El Sid: Saint Vicious

Rating:
Summary: Drugs and Beer and Self Destruction
Review: El Sid Saint Vicious, by David Dalton, is an in-your-face biography of Sid Vicious. Each chapter is very sloppy and unpredictable, just like Sid himself. The books goes through the life of Sid, as he were telling it, and it does not hold back any details that people may be offended by. This book shows the downward spiral of Sid's life. From drugs to fights it's a path to self destruction. It is a very real and humorous look into the life of a punk legend.
The best part about this book is that it reads as if someone from England was talking to you. I had to read a little slower than normal to make sure I understood everything correctly, but after a little less than a quarter of the book I got used to the accent. Another thing I enjoyed was it had some historical information on fashion and lifestyle in 1970's England as well as history and the formation of punk rock and how it is today. I liked the fact that it is a brutal book and does not hesitate to talk about drugs or racism. Over all, this book is a great book to read if you enjoy punk rock.
Something I did not like about this book is that it has on some pages boxes with big letters that are supposed to be "Sid's diaries." I think this was somewhat distracting and had nothing to do with the chapters. I also thought they did not need to be there because the author wrote them as if Sid wrote them. Another thing I did not like is that the book is intended for readers who should know some history of punk and have a good knowledge of bands. I think this book would be hard for readers who don't know anything about punk rock.

Rating:
Summary: Take another look at Sid, and he takes another look at you
Review: How to write about a subject that, almost angrily, resists analysis? That must have been the vexed question confronting Dave Dalton, author of this brief account of the life and times of John Simon Ritchie Beverley, with a confusing title. A very fun read, _El Sid: Saint Vicious_ nevertheless can't seem to decide how to address the question. Was Vicious a kind of liberating hero, a sacrificial victim to be canonized, or both? I think he wanted none of that, a conclusion Dalton himself seems capable of reaching, determining, finally, that Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, were only ever looking for "the perfect f---up." Meanwhile, Sid, for his part, seemed capable of assuming his rebellious role with ease; helping destroy hippiedom, commerce, and respectability; and evincing an ambiguously attractive sexuality. But we knew that already.

In fact, Dalton doesn't really tell us anything we haven't heard before. He just spins the story in a peculiar way. He wants to write an account of Sid that exists in the betwixt and between: not a thesis but not a biography, not literary criticism but not popular journalism, not queer but not exactly straight, not the learned historcizing of a Greil Marcus but also not the rock chauvinism of a Joe Carducci. If you stripped away the Cockney poetry and half-baked French theory, you'd have a short book recounting Sid's maturity--if that's what it can be called--and its intersection with the brief, hot moment of British punk. You'll read it for Dalton's verbal finesse, which is considerable, extending as far as to punctuate the book with sidebars of commentary in Sid's voice, ventriloquized by the voluble Dalton.

So the book is often more suggestive than descriptive. And your taste will decide whether this effect is finally appropriate to Sid. (We're still waiting for the solid, accurate, straightforward account of Sid's life, from birth to death, that doesn't try to damn, redeem, or exalt him.) Sid's sexual persona, for example, retains the ambivalence typical of rock stars. He was basically straight, apparently, but had sex on the road with transvestites; and Dalton often feels compelled to describe Sid's betes noires as "poncey" in a way that intimates homosexual panic. Sid's mates were male, of course, and his relationship with Nancy appears more like companionship and habit-sharing than romantic love in the traditional sense. Dalton registers his own fascination, or attraction-repulsion, for Sid's "weedy," scarred, tortured figure, which Sid himself manipulated to maximum effect.

Sid's role in punk still strikes us as equally complicated. To paraphrase Nietzsche, there was only one punk, and he died in the Chelsea. Sid is venerated as such. He didn't know and didn't care, and f---ed himself up royally, not living long enough to consider compromising his thinking or behavior. Had he joined a reunion tour, he would've done it for the birds and drugs. He would have created the pure spectacle of which the reunited Pistols were only the bloated parody. However, Sid accomplished nothing but his own destruction. He learned only as much as to be able minimally to perform, and had no influence over music per se, despite all his imitators and hagiographers. He ended up a tubby, pathetic junkie, collapsing on stage, with Nancy as his prop. Or maybe Sid was Nancy's prop. Dalton agrees with the late Anne Beverley, Sid's mum, that he died just in time.

Writers who don't pursue professional careers as poets must resort to the type of Burroughsian acid prose that Dalton has mastered. Sid sent shock waves and made history with the force of his addiction, and has compelled Dalton to embody him in this little book in a way that would've given Sid a good larf.

Note: Dalton's book includes a helpful annotated bibliography. In the front.

Rating:
Summary: A MINIATURE "ENGLAND'S DREAMING"
Review: Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming" is the absolute best book on British punk rock and the Sex Pistols. David Dalton's "El Sid" is MUCH MUCH smaller in scope - it is a short book, but it gives a lot of insight as to WHY the Sex Pistols were so NECESSARY to music and pop culture, and bounces back and forth between an irreverent but interesting story of the Sex Pistols and inside boxes on the page, extreme poetic license (!) into the inside of SID'S simple brain, written in crude cockney. It also shows EXACTLY how and why SID had to self-destruct. Just one pic on the cover, but if you love studying punk/Sex Pistols/Sid, this is a small but entertaining look at the Pistols and Sid from a different angle. (And for the person who wrote or implied that SID was worthless, WHY, 21 YEARS after he DIED after a two-year career, at age 21, are there still books being written about him, why is his name known by any average rock n roll fan, and why does his appearance and style continue to fascinate like a Warhol painting?) Even if he was a moron, he unwittingly became a pop culture legend and 2nd level icon, whose image is synonymous with the entire concept of punk rock. And punk rock changed British society and pop culture forever, and much much more than is obvious.

Rating:
Summary: Drugs and Beer and Self Destruction
Review: While as a new but avid Sid fan I wanted to read everything available on the still compelling icon, this superficial tome was way disappointing as a first choice biography. Make no mistake, it's not about Sid Vicious, it's about David Dalton TALKING about Sid Vicious - an entirely different and much less satisfying thing.

Is the photo on the cover Sid? Don't think so. (Is everything else in the book as fake and superficial as the cover? Absolutely DO think so!)

Are the boxed and bolded quotes--distractingly placed throughout the chapters-- Sid's words? No, they are Dalton's ridiculous gimmick of "channeling" Sid's commentary as a supposed unifying feature of the narrative. (Nothing is more irritating than reading an attempt to phonetically reproduce a dialect; plus, examples of Sid's actual recorded voice and words don't reflect the cornball Cockney stupidity that Dalton tries to purvey.)

For me, the only remotely useful feature in "El Sid" was the limited bibliography of other works on Sid and Punk. But even here, in a review of a book which labelled Sid "stupid" and "cheesy", Dalton sniffs, "If you don't get Sid, you don't get Punk!" I don't profess to know a lot about Sid or Punk, but I know Dalton couldn't possibly 'get' either.

If you just have to have all currently available works on Sid, go ahead and buy a (used) version of this book. Otherwise -- pass.

Rating:
Summary: "El Sid" - So NOT About Sid Vicious
Review: While as a new but avid Sid fan I wanted to read everything available on the still compelling icon, this superficial tome was way disappointing as a first choice biography. Make no mistake, it's not about Sid Vicious, it's about David Dalton TALKING about Sid Vicious - an entirely different and much less satisfying thing.

Is the photo on the cover Sid? Don't think so. (Is everything else in the book as fake and superficial as the cover? Absolutely DO think so!)

Are the boxed and bolded quotes--distractingly placed throughout the chapters-- Sid's words? No, they are Dalton's ridiculous gimmick of "channeling" Sid's commentary as a supposed unifying feature of the narrative. (Nothing is more irritating than reading an attempt to phonetically reproduce a dialect; plus, examples of Sid's actual recorded voice and words don't reflect the cornball Cockney stupidity that Dalton tries to purvey.)

For me, the only remotely useful feature in "El Sid" was the limited bibliography of other works on Sid and Punk. But even here, in a review of a book which labelled Sid "stupid" and "cheesy", Dalton sniffs, "If you don't get Sid, you don't get Punk!" I don't profess to know a lot about Sid or Punk, but I know Dalton couldn't possibly 'get' either.

If you just have to have all currently available works on Sid, go ahead and buy a (used) version of this book. Otherwise -- pass.

Rating:
Summary: why?
Review: why do people still know his name, asked one reviewer:

because people like you glamorize HEROIN ABUSE and EARLY DEATH.

wish i could give a zero to a book with such an unworthy subject.