portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, February 03, 2018

The saddest new from the counter-counter culture

On this day in music history: February 2, 1979 - Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious dies of a heroin overdose in New York City. Vicious accidentally ODs’ in the apartment of his then current girlfriend Michele Robinson who he meets after successfully completing a detox program at Bellevue Hospital. At the time, Vicious had just been bailed out of Rikers Island prison, being held on murder charges for the death of his former girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Sid, Robinson and few other friends are having a small gathering at his girlfriends’ apartment to celebrate Sid having made bail. Sid’s mother has heroin delivered to her son which he takes at midnight and immediately overdoses. But those present are able to revive him and are convinced he is fine. He’ll go to bed with Robinson around 3 am, and in the morning she discovers that he has died during the night. Vicious is only twenty one years old at the time of his death.

I had so much to say about the circumstances around Sid's death but am not well enough to collect my thoughts. I guess it doesn't matter either Sid is still dead and people colluded in his death but he himself was responsibly too and in an all too familiar a scenario where heroin addicts taking a break, whether enforced or not, so often return to taking the sorts of levels of substance they were last used to (the very definition of addition) and 'go over' but there should have been people around Sid to aid and to assist as opposed to supply . . . . . .

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