the point." It turns out that Sid is trying to put together a band. "I had a group going. Johnny Thunders. But Nancy smashed up Johnny's girl, so it went down the drain." "Did you?" I asked Nancy. "Yeah. She fed a lot of stupid stuff to me. I've been friends with Johnny Thunders for years. We had a lot of fun. And she couldn't take it. She started it, so I kicked her in the face." So Sid's looking for a new group, and plays with the ex-Dolls in the meantime. We talk about the show at Max's. Sid blames the audience. "My name's worth quite a bit of bread over here," he said. "Isn't that because of the Sex Pistols?" "No. My name's worth a lot on it's own. It's worth more than any of the rest of them." Nancy agrees, and points out that Sid has had more press than any of the others. "Why?" "Because I'm what people call a bad boy. I do things that are outrageous," he says, with what sarcasm he can muster. "Do you think that you're outrageous?" "No, but that's what they write about me. They're square." "Do you think you're a free person?" "No. I'm on house arrest." "Who put you there?" "The world. But I'm going to try to get us free. I won't be able to do it, but if people get the idea for long enough, the idea that punk started off, it'll become like that eventually." We talk about punk's anti-racist side, and about Rock Against Racism, which Sid says he supports, and about England, which Sid reckons is the most boring country in the world- after Sweden, where I come from. America is okay. Sid Vicious is okay, and is doing fine. However, the Sid Vicious I see in front of me seems anything but. He and Nancy make me think of two animals caught in a trap and trying to claw their way out. Desperately. I ring the next day, and speak to Nancy. She doesn't seem to understand me, and thinks I'm trying to put her and Sid down. I tell her she's paranoid, but ask her for an interview. She seems to break down, and suddenly sounds genuine. "It's not so strange that we get suspicious. Everybody's trying to get at us, trying to get Sid's money. Every bastard we meet wants to get famous through Sid. They've made a fortune off him here in the U.S., but we don't get anything. I'm a person, you dig? Not a dog." I ask her again about an interview, but she freaks when I say I can't pay her. ""You think you can speak to us free?"- suddenly she's hard-boiled again- "and go back to Sweden and make money because you met Sid Vicious? Get fucked!" I begin to see their dilemma. They think they can go on living off their fame, while they're in the process of burning out. Sid and Nancy sense that, I felt. What they didn't know was that the Swedish papers would pay more than any of us thought at the time because someone, maybe Sid, stuck a knife into Nancy a week after I met them. Sid's under real arrest. Nancy's dead. And the pop industry and mass media hysteria are doing okay. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ © Stina Lindberg, 1978 |
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