First modification: 02/07/2022 – 07:20
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London (AFP) – An exhibition is touring this summer in London, UK, the images taken by Dennis Morris, the official photographer of the punk music band Sex Pistols, who portrayed the “intense personality” of the group’s legendary bassist, Sid Vicious.
The exhibition “SID: Superman is Dead” takes place until July 15 in the center of the British capital and its protagonist is Sid Vicious, one of the protagonists of the Sex Pistols, who died at the age of 21 from an overdose of heroin four months after being charged with the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
“When he was on heroin, he was completely changed, a totally different person,” recalls the 62-year-old Morris, who photographed the bassist in the late 1970s.
The exhibition, which opens 40 years after the images were taken, wants to show the “intense personality” of the character. “They read about Sid Vicious and think he was pretty violent, but he was actually pretty sweet, very shy,” Morris stresses.
The exhibition recreates, among other things, one of his photos, in which a hotel room looted by Vicious during a tour in 1977 is seen, with an unmade bed full of food wrappers, a floor full of glass and pages torn from a bible. The image also portrays a nightstand filled with drugs.
In the photo, the bassist is half-naked, lying between two beds, while another person, unidentified but “probably a fan,” is huddled on one of the beds.
“One night Sid totally freaked out and trashed his room,” says Morris, who is also known for having photographed reggae legend Bob Marley.
“My room was right next to his and when the noise finally stopped, I opened the door and it was total chaos,” says the photographer, who wanted to recreate the scene to capture “the energy and violence of punk.”
antimonarchical
This violence culminated in the release of the anti-monarchist hit “God Save The Queen” — in which the Sex Pistols refer to the royal family as fascists — which led to the band’s singer, John Lydon, and two producers being attacked with knives.
Dennis Morris recalls “being chased down the street” by pro-monarchists every time they saw the singer.
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“It was quite scary, but for me it was above all an opportunity to live my dream [de hacer fotografía documental]. I was there 24 hours a day,” she recalls.
The Sex Pistols singer, now 66, recently said he “still disapproves” of the monarchy, but respects the queen’s “sense of dignity”.
“None of us were really against it, it was just something we said to create a reaction. All of our parents had a picture of the queen on the wall, or of Jesus, it was like that… We were just rebels,” Morris said. .
“Superstar”
For the photographer, Sid Vicious had everything to become a “superstar”, although his death was, according to him, inevitable.
“He really had the qualities of a star. His problem was that his mother gave him heroin when he was 14 years old (…) that killed him,” he says.
After being released on bail following the murder of Nancy Spungen, found stabbed to death in her New York hotel room, Vicious was terrified of going back to jail, says the photographer, who is convinced of the bassist’s innocence.
“Because of his fame, he was raped several times, so when he got out of jail he told his mother ‘I can’t go back to jail, I can’t’, and she went to buy drugs and that was what killed him,” he says. the photographer.
The bassist died four months after Spungen and the trial never took place.
© 2022 AFP
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