He became friends with Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, having found himself living around the corner to him in London. They went to parties together and he often travelled with the band on tour taking photos. His most famous series of shots is probably those taken outside Buckingham Palace with Malcolm McLaren, as they signed their new recording contract with A&M Records in March 1977.
Gravelle was a heavy drug user, along with and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. On 12 October 1978, Vicious woke from a drug-fuelled stupor after a prolonged party in his hotel room in Manhattan, to find Spungen had been stabbed to death. He was accused of murder and imprisoned in the tough Riker’s Island jail but was later released on bail pending a full trial.
After being released and upon completion of a detoxification course, he arrived in Manhattan and by chance, bumped into Gravelle. He asked him to find him some heroin and take them to his new girlfriend’s apartment (Michele Robison) who was there with his mother Anne Beverley who was also a heroin user. They sat around doing drugs, and Vicious died of an overdose in the night, Robison and his mother discovering his body the next morning.
Gravelle admits that he supplied the heroin that killed Vicious: “I’m very sad a good friend is gone but if Sid hadn’t got drugs from me he would have got them somewhere else . . . You could see Sid was on a path to self-destruction. It really was the only outcome in the end.”
In 2016 he published The Death Of Photography: The Shooting Gallery, which showcases forty years of his best punk and fashion work. He continues to work as a freelance photographer based in London.
