John Lydon’s brutal takedown of Nancy Spungen: “Spiteful, spoiled, selfish”
If you were looking for some kind words to say about virtually any artist of the past 50 years, John Lydon probably isn’t the best person to go to.
Over the years, the Public Image Ltd frontman and former Sex Pistol has rarely had a good word to say about anybody, including some of his own bandmates, but Nancy Spungen has always been a regular target for his vitriol.
For the uninitiated, Spungen was among the most recognisable – albeit divisive – faces of the British punk scene back in the mid-1970s. Having relocated from her native Philadelphia to immerse herself in the abrasive world of early punk, she soon turned her attention to the harbingers of the scene, the Sex Pistols.
After following the band around for quite a while, she eventually became involved with bassist Sid Vicious, and the pair had a famously tumultuous, chaotic, and often abusive relationship, which eventually culminated in Spungen’s bloody murder in 1978, at the age of only 20. Her death was closely followed by Sid Vicious’ own, when he overdosed on heroin while awaiting trial for his girlfriend’s murder.
By anybody’s standards, the tale of Sid and Nancy is utterly tragic, but that hasn’t stopped a litany of punk historians, filmmakers, and fans from glorifying the pair’s doomed relationship as a Romeo and Juliet-esque tale of tragic romance. That whitewashing of history has always stuck in the teeth of Vicious’ former bandmate and close comrade, John Lydon, who never had anything nice to say about Nancy Spungen.
During one 2002 interview with Q Magazine, in fact, the songwriter went as far as to declare Spungen “a very bad piece of work. Spiteful, spoiled, selfish – a problem many semi-wealthy middle class American families suffer from.”
Seemingly, Lydon never got on with Spungen, and the subsequent glorification of her relationship with Vicious only enraged him further: “When I read the mothers book [And I Don’t Want To Live This Life, by Deborah Spungen] on Nancy, I was appalled.”
Explaining, “They got her a psychiatrist at age 4! Go figure why this girl grew up the way she did.”
It is worth mentioning, at this point, that Spungen was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 15, and spent part of her teenage years as a stripper in New York City after having been expelled from high school. So, it is fair to say that she was dealt a pretty poor hand in life, in that regard, and the regular tabloid coverage of her as ‘Nauseating Nancy’ cannot have helped with her mental state – nor, admittedly, could her dependency on heroin or the abusive relationship she was in with Vicious.
What’s more, Lydon has routinely spoken about his deep-rooted regret over the death of Sid Vicious, believing that he should have done more to prevent the bassist from continuing down his path of heroin addiction, so it is not unlikely that he channels a degree of that regret and anger towards Nancy Spungen.
Nevertheless, Lydon wasn’t the only one in the early punk scene who had nothing but contempt for Spungen. Chrissie Hynde, for instance, revealed in a 2003 interview with The Independent, “Everyone hated Nancy.” So, perhaps Lydon’s scathing critique of his friend’s murdered girlfriend wasn’t all that out of step with the prevailing view of her throughout the UK’s punk scene.
