The incident was reported in the papers but no charges were laid. Vicious, high on speed, lashed Kent's head with a rusted motorcycle chain which, according to Hynde, he carried with him. Nick Kent, who had played guitar with the Sex Pistols early on and had left music to become an NME music critic and champion of punk rock (and who was Hynde's boyfriend), was also there, and was apparently blocking Vicious's view. In June 1976, Vicious went to a Sex Pistols concert at the 100 Club. During this time, he learned to play bass by listening to the first Ramones album Ramones, fixating on the up-tempo bump-and-grind pattern of the song "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", a pattern he would apply to most of his playing from then on. In 1976, Vicious co-founded, as vocalist and saxophone player, the Flowers of Romance along with The Clash co-founder Keith Levene and Viv Albertine, who would go on to become the guitarist of The Slits. The Flowers of Romance and Siouxsie and the Banshees (1976) In 1975, Lydon joined Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook in the formation of the band the Sex Pistols, managed by McLaren-Vicious was photographed watching the band attack their audience at the Nashville Rooms in Kensington in 1976. They would play Alice Cooper covers, and people gave them money to stop. According to Lydon, he and Vicious took up busking, with Lydon singing and occasionally playing the violin and Vicious playing a tambourine or an acoustic guitar. There, Vicious met American expatriate Chrissie Hynde, before she formed her group the Pretenders, who reportedly failed to convince Vicious to join her in a sham marriage so she could get a work permit. A favourite spot was Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing store, Sex. The four young men started hanging around the King's Road in Chelsea, London which, at the time, was the epicentre of ' Swinging London', when music and fashion were burgeoning. Lydon's bandmate, guitarist Steve Jones gave him the name Johnny Rotten, and Ritchie nicknamed Wardle Jah Wobble. Three of the four Johns would then take nicknames: Lydon nicknamed Ritchie "Sid Vicious" after Ritchie was bitten by Lydon's hamster Sid (named after Syd Barrett). All four, who became known locally as 'The Four Johns', quit school and began squatting in various dismal locations. In 1973, Ritchie met fellow Kingsway student John Lydon, who introduced him to his friends John Grey and John Wardle. When Ritchie turned 16 that year, Anne kicked him out of her home. While at Kingsway, which he was likely attending to complete his O levels, Ritchie indicated to a counsellor that he was contemplating suicide there were also claims that he was torturing and killing cats. It served as a community and vocational school for students with difficulties. īy 1973, Anne's life was consumed by her addiction to heroin, to the point where she was unaware that her son was attending Westminster Kingsway College, then known as Kingsway College of Further Education. At this time, Ritchie began using the name 'John Beverley'. In 1971, the pair moved to Stoke Newington in Hackney, East London, where Ritchie attended Clissold Park School (now Stoke Newington School). Anne and Ritchie settled in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where they lived from 1965 to 1971, and where Ritchie attended Sandown Court School (now The Skinners' Kent Academy). With the help of the British Embassy in Spain, Anne returned to England and, in 1965, married Christopher Beverley, who died six months later of kidney failure. Shortly after Ritchie's birth, he and his mother moved to Ibiza, where they expected to be joined by his father, who did not appear and provided no financial support-Anne reportedly sold marijuana to get by. Anne had dropped out of school and joined the British Army, where she met Ritchie's father, a guardsman at Buckingham Palace and a semi-professional trombone player on the London jazz scene. Simon John Ritchie was born in Lewisham to John and Anne Ritchie ( nee McDonald later named Anne Beverley 1936–1996). Simon John Ritchie ( – 2 February 1979), better known by his stage name Sid Vicious, was an English musician, best known as the bassist for the punk rock band Sex Pistols.ĭespite dying in 1979 at age 21, he remains an icon of the punk subculture one of his friends noted that he embodied "everything in punk that was dark, decadent and nihilistic".
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