Punk Rock Scrapbook

NEW YORK, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1978
It's November 21, 1978. I'm downstairs at Max's Kansas City, New York. There's a bunch of us. Barry Jones and Steve Dior from The Idols, a couple of Heartbreakers, including Jerry Nolan, some girls from Miami. I've been in New York for two days. A lot's happened since I was last here, and we're still trying to take it all in. When Sid and Nancy arrived in New York, they booked into the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street. They had a small room on the first floor, with a bathroom off it. It was even trashier than Pindock Mews. Whatever she was, Nancy was no home-maker. In the middle of the room was a double bed, surrounded by the spoils of Sid's rock'n'roll war: a couple of guitars, a ghetto blaster, cassettes, clothes everywhere (his and hers), leather trousers, mohair sweaters, T-shirts and leather jackets. In the open drawers next to the bed were spoons, needles, bits of cotton and empty drug packets. The last time I was there, the leftovers of takeaway food and drinks were all over the floor.
On October 12, Sid woke in that room from a drug-induced stupor and found Nancy lying under the sink in the bathroom. She was wearing only her underwear - black knickers and bra - and there was a knife sticking out of her side. There was blood everywhere, and all of it was hers. The bed was soaked in it, there was a trail of it leading to the bathroom, suggesting that at some point during the night she had dragged herself across the room, from the bed to the bathroom, where she had collapsed, dying some time in the early hours of the morning of October 12 from internal haemorrhaging caused by a single knife wound to the abdomen.
Sid started screaming for an ambulance, but it was the cops who got there first and to them it looked like an open-and-shut case, with Sid being the obvious killer. The couple were junkies with a history of domestic violence. Not only that, the knife in Nancy's side was Sid's - a folding hunting knife with a black jaguar on the handle. He'd bought it the day before in Times Square. He was arrested, hand- * cuffed and taken to the Third Homicide division on 51st Street.
"I did it because I'm a dirty dog," he allegedly confessed before being charged with second degree murder, although he'd been so stoned the previous night he could remember nothing at all about what had happened.
On October 13, he was sent to Riker's Island, a tough, heavily-guarded remand centre in the middle of the Hudson River.
On October 17, he was released on bail of $50,000, the money paid into court by Virgin Records.
McLaren was in New York by now, as was Sid's mother, Anne Beverley, into whose care he was released. They moved into the Seville, a welfare hotel on Madison Avenue.
On October 22, McLaren, who had hired a team of private detectives to investigate the case, got a call from an hysterical Anne Beverley: Sid had just slashed his arm with a razor and a broken light bulb in an apparent suicide attempt. He was admitted to Bellvue Psychiatric Hospital, where they put him in detox.
On November 21, Sid was back in court for another bail hearing. District Attorney Al Sullivan had this to say to the court about Sid: "He cultivates an image of antagonism and has a flagrant disregard for constitutional authority." However, the judge allowed bail to stand, on the condition that Sid reported regularly to New York Homicide and attended a methadone clinic.
That night, he turns up at Max's to a hero's welcome. There's a lot of backslapping and bullshitting and I'm glad to see Sid, but it's hard to talk with so many people around.
And what am I going to say to him?
"Did you do it?"

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 9,1978
We meet at Max's, downstairs. We have a booth, order dinner and drinks. There are maybe five of us. We're talking about what it was like on Riker's Island and Sid's playing the tough guy, shrugging it off, when some huge asshole comes up and tries to pick a fight with him. Sid's so far into his own myth, he squares up to the guy. I can't believe he's reacting to this geek. Everyone at the table stands up.
"Hey, fuck you!"
"Fuck yourself!"
"FUCK OFF!"
"Yeah? "Yeah."
We sit back down, order more drinks. Sid wants some pills. I don't think so. More drinks. Sid's depressed. It's time to go. Nothing's happening here.
We get a taxi to Hurrah's, but when we get there it's sort of empty. You could have good nights at Hurrah's, but this didn't look like it was going to be one of them. There was a band playing and a few people watching them.
"Sid, let's cruise."
He's not listening. There are some nice girls here. Sid talks to one of them. The music's real loud, you've got to get real close to hear what anyone's saying, you've got to yell at the person next to you to make yourself heard.
Then some guy comes over to Sid and says something to him. It could have been, "I think you're great. I'm so glad to meet you." Or maybe it's -WATCH OUT! - "I think you're an asshole." Although I don't think that's what he says, because this isn't some big kind of guy and he doesn't look like he's provoking Sid.
Anyway, the next thing I know, out of the blue, Sid's smashed a glass straight in this guy's face.
Blood, screams.
"LET'S GET OUTTA HERE!!!!"
We grab an elevator, get out of there.
"SID, YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!!!!"
Itwasjustthe most stupid thing to do. But Sid wasn't thinking. He was just drunk and Nancy's just died and he's fed up with everything and here he is again, playing out a role that he shouldn't have been playing. My first reaction was to get him the hell out of there as quickly as possible. So I just grabbed him and pulled him out. It was like, "What the fuck are you doing, man?"
I just wanted to get him out of there before the police arrived. But it was stupid on my part to think that even if we got him out of there he'd get away with it. Everybody knew who he was, people had seen him do it. And the guy turns out to be Patti Smith's brother, Todd. And of course, if the police don't pick him up that night, they're going to pick him up tomorrow.
Which they do. The next morning he's arrested.
I'm prepared to go to court, ready to swear that Todd had attacked Sid and Sid had acted in self-defence. I'm sorry for what's happened, but I don't want Sid to go back to prison.
But that's where he's heading.
No more bail, just Riker's Island, out there on the Hudson.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1 1979
Terry Ork had been busted for trying to buy some Quaaludes from someone in Astor Park who turned out to be an undercover cop. Terry was the president of Ork Records and had managed Television when they first started. He was a friend, and he asked me to go to court with him, so I say yeah, and we go down there on the morning of February 1. There's lots of the usual sitting around and confusion.
"Courtroom number what?" "Wait here." More waiting.
"Terry, this is gonna take a while. I'm going to smoke a cigarette."
I go downstairs and someone I don't know comes up to me. He's working for Sid's legal team and he's recognised me from Sid's last court appearance. He tells me that Sid's is going to be released within the hour, that he should be out by lunchtime, a day early.
They were bringing him from prison right now, in fact. He asks me to stay around.
What kind of coincidence is this?
Anyway, Terry's going to have to deal with his drug bust on his own. I go around to the back of the courts to wait and bump into Sid's mother, the only other person waiting for him. I'd met her a few times. I didn't have a high opinion of her. If you saw her in a club, you'd hope she wouldn't see you. Let's put it this way, she was not a person I'd give my phone number to. It seemed amazing to me that anyone expected her to look after Sid. She couldn't even look after herself. It was all pretty hopeless.
Sid arrives not much later. There's some paperwork - "Sign here!" - and then the cuffs come off and we're all out the back door and onto the street. Sid's out of one jungle, into another. He looks tired and nervous, no leather jacket, no studded belt, just blackjacketand pants.
We're walking fast.
"Did you get it?" Sid asks his mother.
"Yes, Sid."
It turns out that she's scored some heroin for Sid from Jerry Nolan.
We walk to where his mother is staying, maybe 10 blocks from the courthouse. No one else was there. Sid took the packet of heroin his mother had bought and Sid and I split the stuff she had - Sid shot it up pretty quickly, like he wanted to forget the horrors of the last few weeks, but no luck. The stuff Sid's mother had was total bullshit. Jerry Nolan had sold her crap. He'd ripped her off. What a surprise!
It was typical of those people Sid hung around. What a bunch of lepers. They were like jackals, everyone on that scene. They were junkies. They had no conscience. The way these people were, they didn't give a fuck about each other. I'm sure it must have seemed real funny to Jerry, ripping Sid's mother off. But it wasn't funny, it was mean and pathetic.
Sid's really pissed off and he asks me if I can get him some stuff.
"Pee-tah, can you do something?"
"I'll try. Where are you staying?"
Sid gives me the address of a girl called Michelle Robinson, who he'd picked up with after Nancy's death. He and his mother have to go and pick up some clothes that McLaren's sent out. I have some things to do, but promise to call him. I get some stuff from someone I know downtown. Then I call them up at Michelle Robinson's appartment in Greenwich Village and a bit later go overthere.
The way I looked at it was like this. He was asking me to get him some stuff. I didn't particularly want to get it for him, but he was going to get something from somebody somewhere, and a lot of people would rip him off, sell him all sorts of shit, and he couldn't exactly go out and score himself. So I thought I was doing him a favour in a sense.
I don't think there were any other circumstances in which I would have done it for them. If they'd called me up and asked me to get them something, I would have refused. I just wanted to make sure he was OK. I thought if I got him some stuff at least it wouldn't be Jerry Nolan's shit.
It's already dark when I arrive at Michelle Robinson's appartment. She and Sid are lying in bed. His mother's in the front room, watching television.
Sid shoots up the heroin and gets pretty stoned and it's hard to keep him from nodding off. I think -oh, shit! - I've given him too much.
"Sid, wake up, talk to me!"
It's an hour before he slowly comes around.
During that hour, he's thrown up a couple of times, but now we're sitting on the bed and drinking tea and talking.
Sid wants some more smack, but I tell him there's none left. I hang around for another three or four hours, and then I have to go. The Only Ones, who I had done some work for, are playing their US debut at Hurrah's and I've promised to go see them. Before I go, I give what's left of the stuff to Sid's mother and tell her not to give him any more that night. She can give him the rest in the morning if he wants it. Sid is fine when I leave.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2 1979
I had been sharing an appartment in the East Village with a Rastafarian. He didn't like me, and the feeling was mutual. I'd had a long night, and when he got home late that afternoon, I was still sleeping.
"Your friend's dead, man."
"What do you mean? Who's dead? Is this a joke?"
"No, man," he says. "The guy in that punk band. It's all over the news."
I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach.
It can't be! He's got it wrong.
Who's he talking about anyway? I was out of the house in a flash.
The papers are full of it.
Pictures. Headlines.
"SID VICIOUS DEAD."
He'd died that morning of a drug overdose.
I feel sick and guilty.
Sick because someone I was just with has died, and I had cared for that person. Guilty because I was the one who had brought him the heroin the night before, and sick again because the night before he had been in the most positive mood I'd seen him in for a long, long time. He'd been like the old Sid, and now he was dead. What happened?

Sid Vicious - Uncut March 1998 Part 1

2011-09-22T08:41:00.002+01:00

THE LAST SAYS OF SID VICIOUS

He was the ultimate punk icon. But from the moment he joined The Sex Pistols and began his doomed romance with Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious was caught in a downward spiral of ferocious drug abuse and violence. Peter Gravelle, who was with Sid the night he died, was an eye-witness to it all. This is his story.

LONDON, JANUARY-DECEMBER 1977

"PEE-TAH!"

Aw, shit: Sid?

"Pee-TAH!"

Of course, it's Sid.

"PEE-tah!"

Who else would it be, standing in the street at this hour, which could be any time between midnight and daylight, the time not meaning much at all to Sid in the state he'd usually be in when he turned up like this.

"Pee-TAH!"

Must have had another argument with Nancy, or he's looking for drugs. Probably both. "PEE-TAAAH!"

You could try to ignore him, but it would be useless. He'd stand there all night, banging on the front door until you took him in. Which you would. You'd just give in, feel sorry for him. Everybody used to feel sorry for Sid, you couldn't help it. He was such a weak person, easily-led, totally impressionable, but very likeable, and he played on that, endlessly telling you how hard-done by he was.

"Peee-TAHHH!"

So, yeah, there was always a couch for him if he wanted to crash out. Sometimes, we'd sleep, but more often we'd stay up, talk, smoke joints, or maybe we'd walk over to Barry Jones' place to see if he was awake, maybe had some people around, someone Sid could score off.

"Peeee-taaaah!"

Yeah, Sid. I'm coming, I'm coming...

It was 1977, and I was living in Elgin Mews North, in Maida Vale. Sid lived with Nancy a couple of blocks away in Pindock Mews. There were a lot of musicians and bands living in that neighbourhood then. Barry Jones, who's in Los Angeles now, also lived nearby, and was a friend. Barry was the half-brother of the designer, Bruce Oldfield, and had helped set up the Roxy, the punk club in Neal Street in Covent Garden - Andy Czezowksi, who'd worked with Malcolm McLaren and briefly managed The Damned, had opened the club with some money he'd borrowed from Barry. Barry also had a band who would later become The Idols, that all kinds of people at one time or another played in - including Glen Matlock, who Sid had replaced in The Sex Pistols, and Jerry Nolan, who used to be in The New York Dolls and played in The Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders. A lot of nights, we'd start at the Roxy, see some bands, and usually, after that, we'd end up back at Barry's place. The place he lived it was like a crash-pad. There were always lots of people, half the time you didn't know who they were or what they did or what they were doing there. It was at Barry's that I first met Sid. Everybody knew him, of course. He'd just joined The Sex Pistols, and you couldn't at the time get any more notorious than that. When I met him first, I think Sid was still living in a flat in Chelsea Cloisters, and used to come with us back to Barry's, usually looking for drugs. In those days, if punk had a drug of preference it was speed, although everyone was also drinking a lot, and there was usually a lot of grass and hash around. I don't think Sid was on heroin at the time, the smack came later. Even then, though, Sid was into needles. He used to shoot speed and Seconal, and later just about anything that was going.Back then, he could be fun to be around. When he wasn't completely stoned, he could be bright and funny. Meeting him for the first time, I remember people used to be a bit intimidated. Everyone knew the stories about him beating people up at Pistols' gigs, before he joined the band. But he never really struck me as being a genuinely violent person. At first, when he'd pick fights at gigs or down the Roxy, it was as if this was the only way he could impress people, be accepted, make a name for himself. And the name itself-Vicious - was a joke, because he wasn't. It was only when he started living out the myth of being Sid Vicious as if it was a reality that he changed. That's when he started getting out of control, when everything in his life revolved around two things: heroin and Nancy.

Nancy Spungen was a pig. She had to come to London with Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, who had signed to Track Records, The Who's label, and had come over from New York to tour with The Clash and The Damned. Her reputation as a kind of super-groupie had already been secured in New York, where she had hung out at punk venues like CBGBs and Max's Kansas City and worked as a stripper from the age of 17, after running away from home in Philadelphia. By the time she was 18, Nancy was also a full-on heroin addict. Nancy's declared intention, upon arriving in London, was to pick up with a Sex Pistol. Her first target, inevitably, was Johnny Rotten, who immediately detested her, dismissing her caustically as "a Titanic looking for an iceberg". Rejected by Rotten, she turned her attentions to Sid, who, to everyone's horror, became utterly besotted with her. I don't know if Sid felt sorry for her because she was treated so badly by everyone else, or whether he saw something in her, something worth loving, that no one else could see.

Whatever, pretty soon after they met, Sid and Nancy were hardly ever apart. They shared everything, including the heroin habit that would eventually destroy them both. No one really liked Nancy. McLaren and the other Pistols were grimly opposed to her relationship with Sid, could only see it ending in tears or worse. Everyone else who met her hated her. You couldn't blame them. She was simply not the type of person you'd really want to know. She was crude, loud and nasty. A really coarse, loud, up-front American. You'd dread her turning up with Sid. Sometimes, she could be sweet and nice, but more often she was a complete bitch. She was the type of person who, the first time you met her, would want money off you, or drugs. You'd know her five minutes and she'd be trying to borrow money, which you knew you'd never get back. If there were drugs around, she'd want them all. Nothing was safe when she was around, she'd steal anything that wasn't nailed down. She was pathetic.

I think Sid really loved her, but I don't know why. And when they did come around, or you met them somewhere else, they'd always be arguing. It was just the way they were together, really. The more they got into heroin, the more they'd have rows -usually about where they were going to score some more drugs and where the money would come from to pay for them.

I guess they used to squabble because that's the only way they knew how to behave. They were junkies. That's how junkies often behave. But I never saw Sid behave violently towards her, although there were all kinds of stories about him beating her up, or her beating him. I guess, yeah, that in some ways it was a sordid relationship because it was all based around heroin. If they weren't shooting the stuff, they were trying to score or get money to score. Sid was always complaining about not being paid, or not being paid enough, although he was a member of The Sex Pistols, who he thought were the greatest band in the world. Which, for a time, they were.

LONDON, APRIL 1977-JANUARY 1978

The first time I saw The Sex Pistols was at the Screen On The Green in Islington on April 4, 1977. It was Sid's first gig with the band, and they were brilliant. Because they'd been banned by then from so many venues, and they'd always refused to play places that would have them, like the Roxy, this was the first time a lot of people had been able to see them since "Anarchy In The UK" had made them the most infamous band in the country.

Rotten, especially, was incredible, probably one of the best performers I've ever seen. People would follow his every move on stage. You couldn't take your eyes off him. And it didn't seem like a show, something they were putting it on. They really did mean it, Rotten especially. It was like he had something he really wanted to tell you, and you were compelled to listen. At that time, he could command your complete and utter attention in a way that only a few other people have ever done.

Everybody came out of that gig stunned, and if they were convinced of anything it was this: at that moment, The Sex Pistols had the power. Which is why what happened to them over the next 10 months was such a tragedy and waste.

Things started getting really bad for them after "God Save The Queen" and the Jubilee Day boat trip on the Thames in June. The newspapers had been running increasingly hysterical stories about them for most of the year, but the tabloids' anti-Pistols campaign reached a peak after that, and the violence that had always surrounded the band became suddenly and awfully real.

Jamie Reid, who designed all the Pistols artwork, had his nose and leg broken in an attack in Borough. This was the day after a particularly inflammatory editorial in the Sunday Mirror. The following weekend, Johnny Rotten, Pistols' producer Chris Thomas and engineer Bill Price were attacked in the car park of The Pegasus, a pub in Highbury, near Wessex Studios. Ten thugs armed with knives and razors set upon them. The tendons in Rotten's left hand were severed. Rotten was also attacked with a machete. On the afternoon of June 21, the Pistols' drummer, Paul Cook, was attacked by a gang of Teddy Boys as he was coming out of Shepherd's Bush tube station He was beaten with iron bars and a wound in the back of his head needed 15 stitches.

Everyone was paranoid - justifiably so. It had got to the point where they couldn't go out without someone wanting to beat the fuck out of them. Rotten was terrified. Sid just shut himself away with Nancy and shot more and more heroin. It seems to me that at this point McLaren lost control of the situation, just as he would lose control of the band - and Sid, especially - on their American tour. His response to the escalating violence was to get the band out of the country. He arranged a 13-date tour of Scandinavia.

I joined them half-way through the tour. I thought the whole thing was a fiasco. They were playing pubs, basically. You'd walk into these places and there'd be like 50 people with hair down to their waists and shit. It was pretty wild. But they shouldn't have been playing these places, it was just insane. Nancy had been left behind in London, so Sid was pretty clean and together for the tour and he was trying really hard at the gigs.

He didn't do very much, just stood there most of the time. Because he could barely play, he had to really concentrate to keep up with the rest of the band.

What really struck me, though, and what I still remember most clearly about that tour, was the change in Rotten since the Pistols played the Screen On The Green, just a few months before, the extent to which he had so quickly become a parody of himself. At the Screen, he'd been commanding and brilliant. Now he was just putting on a show. OK, they were playing to small crowds and that must have been disheartening. But it didn't really excuse what he'd become in just a matter of months - this grotesque parody, just pulling faces and looking stupid.

It was like he'd somehow already lost interest. Something had happened, I think, between him and McLaren. This is the thing about Malcolm: he may have been brilliant at managing the media, but as far as actually running a band, keeping them together, organising tours, he didn't know what the hell he was on about. And as far as being in touch with the people in the band and looking after them, from

what I saw, he didn't care. He didn't care about them at all. Not one bit. He only cared about himself.

He took a lot of credit for a lot of things he shouldn't have taken credit for and had no right to take credit for. This idea of him being the big Svengali who controlled everything, it was bullshit. OK, he put together a band, and in the beginning he helped finance it. But he was extremely lucky he got someone like Rotten involved. Rotten had a quickness and intelligence that McLaren underestimated, I think. Without Rotten, The Sex Pistols would have been just another band. They wouldn't have been any better than Slaughter And The Dogs. And I don't think McLaren could deal with that. He couldn't bring himself to give Rotten the credit he deserved.

McLaren was just somebody who ran a clothes shop. What did he know about managing a group? I mean, look at the way he planned to conquer America. By sending the Pistols out to play places he knew there'd be trouble, basically, in the mid-West, the

South and Texas. He didn't want them to play New York or Los Angeles, where they'd be appreciated, where there were people who genuinely wanted to see them and hear them play. That would have been too easy. So the whole American tour was another fiasco. It was out of control from the start, and it certainly deepened the rift between him and Rotten.

Sid was also out of control. I think that's when he first really started to believe in his own myth and started trying to live up to it. He would never have got away with that in England, people here didn't believe in all that shit. No one would have stood for it. But here he is in America, suddenly he's out there and he's on his own and it's a new country and all anyone knows about him is what they've read in the newspapers and he's got this big reputation that people are taking seriously and he's doing everything he can to live up to it. It's like you can go from being the school wimp in one country to being the school heavy in another country, if you play it right.
Back in England, all you'd hear from people was how stupid it all was over there. How disorganised and chaotic everything was. They had bodyguards who were meant to keep Sid away from drugs, but he kept running away. Who could blame him? These people used to beat him up, claiming it was for his own good. What the fuck was all that about? If the tour had been properly organised, the group would have survived it. They would have carried on. But it was such chaos, it would have made anybody want to stop. Why would anybody want to be involved with someone who's managing a group so incompetently, who's completely messed everything up like McLaren had. No wonder Rotten left.

PINDOCK MEWS, LONDON, FEBRUARY-AUGUST 1978
Sid and Nancy had moved to Maida Vale just after The Sex Pistols' Scandinavian tour, in August, 1977.
By then, Sid wasn't seeing much of Rotten, who was still living in Chelsea and who hated Nancy. Rotten was also appalled at Sid's heroin habit, which was getting completely out of hand, and which he would never again get under control.
It had struck me then, during the nights Sid would spend at my place in Elgin Mews, how alone Sid could seem. I don't think he ever had any close friends, apart from Rotten, who he was always in awe of and would never say anything against, even towards the end, when Rotten had walked out on the Pistols and there were supposed to be such bad feelings between them.
He had a lot of people who surrounded him and used him, but basically no one apart from Nancy that he was in any way close to. Even when he moved to New York, when it came down to it, he'd see Barry, he'd see Nancy, of course, he'd see a few dealers who he was maybe getting stuff off, he'd see me. And that would be it. Not that many other people at all.
When he first used to turn up at my place, it was like he was just looking for someone to talk to, away from all the bullshit. We'd sit up, and over a period of time I found out about his background, his childhood. He'd talk about his mother, who was a pathetic individual in many respects. And Sid, in many ways, was no better. But there was nothing desperate about him then.
When he got back from the American tour, he'd definitely changed. He'd turn up, sometimes on his own, but most often with Nancy, and all he'd talk about was drugs and McLaren, who he thought was just using him. Rotten had been too strong for McLaren, refused to be manipulated, and quit the band rather than be used. Sid was a lot easier for McLaren to control. He was like Malcolm's puppet, and he knew it.
McLaren was still trying to make the Sex Pistols movie he'd already spent so much of the band's money on, and took Sid out to Paris to film the "My Way" sequence for what would become The Great Rock'N'Roll Swindle. But it was a joke. McLaren couldn't accept that when Rotten left, the Pistols were over as a band. He took Steve Jones and Paul Cook to Brazil to record with Ronnie Biggs, which was disgusting, a complete sellout of punk, for which he should have been hung, drawn and quartered. At a stroke, The Sex Pistols became nothing more than a novelty act.
And Sid became a novelty act, as well. In many respects, what McLaren was trying to do with him was turn Sid into a kind of punk Gary Glitter or Alvin Stardust. Sid was partly to blame. He'd complain endlessly about McLaren, but he'd still take his money. He wasn't going to walk out on McLaren, like Rotten had. He wasn't going to bite the hand that was feeding him. As long as there was some money to be made, he'd carry on. It was an ugly situation and he was frustrated. Although he was almost permanently stoned, he knew he was turning into a joke. At the same time, Nancy was always telling him he was going to be a star in his own right, and by August they'd convinced themselves that Sid's solo stardom could best be achieved by moving to New York. They were tired of all the hassles and harassment in London -they'd been in court in May and August, answering charges of possession of methylamphetamine - and had been badly freaked out by the death at Pindock Mews of studio assistant John Shepcock, from a cocaine overdose. They had stirred from dope-induced unconsciousness to find Shepcock in bed with them. It was several hours later before they realised he was dead. There had also been a ferocious falling-out with Rotten. Sid and Nancy had turned up at Rotten's place in Gunter Grove, Chelsea. Rotten refused to let them in. Sid tried to kick in the front door, Nancy behind him screaming. One of Rotten's friends, most likely Jah Wobble, rushed outside and attacked them with an axe. It was time to split. To raise money for their trip, they put on a farewell gig at the end of August at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, fronting a band called The Vicious White Kids, which included Steve New on guitar, Glen Matlock on bass and Rat Scabies on drums. This is what they billed the show as: SID SODS OFF. Which is what he then did.

P.i.L. - NME September 2011

2011-09-21T13:13:00.001+01:00

PART 01

PART 02

PART 03

The Jam - Jamming 1979

2011-09-15T10:41:00.002+01:00

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
PART 5

Blondie - Observer Reporter September 1977

2011-09-05T18:39:00.001+01:00

CLICK IMAGE TO OPEN

Ian Dury - Smash Hits February 1979

2011-09-03T15:27:00.002+01:00

If anyone had dared to predict a few years back that the first charts of 1979 would be dominated by a 35-year-old polio victim with a face like the bogeyman in your nastiest nightmare, they'd have been laughed at and shunned like the neighbourhood twit. But ain't show business a wonderful thing? It never fails to surprise . . .

As I write this, "New Boots And Panties" is celebrating over a year on the album charts and "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" is the Number One single across the nation. There's more, Ian Dury is on page three of the Daily Mirror. Big Time, my son. For the true taste of Dury's early life, check out the lyrics to his songs. Try "My Old Man" or "Razzle In My Pocket". Hear the characters, take note of the incidents. The broad outline, however, is as follows: Ian Dury was born in Harrow Weald, and brought up in Upminster, on the border of East London and Essex. He contracted polio at the age of seven, took up painting in his teenage years and entered Walthamstow College of Art with three GCEs. Also with a passion for '50s rock 'n' roll, and for crippled American rock singer Gene Vincent in particular. He was befriended by distinguished painter Peter Blake who encouraged him to concentrate on painting the things he loved; boxers, Teds, fairgrounds, anything.

When he finished college, he got married and moved to Canterbury to teach Art. There he began to dabble in music with the aid of a couple of pals from avant garde jazz outfit, The People Band, eventually adding a couple of his students and officially forming Kilburn & The High Roads, an inspired name for a pretty inspired band.

As the Kilburns they came to be known and loved on the London pub circuit, going through numerous personnel changes between 1973 and 1977 with only Dury remaining at the helm throughout. They were never less than strange.

The parade of oddballs that passed through the Kilburns included a crippled drummer who had to be lowered onto the drum stool and was forced to kick the bass drum rather than use a pedal; a bass player who was literally 7ft tall; and another who was, equally literally, a midget.

Dury came on like a Charles Dickens nightmare, clad in all over black, black leather glove on his withered hand, dragging his useless leg around like a bag of bricks and screwing his face up into all manner of grimaces as he half-sung, half-spoke his sinister-but-humourous songs, numbers that were as much rooted in old music hall as in conventional rock 'n' roll.

Most bands avoid ugliness religiously; the Kilburns embraced it. There was never anybody remotely like them.

Ecstatic press reviews helped them score a recording contract with Raft Records, but the company folded and the band's album was shelved.

A second record deal with the Dawn label was slow coming and, by the time they got round to releasing their first album, "Handsome", the Kilburns' thunder had been stolen by other, newer bands.

"Handsome" was also low on sparkle and didn't sell. The best of it, though, offered proof of Dury's talent and vision, and it remains essential listening for hard-core fans.

By 1977, the band was trading as Ian Dury & The Kilburns and morale was low.

When Stiff Records signed Dury later that same year, it seemed more a gesture of sympathy than faith in his future. The turning point was the arrival of Chas Jankel, a guitarist and arranger, who began to collaborate with Ian on his songs, and was responsible for bringing out their full flavour at last.

The glorious "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" made some ground as a 45, but it wasn't until the album "New Boots And Panties" that Dury really moved into top gear.

With the help of a great deal of TV exposure he began to gather an audience — a new one. With the help of Chris Jankel he formed The Blockheads, a crisp, versatile and magnetic ensemble capable of handling everything from full-tilt boogie, through the lilting jokery of "Billericay Dickie" to the melting soul drive of "Wake Up And Make Love With Me".

Together with this bunch of skilled professionals, he stole the 1977 Stiffs tour from Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello.

The album was humourous, sly and warm, packed full of individual songs, perfectly written. When you hear a line like, "Shall I mourn your decline/With some thunderbird wine/And a black handkerchief" on "Sweet Gene Vincent", Ian's affectionate salute to the late Gene Vincent, you understand why he can spend days on the tiniest rhyme.

Similarly, the line in "Blockheads" about "Shoes like dead pigs noses" is uncomplicated but immaculate. Being 35 years of age seemed to help rather than hinder him; the punk audience took to him like a favourite uncle.

"What A Waste", a song that only he could have thought of, let alone written, sealed his success by opening up the singles charts and making him big news.

Through it all, he remained a true original, covering the stage with his presence, indulging in sudden spasms of movement, seemingly lost in a private world where he played strange pantomime games with scarves, cheap toys and trinkets, distracted but utterly hypnotic to watch. He doesn't need to work for your attention — he just commands it.

He doesn't rush either. "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" took six months to follow up "What A Waste" and he won't be bullied into a new album before he's good and ready, waiting till he's got something new to say. It's an attitude that a few others might do well to learn from.

The other night in Dublin, he introduced "Sweet Gene Vincent" with this typical little speech; "Some of us are Xmas Cakes, some of us are little burnt currants. He used to be an Xmas Cake." I wouldn't be surprised if somebody was standing on a stage in Dublin in 20 years' time saying exactly the same thing about Ian Dury.

The Clash - ZigZag November 1981

2011-09-01T11:09:00.003+01:00

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

The Clash - NME August 2011

2011-08-10T09:33:00.001+01:00