1. Sid Vicious was photographed watching the band attack their audience at the Nashville Rooms in Kensington in 1976.
42 Facts About Sid Vicious
1. 2.
In 1976, Sid Vicious co-founded, as vocalist and saxophone player, the Flowers of Romance along with the Clash co-founder guitarist Keith Levene, Viv Albertine and Palmolive, and Kenny Morris who would replace Palmolive who got kicked out of the band by Sid Vicious after rejecting his advances.
3.
Sid Vicious was considered, along with Dave Vanian, for the position of lead singer, but Vicious failed to show up for the audition.
4.
On 20 September 1976, Sid Vicious appeared with Siouxsie and the Banshees, playing drums only at their first gig at the 100 Club Punk Special in London's Oxford Street, a two-day festival co-founded by McLaren.
5.
Sid Vicious missed, and the glass shattered against a pillar and blinded a woman in one eye.
6.
Sid Vicious wanted Matlock to leave, and to replace him with Vicious, saying "if Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude".
7.
Sid Vicious was their kamikaze pilot, and they were all too happy to strap him in and send him off.
8.
Sid Vicious jammed a broken bottle into the face of BBC recording engineer George Nicholson.
9.
Sid Vicious was allowed to play bass on one track, "Bodies", but his contribution was later overdubbed by Jones.
10.
Sid Vicious missed most of the band's rehearsals and recording sessions because he was in hospital with hepatitis, likely caused by intravenous drug use.
11.
Dee Dee Ramone had seen him shooting drugs on more than one occasion, and Rotten's friend John Gray had found Sid Vicious shooting speed while he was still living with his mother; Sid Vicious told him that the drugs were "me mum's".
12.
Also in 1977, Sid Vicious met Nancy Spungen, an American groupie living in London, who had a life-long history of unstable mental behavior and was a heroin addict.
13.
The track of Vicious singing the Johnny Thunders song "Born to Lose", which appears on Sid Sings, was recorded during this performance, as Vicious stepped in when Lydon left the stage to pose as Father Christmas.
14.
Sid Vicious was in a constant state of semi-withdrawal and furious that the band had blocked Spungen from accompanying them on the tour.
15.
When Sid Vicious returned to his hotel, he found that Spungen had retaliated for being left alone by superficially cutting her wrists.
16.
Sid Vicious bumped into Glen Matlock, who by this point had founded the band Rich Kids, and suggested that they play a gig together.
17.
Sid Vicious did not play bass in this band; he was the lead singer.
18.
Sid Vicious drew large crowds, though some performances were "hellish", with the audience booing his attempted imitation of Rotten, and Vicious insulting the audience.
19.
Sid Vicious first claimed to have killed her, then said he remembered nothing.
20.
Bailey never appeared in court, but another lawyer from his firm, Jim Merberg, arranged for Sid Vicious to be released on $50,000 bail, with the conditions that he not leave New York and that he sign in daily at the Third Homicide Unit offices, and at the Lafayette Street Methadone Center.
21.
Sid Vicious returned to the Chelsea Hotel, where he was joined by McLaren and his mother.
22.
Hours later, Beverley called Teich and said that Sid Vicious had slashed his arms with a smashed light bulb.
23.
EMS staff arrived with the police; when Sid Vicious saw them, he headed for the window but was blocked by Teich.
24.
Sid Vicious was taken to Bellevue Hospital and then moved to the New York-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center in White Plains, New York.
25.
Sid Vicious said that Spungen's death was "meant to happen" and that "Nancy always said she'd die before she was 21".
26.
Leon claimed that Sid Vicious had given the items to him for safe-keeping.
27.
On 5 December 1978, Sid Vicious went to the Hurrah nightclub with Boothe, photographers David Still and Peter Kodick Gravelle, and the comedian and drug-dealer Rockets Redglare who had appointed himself Sid Vicious's bodyguard.
28.
Smith told him to back off and Sid Vicious smashed a beer bottle and jammed it into Smith's face.
29.
The judge agreed that Sid Vicious had broken the terms of his previous bail and sent him to Rikers Island, where he underwent opiate detoxification.
30.
Sid Vicious arrived in Manhattan, and by chance, met his friend Peter Gravelle.
31.
Sid Vicious's death made the front pages of most New York newspapers for days, and Robinson's apartment building was thronged by reporters.
32.
The first of many posthumous albums appeared in 1980; Sid Vicious, released by EMI sub-label Innocent Records, has as its jacket image the photo of Vicious's body being removed from 63 Bank St.
33.
Several online sources state that the estate of Sid Vicious continues to earn approximately $400,000 annually in royalties.
34.
In Lonely Boy, Jones states that Sid Vicious' estate passed to maternal cousins.
35.
In 1986, Vicious, an American play about the life of Sid Vicious premiered in Los Angeles and was the theater debut of actor George Clooney, who played a male prostitute drug dealer.
36.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said of Sid Vicious: "[He] was everything that's cool about punk rock: a skinny rocker who had a ton of attitude, sort of an Elvis, James Dean kind of guy".
37.
Sid Vicious had a brilliant sense of humour, goofy, sweet, and very cute.
38.
Sid Vicious felt so isolated, poor old Sid, because he wasn't the sharpest knife on the block.
39.
On 20 January 2009, In Search of Sid, a 30-minute documentary about Vicious recorded by his close friend Jah Wobble was aired on the BBC Radio 4.
40.
In 1982, the Exploited included the song "Sid Vicious Was Innocent" on their album Troops of Tomorrow.
41.
In September 2009, the Roy Smiles play Kurt and Sid Vicious debuted at the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End.
42.
The play, set in Kurt Cobain's greenhouse on the day of his suicide, revolves around the ghost of Sid Vicious visiting Cobain to try and convince him not to kill himself.