Flashback: Nancy Spungen Found Dead at Chelsea Hotel
Flashback: Nancy Spungen Found Dead at Chelsea Hotel In 1975, a 17-year-old Philly girl named Nancy Spungen dropped out of the University of Colorado and moved to New York City. She pushed her way in with the emerging punk crowd – meeting seminal rockers like Johnny Thunders and Cheetah Chrome. Spungen quickly established herself in the punk scene as a new kind of groupie, as punk journalist Legs McNeil told New York Magazine in 2008 – and she embodied the nastiest parts of the scene. “We were tired of being nice. It was like, fuck you,” McNeil said. “The left… invented that political-correctness stuff. Punk was supposed to piss off everybody and make people think.” Though most found Spungen abrasive, one person didn’t seem to mind her crass exterior: Sid Vicious, the bassist for the Sex Pistols. The two met in London in 1977 and quickly became an item. The couple rattled around the U.K. and the United States – first with the Pistols and then, w...