Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 035: Sid and Vicious Questions about the Murder of Nancy Spungen

Alan Cross Corus Radio

March 4, 2025 8:59 am

Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 035: Sid and Vicious Questions about the Murder of Nancy Spungen

The Chelsea Hotel sits at 222 West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Since its completion in 1884, the place has been a hangout for some very colourful characters. Most were New York eccentrics and bohemians who needed a place to live, but it also attracted some famous people.

At one point or another, it was home to sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote a big chunk of 2001: A Space Odyssey in his room. Later, Stanley Kubrick, the producer of the movie version of the film, would stay there.

Other long-term guests included photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. So did beat writer Jack Kerouac, playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepherd, actors Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliott Gould, and Jane Fonda. Plus, for extra colour, poets William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg—not to mention Andy Warhol and some of his crew.

Painter Jackson Pollock was a resident for a while. At a luncheon at the hotel organized by art collector Peggy Guggenheim, he proceeded to get very wasted and threw up all over the carpet in the dining room. Someone suggested that they cut out and hang on to that piece of carpet because, she said, it would be worth millions of dollars one day.
The Chelsea was also a favourite haunt of musicians. Bob, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Jeff Beck, Joni Mitchell, Alice Cooper, the guys in Pink Floyd, and many, many others.

Composer George Kelinsinger brought in 12-foot trees from Madagascar along with birds, a monkey, and an eight-foot snake to turn his room into a jungle. I wonder how he got along with dancer Katharine Dunham. She once brought in two full-grown lions to help with a rehearsal.

In 1922, a young woman named Nadia threw herself out of a window after she deliberately cut off her right hand. There are stories of her one-handed ghost trying to get back into the hotel.
A photographer named Billy Maynard was beaten to death in his room on the eighth floor in the mid-70s.

But the most notorious floor was floor 1. It was designated the “junkie floor,” the place where guests with drug problems were placed so that staff could keep an eye on things. This was where ex-Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, checked in. They were given room 100.

It was in that room Nancy died. It looks like she was murdered… but by whom? Sid was charged with killing her, but did he?

This is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry,” and this time, it’s the wild story of the death of Nancy Spungen and the questions that still remain decades later.

Get Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry wherever you get your podcasts. Both Uncharted and The Ongoing History of New Music will be heard back-to-back overnights five days a week on these Corus news stations:

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