Sex Pistol Sid’s mum features on town’s trail
HERITAGE TRIBUTE TO PUNK ROCKER’S PARENT:
THE mother of notorious punk rock icon Sid Vicious is to be featured as part of a heritage trail marking contributions of notable individuals and pioneering industries hailed for putting South Derbyshire on the map.
Anne Beverley ( née McDonald) was the mother of Sid Vicious, of Sex Pistols punk rock band fame, and it is said his ashes were even scattered by Anne on The Delph in Swadlincote.
Anne herself died of an overdose at her home in Hastings Road, in the town, in 1996.
Just three days before her death she played at a pub in the town to a crowd of 30 people with her own punk band, Road Rage, formed to cash in on the Sex Pistols’ fame.
The Sex Pistols were a notorious English punk rock band formed in London in 1975, who caused a storm due to their outrageous antics and music. They are credited with being responsible for initiating the punk movement in the UK and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians.
Vicious had been asked to join the Sex Pistols after Glen Matlock’s departure in February 1977. However, he only appeared on two songs – Anarchy In The UK and Bodies.
Pistols hits also included Pretty Vacant and God Save The Queen, with the latter banned by many radio and TV stations.
The Sex Pistols, also featuring frontman Johny Rotten, made the front pages when they appeared on Thames Television’s Bill Grundy’s Today programme. They continually swore throughout the live broadcast. Grundy urged the band to say something outrageous, and was suspended before later being reinstated. However, the recording effectively ended his career and sparked national outrage.
The episode made the band household names and brought punk into mainstream awareness and the hits followed. The band lasted just 18 explosive months but it secured their place in British music history.
When the Pistols fell apart in 1978, Vicious embarked on a shortlived solo career until his death from a heroin overdose in 1979. He released a cult punk version of the Frank Sinatra classic ‘ My Way’.
Vicious, whose real name was John Ritchie, was famously found dead from a drugs overdose in a New York hotel room in 1979 after the death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
At the time Vicious had been charged with her murder after she suffered a single stab wound. The knife used was Vicious’s own. He said they had fought that night but gave conflicting versions of what happened next. He had pleaded not guilty to killing her. Vicious, just 21 21, was accompanied to court by his mother.
Shortly after his death, his mother claimed that Vicious and Spungen had made a suicide pact and that Vicious’ death was not accidental. She claimed that after Vicious was cremated, she found a handwritten note in the pocket of his leather jacket saying just that.
Anne dropped out of school early due to a lack of academic success and went on to join the RAF where she met her husbandtobe, Ritchie’s father, John, a guardsman at Buckingham Palace and a semi- professional trombone player on the London Jazz scene. Shortly after her son’s birth in 1957, Vicious, or John as he was then, and his mother moved to Ibiza where his father failed to follow them.
Anne later married Christopher Beverley in 1965, before setting up a family home back in Kent. Vicious took his father’s first name and stepfather’s surname and was known as John Beverley.
Christopher Beverley died six months later from cancer, and by 1968 Ritchie and his mother were living in a rented flat in Tunbridge Wells. In 1971 the pair moved to east London.
Anne later moved to Swadlincote but it is not clear when that was.
While there won’t be a plaque or lectern for Anne Beverley in Swadlincote she does have a place on the heritage trail with information provided about her in heritage trail leaflets available from Sharpe’s Pottery Museum.
Now former former punk rocker Martin Roper, of Derby band Anti Pasti, who now runs The Crossing pub, in High Street, Burton, praised the inclusion of Anne, adding that Burton should have a similar nod to the Swadlincote resident.