Page One
The ultimate punk icon, Sid Vicious, began life as Simon John Ritchie, a contradictory
bundle of art school ambition and psychotic tendencies. Pat Gilbert charts his path from
loose cannon to Sex Pistol. Portrait by Bob Gruen.
In the freezing winter months of 1975/'76, a year before they were to perform together in
the Sex Pistols, the future Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten shared a squat together in
Hampstead, north London. To get there, they had to stroll past the elegant, Georgian
townhouses of Flask Walk, and up Lutton Terrace, where the TV and film actor Peter Barkworth
would wave to them merrily while pruning the begonias in his front garden.
The gangly, loping Sid would grin goofily and wave back. But there was little that was
cheery about his and Johnny's squat a few yards up the hill. Built in the 1880s, and hidden
away from view like a hideously deformed royal scion, New Court comprises two imposing
tenement blocks looming over a small grass square. According to locals, the flats have a
dark history befitting theri eerie, Jack The Ripper mood - suicides, murders, fights. In the
1970s, after some well-connected drug dealers moved in, they became popular hang-out for
dissolute artistos and rock-star junkies, including Marc Bolan.
New Court's darkness seemed to be pervasive, creeping into visitors and inhabitants. It was
here that Sid Vicious - then known as John Beverley or 'Spikey John' - was said to have
strangled a cat and slashed his arms with the lid of a tin can. It was also where e probably
first used heroin.
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Photo Caption
Seems like a nice boy: "Gimme a fix" Sid at the Longhorn Ballroom
Marquee, Dallas, Texas, January 10, 1977.
Page Three
Photo Caption
Out of the past: (clockwise from left) the all-pervading evil of
New Court, Hampstead, north-west London; father John with his baby son; the birth
certificate of "Simon John Ritchie" and, below, schoolboy Simon aged 11.
Article Continued from Page One.
"I didn't like going up there," says Jah Wobble,
alias John Wardle, the third of the unholy trinity of 'Johns' (Lydon, Beverley, Wardle) whom
punk would soon make famous. "It wasn't just because it was a big schlep from Stepney, where
I lived: it had a weird force I didn't like. I think I only visited twice. There were
stories of kittens being thrown out of windows. I was told Sid did it. There was a story
about Sid mugging an old lady. That's horrible. It was a rumour, but I couldn't say he
wasn't capable of it."
There are other, contradictory stories about Sid at New Court. Lindy Poltock, who would
later marry The Clash's road manager, Johnny Green, was resident there. (She died from
meningitis in the early '80s.) She remembered the old ladies at New Court adoring Sid.
Apparently, he would always stop for a chat and carry their shopping bags up the stairs.
He'd also show Lindy his paintings, of which he was extremely proud. She thought him
vulnerable, but very intelligent, very witty, very good company.
It was a view shared by many. "He was the last person you'd call dumb," says Mike Baess, a
good friend of Sid's in 1975/'76. "And, though he did some bad stuff, I can�t believe he'd
ever torture animals. There are a lot of tall stories circulating these days which make Sid
out to be tougher and more frightening than he really was. He was a big softie at heart."
But the truth was that, even if he didn't kill a cat, the pre-Pistols Sid almost certainly
once roasted a guinea pig alive. He also robbed at least one old lady at knife-point - plus
a lot worse beisdes.
Even before he ever became a star, it seems, Sid had a knack of keeping people guessing
about who and what he really was.
There can be little doubt that Sid's death in 1979, from a heroin overdose in a New York
apartment while on bail for allegedly killing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, elevated him
into punk's greatest icon. Today, he's one of the chosen few who enjoy a symbolic
relationship with his age: nihilistic, senseless, empty, vain, talentless, iconic, Vicious
did the late 20th century thing better than almost anyone else, except perhaps Gary Gilmore
or Charles Manson. He's a gift for students of postmodern theory, who find his myriad
identities, instant celebrity, self-inflicted wounds and fascination with Nazis endlessly
meaningful, but the man behind them elusive and one-dimensional.
But somewhere at the bottom of it all, when you peel off the layers of myth, Sid Vicious was
an extremely contradictory and complex human being. Only new is the truth emerging about his
extraordinary early life, thanks chiefly to two new biographies marking the 25th anniversary
of his death: Mark Paytress's The Art of Dying Young and Alan Parker's Too Fast To Live.
Jah Wobble knew Sid well, of course. We're sitting in a chintzy hotel restaurant in
Tunbridge Wells on a dark, rainy November evening. Wobble, a man with a rapacious intellect
and booming, geezerish voice, is discussing the artist Gavin Turk's Pop, his self-portrait
as Vicious in the pose of Any Warhol's gun-slinging Elvis. Wobble understand implicitly why
his old pal has become a Brit-Art conceit.
"Sid was all about image, it was all show," he explains. "He was one of the pioneers of
dumbing down. It's certainly related to existentialism and the whole postmodern thing.
Feeling alienated and not having a place, not really being part of anything or having an
identity. It was fucking annoying, actually. With John Lydon there were always moments to
reflect about stuff you liked. With Sid there was no real empathy, he hated everything."
Continue to Part Two of the Article! --->>>
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