In a recent interview with the Daily Record, ex-Sex Pistols’ John Lydon talks about his admiration for Mick Jagger, and I had no idea there was such a connection between both bands! But Lydon reveals something really interesting: During the aftermath of Nancy Spungen’s death, when Sid Vicious was charged with murder, Mick Jagger stepped in and tried to help Vicious!
‘Nancy Spungen was a hideous, awful person who killed herself because of the lifestyle and led to the destruction and subsequent death of Sid and the whole fiasco,’ declared Lydon, ‘I tried to help Sid through all of that and feel a certain responsibility because I brought him into the Pistols thinking he could handle the pressure’
‘He couldn’t. The reason people take heroin is because they can’t handle pressure. Poor old Sid. Her death is all entangled in mystery. It’s no real mystery, though. If you are going to get yourself involved in drugs and narcotics in that way accidents are going to happen. Sid was a lost case. He was wrapped firmly in Malcolm’s shenanigans. It became ludicrous trying to talk to him through the drug haze because all you would hear was, ‘I’m the real star around here’. Great. Carry on. We all know how that’s going to end. Unfortunately, that is where it ended. I miss him very much. He was a great friend but when you are messing with heroin you’re not a human being. You change and you lose respect for yourself and everybody else.’
‘The only good news is that I heard Mick Jagger got in there and brought lawyers into it on Sid’s behalf because I don’t think Malcolm lifted a finger. He just didn’t know what to do. For that, I have a good liking of Mick Jagger.’
‘There was activity behind the scenes from Mick Jagger so I applaud him. He never used it to advance himself publicity-wise.’
So now, is this true? Why would Jagger have paid for the legal fee for Sid if he were accused of having murdered Spungen? Was he convinced he was innocent? The story has always been very muddy, it’s once again one of these mysterious stabbings which has never been clearly elucidated, but even if Jagger thought Vicious was innocent, why did he care enough to pay for his lawyers? And why did he never mention it anywhere? I have not even seen a picture of them together ever, and the only connection that people are able to make is a swastika t-shirt with the word ‘destroy’ that Jagger was wearing around 1978, probably to look more punk?
Furthermore, according to this site, Lydon claimed in an interview in 1979 that ‘he slammed the door of McLaren’s “Sex”-boutique in Jagger’s face’ and he even said that ‘the Rolling Stones were a distraction, something he don’t want his music to sound like’,… the least we can say is that the admiration wasn’t really there at the time!