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The hotel has an ornate history, both as a birthplace of creative modern art and home of bad behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange.
It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning in 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.
Leonard Cohen’s song “Chelsea Hotel
” is about an encounter he had with Janis Joplin in one of the rooms. Other songs that feature the hotel include:
“Sara” by Bob Dylan
“Chelsea Morning” by Joni Mitchell
“Chelsea Girl” by Nico
“Hotel Chelsea Nights” by Ryan Adams
“The Chelsea Hotel” by Graham Nash
Famous visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include:
Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Jeff Beck, Cher, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd and many others.
Chelsea Hotel
222 West 23rd Street
New York New York 10011
212 243-3700
Simon Ritchie (aka Sid Vicious) may have not killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen as everyone thinks. He would have been unable to do so as he was then drugged down. But their drug dealer, Michael Morra (aka Rockets Redglare) was there the same night and he might have been the killer.
Interesting theory….