The Tragic 1978 Murder Of Sid Vicious' Girlfriend Nancy Spungen

Publish date: 2024-05-02

In the wild and reckless environs of '70s-era New York City, home to the Ramones, Nancy Spungen seemed to have found her place among the other punk and hard rock bands of the time. Though her self-destructive behaviors continued, she mixed with bands like Aerosmith but also punk artists like the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, and Richard Hell, who later commented on Spungen in Jon Savage's 2011 book about punk rock, "England's Dreaming." Hell said that Spungen was driven "to be where the action was." That drive took Nancy Spungen from New York to London in 1977, following Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from The Heartbreakers, according to New York magazine.

It was in London that Spungen met Sid Vicious, who had only just replaced Glen Matlock on bass in the Sex Pistols, then England's hottest band. At that point, the couple's troubled and doomed love affair began. Soon enough, though, the Pistols fell apart after releasing just one album and their only U.S. tour. By 1978, Sid Vicious joined Spungen back in New York, and both Vicious and Spungen — then acting as manager for Sid Vicious' solo career — were living in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, a place, over the decades, that many artists, ill-fated and otherwise, have called their home (via Vanity Fair).

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