Page Four
Photo Captions
"After I'd taken his picture he sheepishly pulled up his trousers and tucked in his
shriveled up willy." Roberta Bayley's portrait, Randy's Rodeo, San Antonio, Texas, April
1978.
"For what is a brat? Sid shoots the audience, My Way, April 1978.
Page Caption
"Here was Sid and Nancy. Icons of a generation and they had nothing to say..." Lynne
Leighting
Article continued from Page Three
"My basic nature will kill me in six months," he confides to Roberta Bayley. But Sid's end
is messy, grisly and drawn out. Outside the charmed circle of the Sex Pistols he is pathetic
and vulnerable, masochistically provoking confrontations and getting beaten up, a target for
anyone who confused him with the juvenile delinquent culture-devil he played on-stage.
Richard Hell: "Sid was charismatic in that unguarded but canny waif-punk-addict style of his. He was hilarious and in a funny way kept his balance with people. A lot like Dee Dee Ramone, whom he admired. He was who would say whatever he thought would give him an edge, which because he was so down and out, was usually something that was making fun of himself or being clownish, most often clownishly iconoclastic/aggressive, in the way that the Pistol style perfected by Lydon operated."
Back with Nancy he recovers his bravado. Nevermind the bollocks, it's me, mate, that the fans really want to see. I am the Sex Pistols. But performing at Max's that September with The Vicious White Kids (Mick Jones, Arthur Kane, Steve Dior, Jerry Nolan) he looks a wimpy, pitiable mess - the wild man of punk who can't even stand up by himself. He had disappeared so far inside himself that now only mumbles emerge, to be interpreted, like some oracle, by Nancy.
Lynne Leighting: "When Sid and Nancy walked into Max's I remember thinking that I had never seen anyone so pale before in my life - it actually scared me. Sid was playing that night with Mick Jones. Looking back at it now I know it was an important night for him. Sid and Nancy sat on the couch together completely mute for the better part of an hour just staring at me or hanging on each other. I could see they were sooo very high. But I mean, shit, here was Sid Vicious and Nancy! Icons of a punk generation and they had nothing to say, which, I guess in itself says volumes about how much his fans projected their own fantasies on Sid, filled him and framed him in their own minds. He didn't have his instrument with him, there was no warming up, no tuning (God forbid!). I remember thinking at the time it's amazing he can just go out there without warming up. But after watching a tune or two of Sid jerk-around-in-your-face angry dance (you know the one - there was only one) and hearing a few tunes that just wouldn't sound the same without all that spit spraying, I left thinking, I've seen this before and now it's getting old. Sid was part of a fashion Barbie doll get-up, a fuck-the-establishment Ken for the disillusioned and abused, complete with a throw-away-or-kill girlfriend and do it yourself medical kit. Bass extra."
October 12, 1978. Nancy in blood-soaked black lace bra and panties is found dead under the bathroom sink in their room at the Chelsea Hotel. Sid denies he did it, then confesses ("I'm a dirty dog"), then surmises it must've been part of a suicide pact - a further episode of the frothy Romeo And Juliet rock'n'roll soap opera. Mostly likely it was the Tuinal dealer wot done it [see MOJO 76].
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He Did It His Way!
The making of Sid's My Way, the greatest punk single of all time. No, really, says Clive
Prior.
"I LOVE that song," asserts broadcaster and Factory Records impresario, Anthony H. Wilson.
"It's one of the greatest singles of all time." It was Sid's big moment in The Great
Rock'n'Roll Swindle. The original idea was for him to sing Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien,
as he walked the city's Jewish quarter, sporting a Nazi armband.
Thankfully, he thought the song was crap. In its place we got Sid's sneering, goofish, foul
-mouthed demolition of the '60s Sinatra standard, the highpoint of the film and, as
evidenced by the closing credits of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, as great a cry of
unrepentance as the Piaf classic. "The appeal of My Way lies in the fact that it's great in
the first place but Sid's version," says Wilson, "is done with that punk sneer. It fits the
song perfectly."
The recording of My Way began on April 10, 1978 at Studio de la Grande Arm�e in Paris.
According to G�ant-Vert in his excellent essay at sex-pistols.net, Steve Jones was present
but, like Sid, allegedly too drunk to play. The band showed Sid how to play Something Else
and Gene Vincent's Say Mama while Sid spent the time complaining about "all those fucking
froggies". Tired of waiting around, guitarist Claude Engel, long with Sauveur Mallia on bass
and drummer Pierre-Andr� Dahan, cut the track himself, opting to play the song in A, unsure
if the key "fitted" Sid's voice. After the stop-start two-hour vocal session, a 24-track
recording was sent to Virgin where Steve Jones add guitars and Simon Jeffes added strings.
As for the film sequence, Sid told McLaren that he would only shoot it if McLaren signed a
piece of paper saying he was no longer Sid's manager. That was Nancy's job now. It was
McLaren's idea for Sid to shoot his mother at the end. "I told him he could go fuck
himself," said Anne Beverley. "They used someone else but because no one has seen me anyway
they all believed it was me."
For the 21st century kids, Sid in his white tuxedo on the neon steps of that Parisian
theatre, is My Way. For Robbie Williams' My Way video, the voice is all would-be crooner but
the visuals are pure punk. "In that setting, with those steps," asserts Anthony Wilson, "
Robbie's referencing the Sid version, not Frank's."
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For more information go to www.sex-pistols.net
Page Five
Photo Captions
Sid the icon: the look he'll be remembered for (see below).
What do you do? Rancid's Lars Frederiksen perfects that post-Sid Sid look.
Article Continued from Page Four
February 2, 1979. Out of jail on bail, Sid celebrates by shooting up with drugs supplied by
his mum at the house of a yuppie dominatrix. He ODs and turns blue.
Roberta Bayley: "I'd be sitting with him on the tour and he'd say, 'I just wanna be like Iggy Pop, take a lot of drugs, live in the fast lane and die young.' I'd tell him, Get over it, Iggy is 30 and he's not dead. He couldn't grasp that, it just didn�t fit into his deluded vision - he went straight back into his death-and-drugs-and-Iggy mantra all over again."
Danny Fields: "Sid was a poet, which is the way Dee Dee thought of himself - in the tradition of Byron and Verlaine. Doomed poets. And along with that went the belief that to be a perfect rock star you have to be a complete wreck. Dee Dee more than anybody believed in that and that became Sid's credo, too."
Throughout his short life images of Sid oscillate wildly between the transcendent and the
buffoonish, and it was part of Sid's genius not to know the difference - or care. The fact
that so many opposing things can be said about him, in and of itself makes him a mythic
character - someone who can combine in himself as many contradictory ideas as possible. When
fame hit him, Sid was still in the floating dream world of adolescence - he was too
gullible, too young, too troubled, and too addled by gothic rockstar reveries to be able to
distinguish his lurid fantasy life from the increasingly distorted reality that surrounded
the Sex Pistols. The cocoon of heroin only deepened his trance state, so that even when the
turned into a nightmare it still looked to him like part of the dream. Like a sleepwalker
in search of the door, he stumbled into his own loopy daydream and never woke up.
He could barely play, he couldn't sing. But with a fan's insight he reduced the rock star to
its square root. None of yer muso chops or fret burning nonsense for Sid - just
unadulterated going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket charisma. And in this regard, he is our most
perfect rock star.
------------
Sid birth certificate courtesy Matt Higham ([email protected])
Sid's Kids!
The lasting appeal of a punk icon. By Phil Alexander.
"The fact that Sid couldn't play gave me hope. He proved that if he could do it anyone
could. That's his greatest legacy," says Lars Frederiksen, guitarist/co-vocalist with modern
day multi-million selling Yank punk heroes Rancid. Born in 1971 in Campbell, California,
Frederiksen was only eight when Vicious checked out on February 2, 1979, and yet, as with
many fellow musicians and fans, he remains in thrall to Sid.
"You can feel his impact today everywhere you look," says Lars. "His influence on me is so
great that I started using talcum powder and petroleum jelly to spike my hair when I was a
kid because he used that. I still use it now."
In fact Vicious has become defined by his image - an image frozen in time as the eternal
symbol of punk's nihilism. "Sid is m only influence because he was the coolest bass player
ever," concurs Velvet Revolver's Duff McKagan, padlock dangling around his neck in reference
to his idol.
"Sid looked the way people felt," adds Frederiksen. "He was the first guy to mix up American
and English punk styles. He wore a black leather jacket because he loved The Ramones and he
matched that with bondage trousers which was an English thing. His whole style made people
look punk."
The bassist's leather-and-studs aesthetic also played a significant part in the erosion of
punk's art school associations, reducing the genre to little more than a King's Road
caricature in the eyes of certain critics. To a second generation of streetwise UK punks,
however, Sid's influence led them to form bands like GBH, Discharge, and The Exploited - the
latter exonerating their hero by recording the anthemic Sid Vicious Was Innocent in 1982.
"The Pistols and Sid opened the door in America for that second generation of UK bands,"
states Frederiksen. "That generation of bands also influenced Rancid, Green Day and The
Offspring, so you can kind of race everything back to Sid."
Indeed Sid's ongoing influence on American punk can be seen it in the shapes thrown on-stage
by Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt or heard in the excited chatter of pop punks Good Charlotte.
The latter's frontman Benji Madden is accustomed to using an alias of Kid Vicious. However,
the passage of time has let Sid infiltrate the pop mainstream.
"I created punk for this day and age. I'm like Sid Vicious for a new generation," announced
Avril Lavigne in Seventeen magazine two years ago. A laughable comment it may be, but
millions of Lav-likes would undoubtedly scream their approval. How frighteningly hollow.
Continue to "Nothing Can Hurt Him Anymore." --->>>
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