Deborah Spungen is DEAD TO ME!!!

May her memory be a blessing...to those who remember her ?

And to think I was in the bar at the Hotel Chelsea just yesterday afternoon, telling some clueless tourists that “yes, this is where Sid killed Nancy.” “Like in the movie?” 😵‍💫

who gives a flying fuck

My cat is named after her daughter.

Now that I’m dead I can acknowledge that Nancy gad it coming.

Has Chloe Webb commented yet?

I remember her and her husband on a talk show after Nancy died. I was surprised she was so articulate and caring. At the time there was a lot of hate and contempt directed at Nancy, that she either did it to herself or deserved it. You kind of assume the parents must be fuckups.

Mom said it was so bizarre when Nancy brought Sid to their house. They knew his reputation and were concerned for Nancy but when they met him he was gushing and so impressed with their middle class house with a pool. He was shocked Nancy was as fucked up as she was with such nice parents and background. He didn't want to leave. But mom said Nanci had problems starting from infancy. It was sad, they never gave up trying to get help for her.

There was something neurologically wrong with Nancy, judging by Deb's book about her. As an infant, she screamed inconsolably for hours. By her early teens, she seemed to be addicted to impulsive and reckless behavior - hard drugs, sex with virtual strangers. It's impossible to imagine a middle-aged Nancy; she seems to have been destined for an early and violent death.

Nancy was a "Fucking Psycho" Her parents should have put her away, they had the $$$$!

I always say it's the parent's fault in these cases...

[quote] I always say it's the parent's fault in these cases...

I BEG YOUR PARDON??!!!!

This woman did the best she could in an impossible situation. Her book is good.

Dinner at the Spungens.

Yeah, reading the book made you feel terrible for Nancy's family. She was impossible from birth.

Though to be fair, being that way was probably painful for her as well, which would explain the love of heroin.

Deborah seemed to be very open and honest in her book, which is well written and sad. Families are so strange: her other daughter, Susan, is a professional "food stylist" who worked for Martha Stewart for 12 years.

I loved her book. It was well-written and not extremely self-pitying.

Wow - she graduated from University of PA in 1958!

As I fan of that whole scene I found her book to be fascinating. I agree, it’s very well-written and readable. I’ve read it twice.

R9, they were well off but they weren’t rich by any means. I knew someone who actually was in a mental health facility at the same time Nancy was (she was there for depression). Nancy had very serious issues, the facility actually couldn’t control her either.

If you read the book, you’d know the family tried for years to help Nancy, including putting her away. Her brain was damaged when she was born, she had neurological issues from the day she was born. The other kids are very well adjusted.

Nancy belongs in the Datalounge Hall of Fame. Somewhere between Little Edie and Courtney Love.

I read her book 41 years ago when I was 19. 😳 Many parents would have given up or ended up being abusive to Nancy.

Or both in her case

Her parents weren’t abusive at all, r22. They eventually did give up, Nancy was an adult. She was seriously mentally ill but she was also incredibly smart, so she figured out how to have her way.

Un huh

R24, very witty comeback. The kind of comeback that someone says when they have no clue at all about the subject being discussed.

Thanks, Mom!

r2, I was there, too!! Did you see the host in a wedding gown?

Her brother is a wealth adviser, and his daughter goes to Brown.

With flowers in her hair? Zaftig, but pretty.

Natasha and Dustin are excellent bartenders.

I eat shit.

Meh.

r28, we couldn't get a drink!

WHAT ABOUT THE FAREWELL DRUGS?

R31 I’m a VIP 🙃

I'm sorry to hear of her passing. I read "And I Don't Want to Live This Life" when I was in high school, and I lacked the maturity to really appreciate the scale of what the family had been through (IIRC, didn't Deborah Spungen appear on "Donahue" to promote the book?).

I am of the opinion (based solely on shit I've read online) that Sid did not kill Nancy, and that she was murdered in the course of a drug robbery at the Chelsea Hotel, as it was known by other shady denizens of that place that S&N had cash on hand (from Sid's record label) to buy drugs with. But Sid was also a sad-sack who didn't have much a chance in life, either (I read that the bill for his criminal defense was quietly paid after his death by Mick Jagger--may be urban legend, though).

Anyway, if Nancy had lived into the 21st century, maybe she could have received a more precise diagnosis, better meds options, and some kind of residential care.

If? As if.

Sid's mother, Anne was a long-term heroin addict who died of an overdose in 1996.

[italic]”She wouldn’t send us any money! She said we’d spend it on DRUGS!”

"Well, we would!"

This is well done!

Oh dear. Well, maybe search for “Me as Chloe Web as Nancy Spungen in the film Sid and Nancy” on YouTube

[bold]: )

I didn't know anything about Sid's mother until I read r36. What a piece of work, diametrically opposite the Spungens. If the account in the Wiki bio is true, it's pretty clear she was an accessory to his death, even if she didn't inject him.

I wish I had bought the The Sid Vicious Family Album right after I read Deborah's book. I found it in a funky book and music store, but passed. I kick myself for it, but I was a poor college student

[QUOTE]Only said that he and Anne Beverley made dinner, and that he, Polk, and Pyro left early, when the heroin use began. He noted that Vicious was already nodding off,[63] and around 11 p.m., he "picked him up and slapped him around" before Beverley put a blanket over him and told Only "that he'd be okay. I was like, he's just been in prison for two months so he had to be clean so you know you can't be messing with him."[62] However, Gravelle said that Robinson gave Vicious four Tuinals (a barbiturate and a favourite of Sid's) to help him sleep.[68] Vicious died in the night of a drug overdose. Robinson and Beverley discovered his body the next morning, Friday, 2 February 1979.[69][70]

I just a few years ago learned that Howie Pyro was at the get-together (party?) at the apartment the night Sid died. But who in the excerpt at R21 is “Polk”? It couldn’t possibly be Bridget Berlin?

Wasn’t Rockets Redglare long rumored to have had something to do with what happened to Nancy at the Chelsea Hotel? Like he was there in room 100 that day and had been known to hang around?

R21 Interesting. I did not know this book existed. I may try to hunt down a copy, they look a little rare to come by.

This 2021 article by someone who lived across the street from Sid at 63 Bank Street is a little corny but has some interesting nuggets of information. She described Sid’s mother:

“Mommy Vicious, who’d been hanging around number 63 a lot, looked like a withered groupie from some backwater 1960s group: half-bagged and easy to fool.”

Oops forgot the link…

*hall not street

R34 I went through an "obsessed with Sid Vicious" phase in the 90s and I agree with you. Sid was essentially a harmless little mama's boy who wanted to sit and read comics. More likely to self-harm than stab Nancy. It was dealers and/or robbers.

hmmmmm

There was a documentary about Rockets Redglare made some years ago, shortly before his death. What a mess that guy was. Chronically addicted, with that weird extreme weight gain that [I have noticed] some heroin addicts get. IIRC, he either implicated himself or suggested that he knew who had killed Nancy, and that it was a drug-related robbery.

I'm glad/relieved to have survived and outgrown my teenage punk fascinations. I semi-idolized these blank generation hangers-on for no reason other than that their made-up names were funny and provocative. For the most part, these were seriously troubled people whose sicknesses destroyed whatever creativity they might once have had.

Did his banner not wave?