Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (21 page)

Of all people, it was Lemmy from Motörhead, amongst others, who tried to teach Sid to play bass. Lemmy was really funny about it; he said, ‘Sid has no aptitude at all, no sense of
rhythm, and he’s tone deaf.’ Sid always fancied himself as a drummer. I think that was the Can
Tago Mago
influence, because that was Sid’s favourite record of all time.
He’d always be making
psssh-shut-pfft-pfft-pfft
noises, and pretending he was doing a drum roll. That would be his frequent behaviour, which not many people understood. They thought he
might just be a bit backwards.

We assumed that he’d just find his way with it, like we had. And there’s the danger in that word: when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. As it turned out, Sid
wasn’t actually plugged in at most of our live gigs, and he barely played on the album, if at all.

What I didn’t find out till much later was that Malcolm was not only
not
trying to book us any gigs, he was actually turning them down. He’d say, ‘Oh no, you’ve
got to understand, John, what I’m trying to do is create a scene that you’re a man of mystery, and no one knows anything about you.’ He didn’t want me to be seen at too many
public events because it would destroy the imagery he was trying to create around me.

That was how he explained a horrible evening when I couldn’t get into Andrew Logan’s annual party. I turned up with some mates, and they wouldn’t let me in. I was like,
‘I played here last year!’ Malcolm and the rest of them were already inside. I saw Vivienne, and I said, ‘What’s up? Why can’t I get in?’ and she blanked me.

I became well aware that these people would not stand up for me. Hard lessons in life. I could’ve barged my way in with no effort at all. No! I wanted to be accepted, and I never was, not
within the
Pistols contingent or any of those socialite scenes that were using the Pistols to thrive off.

With nothing to do, no gigs to play, me and Sid were going mental. We had to do something, anything at all. I came up with the idea of the four of us going to Jersey on holiday, because
I’d been to the Channel Islands before on a school expedition from William of York, and I had fond memories of it somehow. I just imagined us getting off the plane and having a lovely time in
this wacky different kind of world.

But no, the whole band got off the plane and we were met at the airport, and strip-searched. As soon as they opened Sid’s suitcase they found his smelly socks on the top, and they gave up.
What they did do, however, was cancel our hotel booking, so we ended up walking around on the beach, with a cart without the donkey, with all our luggage stacked up on it. Luckily a local villain
who’d befriended us found us somewhere to stay.

The next morning we buggered off to Berlin. Malcolm didn’t trust us on our own, so his associate Boogie came as some sort of mentor. Boogie was a bad bunny himself. A fun time was had by
all in Berlin. Wow, what an eye opener.

We hardly saw the hotel. We didn’t want to. It was the Kempinski, and the rooms, you couldn’t even think of sleeping in them, they were so rigidly German. You’re supposed to
sleep in a straight line and the quilt doesn’t come any higher up than your chest. All the wood was very dark, and everything was at right angles. No time at all in there, thank you.

You couldn’t escape the vibe: the war, and then the Wall, with the Russians staring over the top. West Berlin was all set up to annoy the East. It was glorious, but a bonkers, crazy
universe. Readily available was everything and anything that would keep you up all night. Between the British and American soldiers, they had the place well sussed. They had it amped, so to speak.
I fell in love with Berlin, and I’ve always loved it ever since. The word decadent, how applicable. Well done, the West, that’s what you’re
tormenting the
Russkies across the border with. This is freedom! What
you
got?

So that was what inspired the lyrics to ‘Holidays In The Sun’: ‘I don’t want a holiday in the sun/I want to go to the new Belsen’ – from Jersey to Berlin.

The first nightclub we walked into, we were astounded by what we were hearing; the music was exceptional. It was kind of early House, by any stretch of the imagination. Very deep bass drums, a
stripped-down Teutonic dance code, so rhythmically structured.

Then there was Romy Haag. She was a drag queen, and our only connection was that Bowie had mentioned this person in an interview years earlier, and Sid remembered, ‘She’s got this
great club where all the perverts go . . .’ To find it, me and Sid wandered for hours around the streets of Berlin with no idea of where it was, and finally it was just this horrid little
door down some steps into a basement. But a really wacky place with loads of British soldiers in there.

And they weren’t there for you-know-what. They were out for a good laugh, and in them days these drag bars were very sociable places, they were great fun. It wasn’t as separatist as
you would think, they were very welcoming, and it was a great place to go and get plastered, and you wouldn’t be manhandled inappropriately. And in them days, you’ve got to remember,
being gay, particularly a transvestite, was a very harsh life. It was not accepted, and yet I always found them to be very accepting, open-minded people.

There have been rumours about me and Sid being that way inclined. Just,
NO!!!
There was a fantastic line in a song by the Slits called ‘So Tough’: ‘John don’t take
it serious, Sid is only curious.’ That says it all.

Maybe it was true for Sid. I don’t know if Sid ever worked out what he was. He was an exceptionally strange, different person. Very open, very happy, nothing challenged him. He
couldn’t give a monkey’s what anybody thought about him; he just thought he looked beautiful like Dave Bowie. But once he got in the band, all
of that went and
he became a very dour, serious misery, trying to act tough where before he’d never bother with any of that stuff at all.

The ‘I’m a complete virgin’ line ended when he met Nancy Spungen, a heroin-addicted groupie from New York, who I had the misfortune of passing onto him. I thought it would end
in disaster, but not in the way it turned out. I thought he’d fuck her and go, ‘Ouch, what an ugly old bag!’ in the morning. But he liked the idea that she looked wasted and
ruined.

It goes back to years before – how do you translate music? How do you translate
Berlin
, the Lou Reed album? Do you translate that as the falling-apart of a relationship, or do you
translate it as an accolade to drug addiction? That’s the problem. ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, to Sid, obviously didn’t mean, ‘go gay’, it meant, ‘take a lot
of drugs’. That’s how he’s seen it, and he was very overwhelmed by a person like Nancy talking: ‘Oh ye-ah, in Noo Yawk, we can get it all the time, it’s gawnna be
great
.’

Well, they got it all the time to the point where it killed both of them. I lived in New York later on and I know the difference, but my poor friend Sid didn’t. I can’t imagine him
in heaven being any cleverer, other than he will ignore his previous existence. He was addicted to the addicted lifestyle. His mother was a registered addict, and he thought that was the road to
cool runnings – and I’m not talking about the Jamaican bobsleigh team. I’m talking a real serious understanding of how things were, and how human beings perceive. Sid’s
perception was very minimal, and desperate and immediate. He was not by any standards unintelligent, but the inflection his mother put on him limited his narrative as a human being.

Heroin users will steal anything. They’d steal your toenails – anything that’s got a dollar value on it, or a pound, or a penny. It goes straight into the arm. And you
can’t trust them, they’ve lost their soul. It’s a very odd thing to be in the company of someone who is a long-term addict; they just feel lifeless, and there’s nothing in
the eyes that shows any human kindness or empathy, or anything at all. Ultimately, they are the true vision of a zombie. They are the walking dead.

Signing for our next label, A&M, outside Buckingham Palace was a hoot and a holler. Sid was wicked when he found an angle on someone – he’d keep at it and up
the ante with really humorous but negative comments. His big thing with Paul was: ‘You’re an albino gorilla,’ and in the limo on the way to the signing that morning, he finally
earned himself a smack in the mouth from Paul.

Suddenly, everyone was punching everyone in that car, God knows why, but that’s how it was. And all of us took a whack at Malcolm. In fact, that was where we bonded – once we
finished rubbishing each other, there’s the perfect target.

We signed on the dotted line, all grinning and goofing around, just seconds after trying to smack each other senseless. There were so many pent-up problems, thanks to Malcolm’s alleged
‘orchestration’ putting us in a world of perpetual chaos – it wasn’t pleasant. So that became a great moment of relief. Then we did a press conference blind stupid drunk.
Sid threw a custard pie, the tough lad, which just about shows the jolly frolics of it.

There was nothing at all for us at A&M’s offices, they’d got no drinks in, so we insisted that they send out. That took forty-five minutes and in came a crate of crap lagers, the
usual that we’d been used to every time we signed a record contract – a shortage of inebriations. I’ve never known anything like these record companies. They don’t know how
to do a welcome wagon. I’m Johnny, you come knocking on my door – mate, there’s a beer in your hand. I’m loaded and ready to go. I entertain my guests.

Failing to lay on the hospitality can lead to all kinds of fury, and of course what ensued was a situation of their own making. I was sick in a plant pot – oh, yes – and they accused
us of breaking a toilet. ‘Look, Sid was never potty trained, all right?’

If you’re gonna make people feel uncomfortable and unpleasant
and unwanted, then they’re gonna hang around for a hell of a lot longer. At least that’s
my way, and Sid’s well up for that cup. And Steve and Paul had nothing better to do, you know what I mean? We were very co-operative with each other, all of a sudden. ‘This is a Viking
raiding party and we’re all in it together!’ I love that sense of camaraderie in a band.

Ah well, we didn’t even last a week at this one, did we? I’m surprised it took that long for them to chuck us off. Apparently, it was Herb Alpert – the ‘A’ in
A&M – that sent a communiqué from LA to the UK label’s offices saying we had to go, he didn’t want our sort of undesirables on his label. Simply put, we were a threat
to the hamster wheel that they’d become so acclimatized to putting their acts on.

These old-fart bands had found their comfort zone, and they were irritated at having to rethink the agenda. That’s terrible because in no way was I setting out to replace them, just remove
the flotsam and jetsam that was blocking the drainpipes so the rest of us could have a flush. I don’t put roadblocks up for new bands, and in them early days we definitely had roadblocks, and
seriously negative attitudes from quite a few alleged musicians, demanding that the record label sack us – the likes of Rick Wakeman from Yes, and Steve Harley of Cockney Rebel. Like,
actually, who are you to make such demands? I didn’t care who my label-mates were, that’s irrelevant.

I found the whole thing very humorous indeed, this arsehole Wakeman who was playing ‘Ice Capades’ Wurlitzer music, telling me I’m not worthy. How am I supposed to take that,
but un-seriously? The days of Yes were gone and he had nothing new to offer anybody except criticism – a spoilt fading memory. But it did create problems, and we got a bump because of it,
that just fuelled the engine of negativity.

From the beginning Malcolm had been fending off overtures from Richard Branson to sign to Virgin, because they were a hippie label. My draw to Virgin was their astounding record stores. The
first one was on Oxford Street: it was absolutely awe-inspiring, the things they’d pack into that tiny little one-room place. To just look around and go, ‘Oh,
the possibilities! I could have it all, but I can only afford one.’ They made music seem fantastic, diverse and limitless. You flicked through all these different album covers and just
– the potential of it all, the wonderful creativity that music really, truly is.

So, after A&M, the pressure was on Malcolm to get us a deal that would actually work. ‘Can we have a label? It’d be kind of interesting, don’t you think? Here we are, the
ultimate primo numero uno punk band, and we ain’t got a record out?’

In the meantime we started recording our album with our previous advances and severance pay. I got my words in succinctly and correctly pronounced, so I was happy. I did one or two takes, and
that would be it. There’d be no overdub work at all, so I’d have to be bang on when it came to my turn. I couldn’t bear endless guitar overdubs, but the sessions quickly turned
into a jolly little joyride for Steve and Chris Thomas, the producer, to ‘experiment with guitar possibilities’. It was infuriating and indeed I left the studio for large amounts of
time because of that.

Chris Thomas drove me nuts. I thought what he was leading us towards was too elaborate for us at that point. To be pushing the singer aside in any band so you can have more guitar overdubs is
nonsense. The only thing that made him interesting to me, was that he went out with Mika of The Sadistic Mika Band, a group I loved. Any conversations, it was always about, ‘What’s she
really like?’ I don’t suppose it endeared me to him at all, but it was a very impressive band with a Japanese woman upfront squealing away in a Japanese way. It turned out he was deaf
in one ear. Nobody told me until the middle of recording when he’d be leading in with one ear. ‘What you doing?’ ‘Oh, I can’t actually hear with the other
ear.’

Around the making of the album, of course, Sid went and got hepatitis. Fantastic, huh? I almost think he did it deliberately just so he wouldn’t have to ’fess up about his musical
inadequacy, or
step up to the plate. He was just confused; he never got it, on many levels. He never got the rally, he never got the neighbourhood connection, he never got
the understanding of the bigger issues.