“There were only, like, 200 people,” journalist and critic Legs McNeil told New York magazine in 2008. “So you met everyone pretty quickly. It wasn’t a scene that anyone wanted to be a part of.”
“Nancy had one of those passions for rock and roll that very few people have,” he continued. “She knew everything about every album. Groupies in those days were different. They were a part of the scene. Everyone was treated the same. The roadies were treated the same as the rock stars. The groupies were treated the same as the rock stars. It was completely democratic.”
But after two years of hard living in New York, she took off for London, where she met Sid and was glued to his side by the time the Sex Pistols embarked on their first and only U.S. tour in January 1978. Which Nancy was banned from, the majority of the “God Save the Queen” rockers having taken an immediate disliking to her.
In his 1994 book, John Lydon referred to her as “that beast” and a “spoiled cow.” But he wasn’t being “vindictive,” he assured. Rather, “She was a very self-destructive human being who was determined to take as many people down with her as possible. Nancy Spungen was the complete Titanic looking for the iceberg, and she wanted a full load.”
Artist and writer Leee Childers, a tour manager for New York-based punk band The Heartbreakers, told Legs McNeill for his book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk that Nancy “was a very, very, very, very, very, very bad influence on people who were already a mess. She was a troublemaker and a stirrer-upper.”