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How punk icon Sid Vicious was saved by a border mercy dash from his kind-hearted Gibraltarian family,writes Joe Duggan
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E’S the face of a rock and roll movement that shook the world. With his permanent sneer, black leather jacket and spiked hair teased to the heavens, punk icon and Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious personified the spirit of disillusionment that energised Britain’s youth in 1976. “If Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Sid Vicious is the attitude,” the band’s manager Malcolm McClaren once said. Of course, the story took a dark turn as Vicious sank into a hellish world of heroin addiction. He was the main suspect in the killing of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, who was found stabbed to death in New York’s Chelsea Hotel in 1978. Vicious himself died of a drugs overdose a few months later, aged just 21. All told in the film Sid and Nancy. It’s a well-told tale of nightmarish rock and roll depravity. But for the first time, Gib Rocks can reveal Vicious’s family ties to Gibraltar, and how a mercy dash to the Spanish border saved the infant Vicious and his penniless mother in their hour of need. Sid Vicious was born Simon John Ritchie in London on Friday, May 10, 1957. It was a name the hellraising rocker shared with his great grandfather, John Ritchie. The Scotsman had been born in a remote village just outside Aberdeen in 1863, but left to take a job in Gibraltar’s dockyards as a young man. Here it emerges, he married a widow from Catalan Bay called Victoria Wilson, who was the daughter of another Scotsman. In 1900, VICIOUS: In his youn- the couple had a son called Charlie - Sid’s ger years grandad. Gibraltar coroner and Stipendiary magistrate Charles Pitto, a second cousin of Vicious, explains how the young Charlie Ritchie ended up in England by chance. “Sid’s grandad Charlie was my grandmother’s brother,” he reveals to Gib Rocks. “Charlie was going to go and live in Australia, but apparently he missed the boat when he was running to the North Mole and his friends were waving goodbye as the ship sailed. “He then worked his way to England on a Blands ship where his brother was a trainee officer midshipman.” It was a twist of fate that landed Charlie in Dagenham, Essex in the early 1920s. Times were hard, with Charlie taking a number of jobs, including working on the construction of Battersea Power Station. Eventually, he found work along with thousands of other local men and women at the vast Dagenham Ford car factory. A left-wing activist, he took part in marches with his well-spoken wife Maggie and became a paid-up member of the Communist Party. “He wasn’t exactly one of Stalin’s bosom mates, but he read the Morning Star,” recalls Pitto. “I remember him telling me how he watched the dog fights during the Battle of Britain in the back garden.” Maggie and Charlie had their first son, George, around 1921. John, Sid’s father, came next. John Ritchie, a keen musician, played trombone in the British Army, where he
Holidays in the
SEXED UP: (From left to right) Vicious in controversial Swa
is also believed to have been a stretcher bearer. According to Johnny Rotten in Julien Temple’s documentary The Filth and The Fury, Ritchie was on guard inside Buckingham Palace as his son Sid and the Sex Pistols signed their A&M recording contract at the palace gates in 1977. This, however, is not true, insists Pitto. “John had left the army long before that,” he reveals. After joining the army, John Ritchie met Sid’s mum, Anne Beverley. She had joined the RAF at a young age, although the young woman from a troubled background struggled with military life. Following Sid’s birth, the couple decided to move to Ibiza, which already had a reputation for bohemian decadence. However, at some point, Anne and John split up and were never reconciled. According to reports, Anne eked out a living on the Balearic island with her two-year-old son Sid by petty drug dealing and working as a typist. Her chaotic lifestyle eventually led to her desperately seeking John Ritchie’s family in Gibraltar for help to get home to England. One day, Anne and Sid arrived at the frontier. “She gave the border guards the name of one of John’s uncles, Hector Ritchie, who was then a harbour pilot,” says Pitto. “In those days if you were an unlikely looking character and you possibly had no money and would be more trouble than you’re worth more often than not they would say ‘no’, can’t come in. “Hector ‘as ever’ sorted them out and took them in. He had a heart of gold. When nobody had money he always had a fiver in his pocket. “He took Anne home and bought CAPTION