Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The term ‘Heroin chic’, popularised in the early 1990s by the world of fashion, provides a shameful reminder that at times we allow a glorification of some of the worst habits that a person can descend within, and whilst it often adds gravitas to a particular tale from an outsider’s point of view, it can but be galling to find that someone has fallen for a hero for more than their talent, that they openly admire their capacity for which ever drug of choice has led them to be remembered for.
Punk had its rightful ethics, its joyousness, the anti-authority to which arguably Generation X took too with a pleasure unbound, and yet it also had its downfalls, the pits in which it could command obedience through suffering, and to glamourise it feels dirty, like being flagellated against your will with a stiff piece of bloodied jute, and the films and books that have used it as an effect of virtue often leave a taste in the mouth that is far beyond anarchy, it is sullen and unpleasant.
It is refreshing when you come across a book by a writer who did live through the turmoil of Punk’s emergence, who found their life overtaken by the need to score, and who found themselves for a time at the epicentre of mayhem, of arguably being in the same orbit as one of the hottest properties in the world, and who does not excuse the mess of the situation such as Den Browne conveys in his time living in the same squat with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in Padlocks: Living With Sid And Nancy.
What Den Browne succeeds in doing is marrying history with mythos and presenting a stable version of truth without sensationalising the reactions and the people immersed in the tidal wave, he refuses to cover up the emotions, the sense of drowning that others refused to see, and whilst he also explains what drove him to his own personal habit, he does not shy away from the examples of how unhappiness and boredom, of feeling neglect from the system gave him a feared outlook; and when coupled with two of the most famous people on the planet at the time sharing spaces, needles, and in two casual episodes a sexual encounter with Nancy Spungen, the sheer bravery of the piece reads in part as an obituary to the self, and a wake up call, a reminder that only with control do we emerge on the other side, bloodied, scathed, scarred, but open to talking about the past.
To airbrush history, to sanitise it, to overtly overplay its significance is a sin against a truth, Den Browne avoids such caricature and focuses on a kind of meaning that is haunting but also captivating, sincere without embellishment, and for the moments where the reader might start to believe that the use of narcotics is an act of heroism shrouded in dreams, the come down, the fights, the inherent anger, the visions of dependency and sacrificing of friends brings it home that drug chic of any kind is to be avoided at all costs.
A close look at one of Britain’s most enduring of images, of the outbreak and eventual fall of early Punk in the personification of an outsider capturing the detail of a person in the midst of self-induced pain, a star risen too quickly, a high framed with its consequences and fallout. This is the lock picked cleanly, not by a voyeur, not by a hanger on or the in depth dream of a person not there justifying opinion, this is the dirt of the occasion shown as it truly was, driven by a shared common need. Den Browne deserves huge congratulations for releasing his soul into memory and bringing a different light to the Sid and Nancy story.
Ian D. Hall