A Vicious Phone Call

Shortly after the Sex Pistols' break up, Sid boarded a flight from Los Angeles to New York on January 20th 1978. He overdosed from a cocktail of methadone, pills and alcohol, and was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, Queens, New York. A huge blizzard had immobilised the city that year and families were advised to stay in their homes. American photographer, Roberta Bayley, telephoned Sid in the early hours after his admission. Here is the call in full.

Sid (tired): "Hello."
Roberta Bayley: "Hello, Sid?"
Sid: "Hello?"
Bayley: "Sid?"
Sid: "Yeah?"
Bayley: "Hi, this is Roberta. You remember me from the tour?"
Sid: "Um, yeah."
Bayley: "The photographer, the one whose thumb you broke."
Sid: "I broke your thumb?"
Bayley: "Well nearly, it just broke the nail. How are you? You alright?"
Sid: "Oh yeah, I remember. Will someone come visit me in hospital?"
Bayley: "Yeah, I would do but it's snowing."
Sid: "Oh."
Bayley: "I don't have a car and you can't go on the trains 'cause the wind's too high."
Sid (sad): "I'm lonely."
Bayley: "We're gonna come tomorrow. Do you think you'll still be in tomorrow?"
Sid: "I'm supposed to go back to London tomorrow."
Bayley: "Yeah but the airports will still be closed."
Sid: "Oh well, then in that case... I'm getting out of here tomorrow and I'm going to some girl's place that I know."
Bayley: "Yeah?"
Sid: "But... I dunno."
Bayley: "How are you feeling?"
Sid: "Weak."
Bayley: "Nobody's been up to see you or anything?"
Sid: "No."
Bayley: "It's so miserable outside, I guess you can see it on television."
Sid: "Yeah, I'm just sitting here on my own."
Bayley: "Oh fuck... it's really far away where you are, you know, or I'd come right over there."
Sid: "What?"
Bayley: "How long you been in there, just last night?"
Sid: "Um, yeah."
Bayley: "What happened to everybody else? Who was on the plane with you?"
Sid: "Boogie."
Bayley: "Yeah?"
Sid: "But I did... are you a photographer?"
Bayley: "Yeah."
Sid: "Not a reporter."
Bayley: "No, I'm a photographer."
Sid: "This is between me and you, innit? What happened was I done eighty milligrams of methadone, right?"
Bayley: "Uh-huh."
Sid: "And when you get - and about six or seven valiums - when you get high in the air, it has a much greater effect on you than it does when you're on the ground. And you know, you get pissed a lot quicker in the air."
Bayley: "Yeah, you get drunk faster."
Sid: "That's what happened."
Bayley: "So did Boogie just go back?"
Sid: "Huh?"
Bayley: "Boogie just went back?"
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "He left you? (laughs)"
Sid: "What?"
Bayley: "He just left you? He's gone back to London, Boogie?"
Sid: "Ah no, he's still here."
Bayley: "Oh, where is he?"
Sid: "I don't know."
Bayley: "Oh, that's nice. And nobody else is in New York?"
Sid: "Oh yeah, there are a few people in New York but nobody's even like bothered to let us know the snow's too bad or whatever."
Bayley (sighs): "Fuck... that's really fucked up. Maybe I could get Bob to... what if I called Bob tonight? You know, Gruen?"
Sid: "Oh no, forget it. I already called him."
Bayley: "Yeah, what did he say?"
Sid: "He said he couldn't make it."
Bayley: "It's the weather, right?"
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "The highway to where the hospital is... it's just shut off."
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "It's really fucked. And the trains go above, you know, instead of going underground. Out there the trains go above the ground so they um, and the wind's too bad."
Sid: "What, they just blow off?"
Bayley: "Yeah, I think they probably stopped 'em or something 'cause the wind's gonna get worse tonight."
Sid: "I wouldn't expect anyone to go on a train all this way just to see me anyway."
Bayley: "Oh, c'mon on. You have a TV at least."
Sid: "Huh?"
Bayley: "You have a TV set anyway."
Sid: "Do I have a what?"
Bayley: "A television."
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "Color or black and white?"
Sid: "What I could do with would be something to read."
Bayley: "Yeah, magazines or something, huh?"
Sid: "What I really want is like a very, very large pile of Marvel comics."
Bayley: "Yeah? Wow! I got some great comic books."
Sid: "Yeah, so do I but Boogie's got them, the arsehole."
Bayley: "You don't have any way to get in touch with him or anything, do you?"
Sid: "No. He said that he'd call me later today and he hasn't bothered."
Bayley: "Shit."
Sid: "And he wont be bothering either. He's a cunt."
Bayley: "And people that come up there can just visit you? It's not a problem?"
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "Wow. Well, what happened with this group of yours anyway? (laughs)"
Sid: "I left them."
Bayley: "Yeah, it seems like everybody left them."
Sid: "Well, I don't think anybody really wanted to continue, but no one had the guts to actually say it. So like, I just phoned John up and told him what I thought of him, and where I thought he was at and um, I mean I still think I'm pretty good. I think I was better than any of the others."
Bayley: "Well, with the attitude, yeah. But what do Steve and Paul want to do?"
Sid: "I don't know. They'll probably try and get another band together and fail. John's completely finished."
Bayley: "Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus."
Sid: "Huh?"
Bayley: "That seems to be the general consensus."
Sid (cheerfully): "Does it?"
Bayley: "Well, everybody's just saying, well, what can he do now?"
Sid: "Yeah, right."
Bayley: "And no one can figure out anything that he can do."
Sid: "Yeah and like, he's finished as a person as well."
Bayley: "Oh."
Sid: "He's just not what he used to be."
Bayley: "Well, maybe this will er, shake him up a little bit?"
Sid: "Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. That it'll shake him up and then he'll be able to do something. That'd be good if he could do that. But otherwise, if it doesn't shake him up and get him out of it, then as a person, not only will he not do anything but he'll also... nobody will even want to know him."
Bayley: "Yeah."
Sid: "They'll go, 'Didn't you used to be Johnny Rotten?'"
Bayley: "Yeah, I guess in England everybody's gonna be really upset about this, you know?"
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "How do you feel about it?"
Sid: "I'm glad that it's over now because it was like, um, I felt like I was the only one who was still putting any real energy into it. Did you see our show at Frisco?"
Bayley: "Yeah."
Sid: "Well, didn't you notice there, that like..."
Bayley: "Yeah, it was a very weird show there."
Sid: "I mean, John wasn't doing very much was he?"
Bayley: "Nah-uh. And Steve was just sorta jumping around then. It's just that there wasn't, you know... I mean, the shows got worse instead of better."
Sid: "Yeah. I think the one we did at Dallas or something was..."
Bayley (interrupting): "San Antonio. Now that was the best."
Sid: "Was it? What, was that the one where I got butted in the face?"
Bayley: "No. That was Dallas, I think."
Sid: "Roberta?"
Bayley: "But I liked the one when you hit the guy with the guitar."
Sid: "Oh, was that the one when I was going really nuts?"
Bayley: "Yeah, and John was really jumping around a whole bunch and the people were really throwing lots of beer cans."
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "That was a really exciting one. I've got all these great pictures to show you and everything."
Sid: "Have you?"
Bayley: "Yeah, tons of stuff. So we really should come up tomorrow, I'll fucking beg Gruen to come up, you know?"
Sid (pleading): "Yeah, can you do that?"
Bayley: "Yeah, we'll bring up all kinds of stuff."
Sid: "Yeah, but make it... it has to be before nine o'clock though."
Bayley: "In the morning?"
Sid: "No."
Bayley: "In the night."
Sid: "So are you coming up tonight?"
Bayley: "Yeah. But if you, um, if the planes go out tomorrow, you know, then would you go out first thing in the morning? If they open up the airports?"
Sid: "Well, I said I would, so like Sophie'll book the ticket."
Bayley: "Oh. But they may not be letting planes go at that time."
Sid: "Yeah, I hope they don't in a way because I wanna like stay in New York for at least one day."
Bayley: "Yeah, you should. You really should. You should come, you know, to the city. I mean, I know lots of people who wanna see you and everything."
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "You've never been here before. You could have a good time. If you're healthy enough to do it."
Sid: "Yeah, I don't know whether I am. I can't drink. I can't like... the doctor said that if I drank anything like vaguely remotely the way I've been drinking for the past, like however long, that I've got about six months at the absolute outside to live."
Bayley (concerned): "Oh, c'mon. Then don't drink, you asshole."
Sid: "And like, the drugs as well. More or less, I can't do anything. So if I went out anywhere, I have to just like... sit there."
Bayley: "Well, if you just come around and I dunno..."
Sid: "If I went out anywhere, I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation - that would be the trouble. Like I would just end up boozing myself outright."
Bayley: "Well, what are you gonna do if you go back to London? I mean, it's the same thing."
Sid: "Yeah, I probably will die in six months, actually."
Bayley: "You have to straighten out for a while."
Sid: "I can't straighten up! I just can't be straight."
Bayley: "Yeah, you could. Just as an experiment."
Sid: "I suppose I'll just have to be. I haven't figured out yet quite how I'm gonna do it ‘cause I haven't been straight in like, four years."
Bayley (sighs): "Just as an experiment, you should do it. There must be a way."
Sid: "Yeah well, listen, can you please try and drag Bobby over tonight?"
Bayley: "Yeah, I just think, you know, it's like almost physically impossible but tomorrow..."
Sid: "Well like, if the planes aren't running tomorrow, I'll see you tomorrow."
Bayley: "Can you phone out from there?"
Sid: "Er, yeah."
Bayley: "Why don't you take down my number?"
Sid: "Okay. (Talks to hospital staff) Do you have a pen? Could you write down a number for me? (To Bayley) Yeah, what's the number?"
Bayley: "6-7-3."
Sid (to staff): "6-7-3."
Bayley: "Yup, that's Roberta."
Sid (to staff): "And, the name's Roberta. Did you manage to get a match? (Silence) Jesus, you mean there's not one in the whole hospital? (More silence) Is there anywhere where you can get 'em?"
Bayley: "So where's Malcolm, has he gone back to England?"
Sid: "Malcolm's in L.A."
Bayley: "Oh, he's still out there. What's he gonna do now?"
Sid: "Well, he's gonna rest for a while and then I don't know. He'll probably just like..."
Bayley: "Do something else?"
Sid: "Yeah. I'm going back to London to get a group together with Johnny Thunders."
Bayley: "Yeah, you should do. You'd be much better than Billy Rath, you know?"
Sid: "Huh?"
Bayley: "You know the other bass player? You should just kick him out."
Sid: "Yeah right, he's just an arsehole."
Bayley: "You'd be much better."
Sid: "See what that group would be like with me, Thunders, Nolan and Walter Lure?"
Bayley: "Yeah, amazing. Really amazing..."
Sid: "We'd be pretty good, wouldn't we?"
Bayley: "Yeah."
Sid: "If I was healthy. That would be an incentive for me to get healthy as well."
Bayley: "Yeah, Johnny somehow manages to... I know he does, um... he has a few bad habits but he somehow manages to stay pretty healthy in spite of it."
Sid: "Yeah."
Bayley: "I don't know how he does it but maybe..."
Sid: "It's because he never had hepatitis."
Bayley: "Yeah."
Sid: "I had hepatitis and when I got out of hospital I just like really fucked myself up as badly as I could. I don't know why but everybody said you can't do it, so I just went ahead and done it."
Bayley: "Well, I know somebody like that that did the same thing."
Sid: "It's my basic nature."
Bayley: "Yeah but your basic nature is gonna get you in a lot of trouble."
Sid: "My basic nature is gonna kill me in six months."
Bayley: "Well, you just gotta change it."
Sid: "Yeah, I will do as well."
Bayley: "Okay, well call me. You can call me, you know, call me later tonight or else call me in the morning if you think you're still gonna be there."
Sid: "Yeah okay."
Bayley: "I'll call you back too."
Sid: "I appreciate it."
Bayley: "Okay, call me later if you're bored."
Sid: "Okay, thanks for calling anyway."
Bayley: "Yeah, we're worried about you. Okay, so take care of yourself."
Sid: "Okay."
Bayley: "Bye-bye."
Sid: "Bye."