Whilst on one of my jolly ups across the Atlantic I had a darn lovely chinwag with a chap named Bob.
I recall having been awake for around 30 hours, parking my tired bum on a creaky old stool in a bar that smelled a little of adventure and sipping Italian blend coffee through tender lips, captivated by Bobs tales of 40 odd years in the Big Apple.
Rewind to 1977, when I heard the Sex Pistols for the first time, and whilst it didn’t quite change my life it did kinda fill in a few gaps. The energy, the attitude, all at just the right time.
I still listen to their first record, their only one in my opinion, and goose bumps invariably form on goose bumps formed 40 years past, and certainly don’t look out of place there.
‘I was living in the Chelsea Hotel at the time the shit hit the fan,’ Bob explained as he sparked up his tenth Marlboro light.
When Sid Vicious lived there? I asked. The shit to which he referred was when a drug soaked Sid found a blood soaked girlfriend on the bathroom floor.
Dead.
By an ‘unknown’ hand.
‘It was like fuckin’ Cluedo, ‘ Bob cackled, and his big ‘tache bounced a bit, beneath flared nostrils.
Did you ever meet him? I enquired, whilst eyeing up a bottle of tequila on the bar shelf. Once, or twice, Bob replied. By this time saliva had appeared in both corners of his mouth as he picked up a menu and began to peruse details of fifty gut busting, cholesterol loaded burgers, one or two of which would soon be landing into Bob’s interior peptic lake, along with a side of fries and slaw.
‘He was a nice guy’, Bob added, ‘it was all just a front, the vicious thing.’
Yep, I always thought as much. Sure, he couldn’t play bass and he could barely fight his way out of a paper bag but, well, he looked the part. And, in my opinion that’s all that matters sometimes.
Around 1am, Bob buggered off into a crisp New York night, probably to hack up his raw umber coloured nicotine phlegm onto the pavements of dark street corners, whilst perhaps sparing a casual thought for a punk rocker from England, who he’d known briefly but who had lived barely another few weeks. Dead at 21.
Simon John Beverley. Aka Sid Vicious.
Casualty.
Looked flippin good in a leather jacket.
Bourne 