The Final Days of Sid Vicious: Rikers, Bank Street and the Death of a Punk

Feb 2

9 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Collage of newspaper headlines announcing Sid Vicious's death, a photo of Sid and his death certificate, with the title The Death of Sid Vicious

On the afternoon of 1 February 1979, Sid Vicious walked out of Rikers Island clean for the first time in years. He'd spent 55 days locked up, he'd sweated out his heroin habit the hard way and his lawyers reckoned he had a decent shot at beating the murder charge hanging over him. By the next morning he was dead on the floor of a Greenwich Village flat, aged 21.

This is the story of how he got there, from a chaotic childhood and a short, ugly stint as the most famous bass player who couldn't really play bass, to the bail hearings, the famous lawyer nobody ever saw and one last night at 63 Bank Street.

Quick Answers

When did Sid Vicious die? In the early hours of 2 February 1979, the morning after he was bailed out of Rikers Island.
How did he die? A heroin overdose. The New York medical examiner estimated the heroin was around 80 per cent pure, and seven weeks of enforced detox meant his tolerance had gone.
Where did he die? 63 Bank Street in Greenwich Village, the flat of his new girlfriend, Michele Robinson.
Who was with him? His mum Anne Beverley, Robinson, photographer Peter Gravelle and a handful of friends. Anne and Robinson found his body the next morning.
Was he ever tried for killing Nancy Spungen? No. He was charged with second-degree murder in October 1978 but died before the case reached a jury.

Before the Fall

He was born John Simon Ritchie in Lewisham on 10 May 1957 and grew up mostly with his mum, Anne, a heroin user who moved him around constantly, from London to Tunbridge Wells and Bristol and as far as Ibiza. His dad was barely in the picture and school came and went. By his mid-teens he was more or less fending for himself.

He fell in with a gang of kids that included John Lydon and John Wardle. Sid was the one who renamed Wardle, garbling his name into Jah Wobble, which stuck so well that Wobble went on to play bass in Public Image Ltd. Lydon gave Sid his own name too, after a pet hamster that bit him. Lydon has also said there was a nod to Syd Barrett in there.

Sid was already trouble. At the 100 Club Punk Special in September 1976, he threw a glass at the Damned's Dave Vanian. It missed, shattered against a pillar and a young woman was blinded in one eye. He was arrested and sent to Ashford Remand Centre. He'd also laid into journalist Nick Kent with a bike chain, drummed at Siouxsie and the Banshees' very first gig and spent as much time hurting himself as anyone else.

Sid Vicious performing on stage with the Vicious White Kids at the Electric Ballroom in Camden in August 1978, alongside Glen Matlock, Rat Scabies and Steve New — Sid with the Vicious White Kids at the Electric Ballroom, 15 August 1978. From left: Glen Matlock, Rat Scabies, Sid Vicious, Steve New

The Pistols, America and the First Overdose

When Glen Matlock left the Sex Pistols in early 1977, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood wanted Sid as much for his look as anything else. He made his debut with the band on 3 April 1977. He'd missed the band's notorious Anarchy Tour the previous winter and he barely featured on Never Mind the Bollocks, either. Steve Jones played most of the bass, partly because Sid was laid up in hospital with hepatitis.

The band's American tour in January 1978 was where it all came apart. Sid carved slogans into his chest, picked fights with crowds and, at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, punched a hole in a wall that now has its own plaque. The Pistols played their last show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on 14 January. Within days Sid had overdosed on methadone and ended up in hospital in Queens. He was 20.

1978: My Way, Max's and Nancy

With the band gone, McLaren kept Sid busy. His snarling version of “My Way” was filmed in Paris for The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and gave him a genuine hit. In August he played a farewell London gig with the Vicious White Kids, a scratch band of Glen Matlock, Rat Scabies and Steve New, at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, to raise money for a move to New York.

In New York he and Nancy Spungen moved into the Chelsea Hotel, and Sid tried to make it as a solo act. His last ever gig was at Max's Kansas City on 29 September 1978, backed by Arthur Kane and Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls with Steve Dior on guitar. The second set was all covers, from the Stooges' “I Wanna Be Your Dog” to “My Way”, at a time when Iggy Pop himself was busy pulling his life back together in Berlin with David Bowie. The crowd booed and Sid insulted them back. Recordings from those nights became the album Sid Sings.

Thirteen days later Nancy was dead, bled out on the bathroom floor of Room 100 with Sid's knife in the room and Sid himself out of his head on Tuinal. We've gone through that night hour by hour in our full account of Nancy Spungen's death, including the witnesses, the dodgy police work and the other suspects. Here we're following Sid.

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen posing together in the late 1970s, Sid in a leather jacket with spiky hair — Sid Vicious later withdrew his confession to killing Nancy Spungen

A Famous Lawyer and a Long Wait

Sid was charged with second-degree murder and bailed for $50,000, paid by Virgin Records. The conditions were tight. He had to sign in every day at the 3rd Homicide offices and attend the methadone centre on Lafayette Street. He spent the rest of October in a state, trying to kill himself at the Hotel Seville with a razor blade and a broken light bulb.

Sid Vicious in a dark suit walking past a chain-link fence at night with two people after being released from Rikers Island on bail in October 1978 — Sid leaves Rikers Island on $50,000 bail in October 1978

On 28 October, after interviewing more than 20 lawyers, McLaren hired F. Lee Bailey, the American defence star who'd represented Patty Hearst. Bailey never actually turned up in a New York courtroom on the case. The day-to-day work went to his associate Jim Merberg, and one person on the prosecution side joked that Bailey would appear when the jury did. Sid's own idea of a defence fund was a new album. He told friends he'd record it upstate, covering songs like “I Fought the Law” and, of all things, “YMCA”.

Then he blew it. At the Hurrah club in early December he smashed a bottle into the face of Todd Smith, Patti Smith's brother, who needed five stitches. Sid was arrested on 7 December and the next day a judge ruled he'd broken his bail terms and sent him to Rikers. A felony assault conviction alone could carry seven to fifteen years.

Reporter Ann Louise Bardach followed the case closely. When the bail fight came back to court on 16 January, Assistant DA Ken Schachter had put Sid's chances at “perhaps 500 to one”. Judge James Leff granted it anyway, set bail at $10,000 on the assault charge and dropped the daily sign-ins and the methadone clinic. The only new rule was no nightclubs. Paperwork dragged on for another two weeks, and Sid finally walked out on 1 February.

The Last Night at 63 Bank Street

Sid went straight back into Manhattan and ran into Peter Gravelle, a photographer friend from the scene, and asked him to bring $200 worth of heroin to a small party that night. The venue was 63 Bank Street, the Greenwich Village flat of Michele Robinson, an aspiring actress Sid had been seeing. His mum was there, along with Jerry Only of the Misfits, Howie Pyro and a few others.

By Gravelle's account, given years later to the Independent's Mark Beaumont, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. Sid was talking about the trial and the album. Only and Pyro left before any drugs came out. When the heroin arrived Sid took a big hit and started turning blue. They brought him round, and Gravelle stuck around until about 2am. When he left, Sid was sitting up drinking tea, weak but alive. Gravelle only found out what happened next when he saw the headline in the evening papers.

At some point after Gravelle left, Sid took more. The New York Post reported that he took the rest of the heroin from his mother's bag. The medical examiner later put the purity of the heroin at “80 percent pure”, which for someone who'd just spent seven weeks clean was close to a death sentence. It's the same trap that caught Janis Joplin in 1970, a dose far stronger than her body was ready for. Anne and Robinson found him dead the next morning. His death certificate gives the cause as acute intravenous narcotism.

New York police officers and onlookers outside 63 Bank Street in Greenwich Village as Sid Vicious's body is carried to a police vehicle on 2 February 1979 — Police carry Sid's body out of 63 Bank Street, 2 February 1979

Did Anne Beverley Give Him the Last Dose?

This is the bit nobody's ever been able to settle. Gravelle says he brought the heroin, but the New York Post reported at the time that Anne supplied it, and the Dengrove Collection goes further, saying she'd been getting his drugs for years. Some later accounts claim she gave him the final injection herself. Gravelle has his own nagging doubt, wondering if Robinson gave Sid something else after he'd gone. Robinson has never spoken publicly about that night.

What Anne did do was produce a handwritten note she said she found in Sid's leather jacket after the cremation, claiming he and Nancy had a death pact and asking to be buried beside her in his jacket, jeans and boots. Nancy was in a Jewish cemetery in Pennsylvania, so that was never going to happen.

Two torn scraps of paper with Sid Vicious's handwritten note describing a death pact with Nancy Spungen and asking to be buried in his leather jacket and boots — The note Anne Beverley said she found in Sid's jacket

Dead at 21, in the Charts by Spring

Sid was worth more dead than alive almost immediately. His cover of Eddie Cochran's “Something Else” entered the UK chart on 3 March 1979, a month after he died, and climbed into the top five. Another Cochran cover, “C'mon Everybody”, reached No. 3 that summer. Both came from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack, a project without a single Johnny Rotten vocal on it. Sid Sings, the scrappy live album from Max's, followed at the end of the year.

Anne Beverley, Sid Vicious's mother, sitting distressed in the back of an ambulance outside the Sixth Precinct police station in New York, wearing a fur-lined coat — Anne Beverley outside the Sixth Precinct police station on 2 February 1979

The Ashes and Anne

Sid was cremated in New York and his ashes have collected more legends than he did. One story has Anne knocking the urn over in the arrivals hall at Heathrow, which grew into nonsense about his ghost haunting the airport. Another says she scattered them over Nancy's grave in Pennsylvania. And in Swadlincote, the Derbyshire town where Anne later lived, locals will tell you she scattered them on a patch of land called The Delph.

Anne stayed in Sid's orbit for the rest of her life. She ended up in Swadlincote, fronting a punk band called Road Rage. In 1996 she played a pub gig in the town to around 30 people, and three days later she died of an overdose at her home on Hastings Road. She's now part of the town's heritage trail, which is about as strange a footnote as this story gets.

What Sid Left Behind

The people who knew him still don't agree on what he was. Jah Wobble remembers a cruel, angry kid who also happened to be funny, and who no adult ever properly looked after. Jon Savage, punk's best historian, has said there's a good chance Sid didn't kill Nancy but was so far gone he probably believed he had. Asked what Sid stands for now, Savage once answered in two words: a T-shirt.

Rat Scabies, who played that last London gig with him, put it most bleakly. If you'd made Sid up, he said, “it was the only ending he could have had.” It's hard to argue. Punk lost plenty of people to heroin over the years, and some of the survivors, like Joe Strummer, had their own very public wobbles. But Sid went quicker and younger than almost anyone, and the music industry carried on selling his face long after the rest of him was gone. Nearly half a century later, much like Kurt Cobain, he's remembered far more for how he died than for anything he actually played.