🖤 First Lady of Punk: Ms. Nancy Spungen 🖤

Emotions run high when talking about the life and death of Ms. Nancy Spungen. Has anyone ever had a moderating, tolerant view of her? People either hate or love her. There is no in between.

Nancy Spungen became the unlikely face of a once-young, fledgling punk scene that emerged in the late 1970s. She wasn't a musician, or even a singer, but with her brazen and brash personality, Spungen pitched herself as the ultimate punk VIP and earned an exalted perch alongside her beau and fellow tragedian, Sid Vicious.

Nancy Spungen was the quintessential punk rocker.

No one was better at expressing the balls-to-the-wall punk ethos than Ms. Spungen. She espoused the virtues of the punk genre more convincingly than male rivals Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren, and because of that in-your-face, I-don't-give-a-fuck bravura, rose to become herself an improbable celebrity. The tabloid press dubbed her "Nauseating Nancy" and she more than lived up to the hype and reputation. She was blonde, beautiful, outspoken, rebellious, violent, crude, nasty, mean, stubborn, defiant and completely unapologetic.

Her ascendance to punk iconography began with her murder on October 12, 1978. The still-murky circumstances of her death rattled the rock-and-roll establishment, all but ending any promise of punk's advance into the American mainstream. In the years following her death, Spungen became an all-too-convenient villainess in the "Sid and Nancy" story-line - depicted often as a Yoko Ono type, a she-whore who helps undermine and destroy the Sex Pistols' successful run. History remembers her as an opportunist who led Sid Vicious astray; but history doesn't always get the facts correct, especially when history is written and presented by men who loved the Sex Pistols but who hated Nancy Spungen. Most men of her time were most certainly threatened by her intelligence, charisma and chutzpah. Is it little wonder, then, that male music historians helped propagate and pass down an unflattering account of her life? It might be safe to assume that, had she been born a man, would Nancy Spungen have suffered the same indignity time and time again?

October 12th, 2018 will mark her death anniversary, and here we are, forty years later, debating her legitimacy and rightful place as a punk and cultural icon.

So what is different today? Well, for one thing, the optics. We see her life through a more objective and less judgmental lens. We recognize her as a young woman struggling with mental illness and drug addiction, because like her, WE TOO may have struggled with and fought the very same battles she did, and in waging those battles, we may have been misunderstood, marginalized and maligned ourselves. Even if never plagued with mental ill health or drug issues, we could have empathy and compassion still for Nancy Spungen and understand how and why her life played out as it did.

Will history judge her less harsh in the next 40 years? It's hard to say, really. The real question is whether the "haters" are prepared to accept a reality where Nancy Spungen is recast and reintroduced as a sympathetic, redeemable human being. For some, a rehabbed and 2018-styled update of Nancy Spungen may prove too hard a sell.

POSTSCRIPT: In July 2015 I recorded a cover of the Johnny Thunders classic, "You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory," and used it for a video I created, the "First Lady of Punk: Ms. Nancy Spungen." Never thinking it would garner much attention, or get many views, I uploaded it and hoped for the best. Thanks in large part to viewers like you it became my most-liked, most popular upload to date. I've enjoyed reading your comments, and I've reveled in the drama, debate and discussion I've helped generate on Nancy Spungen and her place in punk history. I thank you (again) for your likes, comments, well wishes and continued support of me, my videos and channel.

Richard D. Olson, October 12th, 2018

"You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" ((Johnny Thunders)). Performed by OLE. Taken from the CD “OLE IS MY NAME” (Cover Tunes, Memories and Ghosts) (2020) [Vocal: Rik / Guitars: Michael Nazari / Bass and Percussion: Lucky Lew / Production: Lucky Lew (Originally Recorded 2015)]

Видео 🖤 First Lady of Punk: Ms. Nancy Spungen 🖤 канала Rik is Major Drama!