My promotion into the junkie premier league came in the latter stages of filming The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle. By Steve Jones
When I was told that Sid had died, I didn’t have a lot of feelings about it. I didn’t have a lot of feelings about anything at that stage, to be honest, so when some guy from Rolling Stone called me up, I just said the first thing that came into my head, which was ‘Well, at least we’ll sell some records now.’
So Sid’s off to Paris with Nancy, and he’s got six big bottles of methadone he’s taking over with him. I guess he’s getting it legally now because he’s trying to kick — that old routine. Anyway, they’re filming over there and I’ve somehow got pulled into the mix to go over and be the musical director in this little studio with these French session guys. At that point, being around him and that bird ranked a little below hell on earth as a place you’d want to be.
To be fair to Sid, he was totally out of it, and methadone is a nasty fucking drug. I heard the Nazis came up with it, although I don’t know if that’s true. Either way, because you drink it in liquid form, it doesn’t have such an immediate impact, but it lasts way longer. As a result, it’s actually harder to kick than heroin is.
Once Malcolm McLaren had got some guy to write out string charts and they’d put the orchestra on, it sounded pretty good. Unfortunately, I’d started to go downhill with the smack myself by then, so I wasn’t as interested as I should’ve been. I was actually working with The Avengers when I got the call to say that Sid had died. Obviously Nancy had gone ahead of him to see if she could find a connection in the afterlife.
Sid was not an idiot, he was quite an intelligent bloke, but once he was in the band the logic of his situation pushed him down a very dark track. With Sid’s death, it was finally clear to everyone — even Malcolm—that the band was over.
Complete article at https://medium.com/cuepoint/destiny-is-a-motherfucker-the-death-of-sid-vicious-b97ff8b32f7f#.i0ek96rcq
