Left to their own devices, and with the Sex Pistols basically over, Sid and Nancy found their way to New York City. From room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel, they spent 1978 in a drug-fueled haze, with Nancy booking some gigs for Sid to keep them supplied with money to support their habits. On October 12, 1978, Sid awoke from a Tuinal-induced sleep and found Nancy dead on the bathroom floor, with a stab wound in her abdomen. He was arrested and charged with her murder, but didn’t live long enough to stand trial. Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979, though the specifics of his final dose remain a subject of speculation.

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Alicia’s Receipts

England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, by Jon Savage (bookshop.org)

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (bookshop.org)

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, by John Lydon, Keith Zimmerman, and Kent Zimmerman (bookshop.org)

Sid Vicious: No One is Innocent, by Alan Parker (amazon.com)

And I Don’t Want to Live This Life: A Mother’s Story of Her Daughter’s Murder, by Deborah Spungen

The Death of Photography, by Peter Gravelle (bookshop.org)

Sid Vicious: Little Boy Lost (theguardian.com)

The Saddest Parts of Sid & Nancy’s Doomed Romance (ranker.com)

The 100 Club History (the100club.co.uk)

Sex Pistols Gig Archive (sexpistolsofficial.com)

The Day Punk Rock Shocked the Nation When the Sex Pistols Swore on Live TV (youtube)

Interview with Peter Gravelle: Sex Pistols Photographer (louderthanwar.com)

Deaths of Sid and Nancy Leave Many Unanswered Questions, 40 Years Later (YouTube)

The Sex Pistols’ 1977 Jubilee pageant (the-independent.com)

The punk Patti Smith thought was “just crazy” (faroutmagazine.co.uk)

The moment Sid Vicious assaulted Patti Smith’s brother, Todd (faroutmagazine.co.uk)