In February 1977, Sex Pistols' manager McLaren announced that Glen Matlock had been "thrown out of the band" because "he liked
the Beatles", and that he had been replaced by Vicious. In his autobiography
I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, Matlock says he quit because he was "sick of all the bullshit". In the 2000 documentary
The Filth and the Fury, the band members agreed that there was tension between Matlock and Rotten, but Matlock says that those tensions were aggravated by McLaren, who wanted to generate chaos in the band as a creative mechanism, and as a way of building the band's image. He wanted Matlock to leave, and to replace him with Vicious, saying "if Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude". ha Vicious had become the Sex Pistols' uber-fan, never missing a concert. He was encouraged to be drunk and disorderly, with Wobble saying, "Sid was offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the people around the Pistols. None of them would have gone over the top. He was their kamikaze pilot, and they were all too happy to strap him in and send him off." Vicious played his first show with the Sex Pistols on 3 April 1977, at
The Screen on the Green; his debut was filmed by
Don Letts and appears in
Punk Rock Movie. But he could not play well and had no bass experience, so guitarist Steve Jones played bass on the band's debut album, ''
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols''. Vicious was allowed to play bass on one track, "
Bodies", but his contribution was later overdubbed by Jones. He also missed most of the band's rehearsals and recording sessions because he was in hospital with
hepatitis, likely caused by
intravenous drug use. By this time, Vicious was using heroin, with many believing that his mother was his supplier.
Dee Dee Ramone had seen him shooting drugs on more than one occasion, and Rotten's friend John Gray had found Vicious shooting speed while he was still living with his mother; Vicious told him that the drugs were "me mum's". Spungen, who had initially set her sights on Rotten and who supported herself by alternately dealing drugs and working as a topless dancer, made herself useful on the King's Road scene by procuring drugs for musicians. She and Vicious became inseparable, which caused problems with the band, whose members did not like her; McLaren admitted to planning to have her abducted and forced onto a plane back to the United States. Vicious and Spungen had a volatile relationship; Vicious played nursemaid when she was sick and was shy and polite with her mother, who reported watching Spungen cut his meat for him. On the other hand, Spungen was known to be verbally abusive and physically aggressive. Vicious may have facilitated Spungen's occasional prostitution (and watched). According to Rotten's wife Nora Forster, Vicious often hit Spungen and, in her last conversation with her mother, Spungen admitted that beatings which she had previously said were at the hands of strangers actually came from Vicious. In 1977, the Sex Pistols were recording in Wessex Sound Studios at the same time as
Queen. Vicious entered the control room Queen was working in and mockingly called out to them: "Oi, Freddie! Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?" (This was a reference to an earlier NME interview in which Mercury gave parallels between ballet and rock music).
Freddie Mercury responded: "Ah, Simon Ferocious!" and "We're trying dear, we're trying." Mercury then grabbed Vicious by the lapels and threw him out of the room. On 24 December 1977, the Sex Pistols played The Royal Links Pavilion,
Cromer; the next day, the band played two shows at Ivanhoe's in
Huddersfield,
West Yorkshire. It was during the national Fire Brigades Strike and the band performed a matinee for the children of firefighters. In the 2013 documentary ''Never Mind the Baubles: Xmas '77 with the Sex Pistols
, Lydon claimed that Vicious had to be warned not to be the "hardcore, tough rocker bloke" in front of the children. The track of Vicious singing the Johnny Thunders song "Born to Lose", which appears on Sid Sings'', was recorded during this performance, as Vicious stepped in when Lydon left the stage to pose as
Father Christmas. These were the Sex Pistols' last performances in Britain, until the original members reunited for the
Filthy Lucre Tour in 1996. To make matters worse, McLaren, ever eager for more chaos and careful that journalists were on-scene, booked the band, not into the clubs of New York, but into bars in Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. In
San Antonio on 8 January, Vicious felt antagonised by an audience member and struck him on the head with his bass. The next night, 11 January, he punched a hole in the Green Room wall after the band's show at
Cain's Ballroom in
Tulsa. At their 14 January show at the
Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, Vicious did not bother to plug in his bass at all. At the end of the show, Johnny Rotten uttered the famous quote "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?", marking the end of the Sex Pistols. == Post-Sex Pistols ==