MALCOLM McLAREN, who died of cancer aged 64 in New York yesterday, was a flamboyant entrepreneur and impresario who made his name during the punk rock years of the late 1970s.
In typically boastful fashion he claimed to have invented punk, but perhaps will be best remembered for managing The Sex Pistols and artfully constructing their notorious status.
A sort of latter day Renaissance man, McLaren – never shy about estimating his cultural influence – was also a fashion shop owner, a successful recording artist in his own right and something of a cultural touchstone in music and fashion.
Born in north London, he was an art school dropout who first came to attention in the early 1970s when he persuaded the US band The New York Dolls to engage him as their manager. Soaking up the nascent counter-cultural punk rock scene in New York he returned to Britain with plans to launch a “punk revolution”.
With his then girlfriend, the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, he set up the infamous “Sex” fetish shop in London’s King’s Road and assembled The Sex Pistols from a collection of customers/ hangers-on at the shop. Steeped in Situationist philosophy and always with a keen eye for a front-page-grabbing publicity stunt, he made The Sex Pistols the most infamous band of their generation.
The Pistols had a brief but very successful career (a number one album and controversial hit singles) and remain a massive influence on today’s scene.
Tensions with the band’s lead singer, John Lydon, caused the band to implode in 1978 and there was an acrimonious court case between manger and band over royalties and copyright issues. In the 1980s, McLaren released one of the earliest hip-hop records (Dutch Rock in 1983) and also managed the briefly famous group Bow Wow Wow.
He remained a highly quotable and entertaining cultural commentator and in 2000 said he was going to run for the newly elected position of London mayor – though his campaign never got off the ground. Three years ago he was supposed to appear on the reality TV show, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, but he pulled out the night before, saying he had never heard of any of the other contestants. He also co-produced the documentary film Fast Food Nation(shown at the Cannes Film Festival) and a series of his "sound paintings" was shown on a giant screen in New York's Times Square. His son by Vivienne Westwood, Joe Corre, is the founder of the successful lingerie retail chain, Agent Provocateur. Westwood yesterday described McLaren as "very charismatic, special and talented".
Speaking to this reporter just days before McLaren’s death, Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon said he never really, as conventional wisdom has it, hated his ex-manager and courtroom adversary. “We were a great band but we had those awful management problems with Malcolm” says Lydon.
“After the very last ever Sex Pistols show in San Francisco (in 1978), he left me stranded without any money or plane ticket home. The whole thing had become a joke and he wasn’t even speaking to me at the time. Then we had this insane court case and what really annoyed me was that he was claiming he owned my nickname “Johnny Rotten”. It was a very frustrating time. With The Pistols broken up, punk just become a coat hanger for people with studded leather jackets and spiky hair.”
The main chronicler of the UK punk scene, writer Jon Savage, said yesterday of McLaren: “Without Malcolm there would not have been any British punk. He’s one of those rare individuals who had a huge impact on the cultural and social life of his nation. What he did with fashion and music was extraordinary.”
The ex-bass player with The Stone Roses, now with Primal Scream, “Mani” Mountfield, said yesterday: “What Malcolm and the Sex Pistols started was a generation of musicians who had the balls to think for themselves and challenge the normal working practices of the recording industry.
“I and many others of my generation are indebted to him for showing us the way. RIP Malcolm McLaren, a true innovator, visionary, instigator and agent provocateur.”
