Simon John Ritchie[a] (10 May 1957 – 2 February 1979), better known by his stage name Sid Vicious, was an English musician, best known as the bassist for the punk rock band Sex Pistols. Despite dying in 1979 at age 21, he remains an icon of the punk subculture; one of his friends noted that he embodied "everything in punk that was dark, decadent and nihilistic."[2]
On the morning of 1 February 1979, after completing his detoxification program, Vicious was released from Rikers Island. He arrived in Manhattan, and by chance, met his friend Peter Kodik. Vicious asked Kodick to find him some heroin. Kodik brought $200 worth of the drug to the apartment of Michelle Robinson at 63 Bank Street, where he joined Vicious, Robinson, Beverley, Jerry Only of the band Misfits,[62][63] Eileen Polk, Jerry Nolan of The Heartbreakers, Esther Herskovits, and Howie Pyro.[64][65][66] Gravelle said that they sat around doing drugs, and he left at 3:00 a.m.[67]
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 quaaludes (a barbiturate known in the UK as Tuinal 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]
