Sid Vicious

Simon John Ritchie was born in Lewisham to John and Anne Ritchie (nee McDonald; later named Anne Beverley; 1936–1996).

Anne had dropped out of school and joined the British Army, where she met Ritchie's father, a guardsman at Buckingham Palace and a semi-professional trombone player on the London jazz scene.

Shortly after Ritchie's birth, he and his mother moved to Ibiza, where they expected to be joined by his father, who did not appear and provided no financial support—Anne reportedly sold marijuana to get by.

Simon John Ritchie (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.

With the help of the British Embassy in Spain, Anne returned to England and, in 1965, married Christopher Beverley, who died six months later of kidney failure.

Anne and Ritchie settled in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where they lived from 1965 to 1971, and where Ritchie attended Sandown Court School (now The Skinners' Kent Academy).

In 1971, the pair moved to Stoke Newington in Hackney, East London, where Ritchie attended Clissold Park School (now Stoke Newington School).

At this time, Ritchie began using the name 'John Beverley'.

By 1973, Anne's life was consumed by her addiction to heroin, to the point where she was unaware that her son was attending Westminster Kingsway College, then known as Kingsway College of Further Education.

It served as a community and vocational school for students with difficulties.

While at Kingsway, which he was likely attending to complete his O levels, Ritchie indicated to a counsellor that he was contemplating suicide; there were also claims that he was torturing and killing cats.

When Ritchie turned 16 that year, Anne kicked him out of her home.

In 1973, Ritchie met fellow Kingsway student John Lydon, who introduced him to his friends John Grey and John Wardle.

All four, who became known locally as 'The Four Johns', quit school and began squatting in various dismal locations.

Three of the four Johns would then take nicknames: Lydon nicknamed Ritchie "Sid Vicious" after Ritchie was bitten by Lydon's hamster Sid (named after Syd Barrett).

Lydon's bandmate, guitarist Steve Jones gave him the name Johnny Rotten, and Ritchie nicknamed Wardle Jah Wobble.

The four young men started hanging around the King's Road in Chelsea, London which, at the time, was the epicentre of 'Swinging London', when music and fashion were burgeoning.

A favourite spot was Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing store, Sex.

There, Vicious met American expatriate Chrissie Hynde, before she formed her group the Pretenders, who reportedly failed to convince Vicious to join her in a sham marriage so she could get a work permit.

According to Lydon, he and Vicious took up busking, with Lydon singing and occasionally playing the violin and Vicious playing a tambourine or an acoustic guitar.

They would play Alice Cooper covers, and people gave them money to stop.

In 1975, Lydon joined Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook in the formation of the band the Sex Pistols, managed by McLaren—Vicious was photographed watching the band attack their audience at the Nashville Rooms in Kensington in 1976.

Vicious then began his musical career.

In 1976, Vicious co-founded, as vocalist and saxophone player, the Flowers of Romance along with The Clash co-founder Keith Levene and Viv Albertine, who would go on to become the guitarist of The Slits.

During this time, he learned to play bass by listening to the first Ramones album Ramones, fixating on the up-tempo bump-and-grind pattern of the song "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", a pattern he would apply to most of his playing from then on.

In June 1976, Vicious went to a Sex Pistols concert at the 100 Club.

Nick Kent, who had played guitar with the Sex Pistols early on and had left music to become an NME music critic and champion of punk rock (and who was Hynde's boyfriend), was also there, and was apparently blocking Vicious's view.

Vicious, high on speed, lashed Kent's head with a rusted motorcycle chain which, according to Hynde, he carried with him.

The incident was reported in the papers but no charges were laid.

Although the songs they wrote would later be performed by other bands, The Flowers of Romance did not perform live, or record any music.

But Vicious came to the attention of members of The Damned.

He was considered, along with Dave Vanian, for the position of lead singer, but Vicious failed to show up for the audition.

On September 20, 1976, Vicious appeared with Siouxsie and the Banshees, playing drums at their first gig at the 100 Club Punk Special in London's Oxford Street, a two-day festival co-founded by McLaren.

The following day, Vicious went to The Damned's performance.

Drunk and high on amphetamines, he hurled his glass at the stage, attempting to strike Vanian.

He missed, the glass shattered against a pillar and blinded a woman in one eye.

Vicious was arrested and imprisoned at Ashford Remand Centre.

Westwood and Albertine visited Vicious in prison, with Albertine bringing the book Helter Skelter as a gift.

He died of a heroin overdose in February 1979, at age 21, following his arrest for the alleged murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

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".