Mar 03 2025 45 mins 167
The Chelsea Hotel sits at 222 West 23rd Street in Manhattan…since it was completed in 1884, the place has been a hangout for some very colourful characters…most were New York eccentrics and bohemians who needed a place to live…but it also attracted some famous people.
At one point or another, it was home to sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke who wrote a big chunk of “2001: A Space Odyssey” in his room…later, Stanley Kubrick, the producer of the movie version of the book would stay there…
Other long-term guests included photographer Robert Mapplethorpe stayed there…so did included beat writer Jack Kerouac, playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepherd, actors Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliott Gould, and Jane Fonda…plus, for extra colour, poets William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg—not to mention Andy Warhol and some of his crew.
The Chelsea was also a favourite haunt of musicians…Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Jeff Beck, Joni Mitchell, Alice Cooper, the guys in Pink Floyd, and many, many others.
But the most notorious floor was floor 1…it was designated the “junkie floor,” the place where guests with drug problems were placed so that staff could keep an eye on things…
This was where ex-Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen checked in…they were given room 100.
It was in that room Nancy died…it looks like she was murdered...but by whom? ...Sid was charged with killing her, but did he?.
This is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and this time, it’s the wild story of the death of Nancy Spungen and the questions that still remain decades later…around whether Sid Vicious actually did it.
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