A youthful Malcolm Mclaren...
I have to admit that as famous as Malcolm McLaren was, I know little about him beyond his media persona. He seemed to be a man with his finger on the pulse, throughout his careers both in fashion and the music industry.
Of course, he was best known as manager of The Sex Pistols and later Bow wow wow. He was often painted (especially by the endlessly bitter John Lydon) as a schister and con man who purposely set out to profit from The Sex Pistols with ill regard for them or their welfare, monies owed etc. But, isn't that the way every music manager/mogul from Uncle Tom Parker to Alan Klein? Was he any worse than say Brian Epstein who manipulated The Beatles by grooming their image, puting them into neat suits thus securing them household acceptance the world over? Lydon eventually got the royalties rightly owed, but never forgave McLaren.
Well as I said I know little about the man apart from his various music projects. I do know that "Buffalo Girls" was a great song as was "Double Dutch", the world would've been a duller place without The Pistols and Annabella Lwin sure looked good on that Bow Wow Wow album cover (itself 'stolen' from a painting by Manet).
Malcolm's most famous pronouncement was..."Be reasonable, demand the impossible" again stolen from the French situationists of the late 1960's, nothing's original and all that...anyway here's the Sex Pistols at the top of their game and actually looking like they're having a bit of fun...
Mojo Magazine On line Obituary...
Malcolm McLaren, the man who - if his own outlandish publicity is to be believed - birthed punk as a cultural force during his tenure as the manager of the Sex Pistols has died at the age of 64. The punk svengali had been diagnosed with cancer which finally claimed his life on Thursday April 8, 2010, in Switzerland.
Born in Stoke Newington in North London on January 22, 1946, McLaren enjoyed a middle class education and eventually attended art college in the '60s before embarking on a life in fashion and music as the '70s dawned.
Influenced by teddy boy culture and retro American rock'n'roll - most notably the likes of Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley- he and his partner Vivienne Westwood opened Let It Rock, a shop on the King's Road, in 1971. A year later he headed to New York to buy stock for the shop when he encountered the New York Dolls and, intrigued by their trashy aesthetic, he began managing them.
Renaming his shop Too Fast To Live, To Young To Die, McLaren was clearly influenced by the Dolls' nihilistic attitude but both parties went their separate ways after a three year struggle. By then he'd developed his shop further and, now called Sex, it became the epicentre for what would become the UK punk scene which was centred around another band he was managing. That band would eventually become the Sex Pistols.
McLaren was largely credited with engineering the Pistols' controversial career - much to singer John Lydon's eternal annoyance who later sued him for unpaid royalties and won in 1987. In hindsight, however, McLaren's ability to create controversy also ended up destroying the band itself after their one and only proper studio album Never Mind The Bollocks, claiming the life of bass player Sid Vicious along the way.
Post-Pistols, McLaren managed Bow Wow Wow fronted by the teenage Annabella Lwin before launching his own musical career drawing on everything from hip hop (Buffalo Gals) opera (Madame Butterfly) to Franco-pop (Paris Paris) along the way.
Ever an outspoken figure, McLaren's endeavours and sloganeering contributed hugely to punk's cultural resonance and will outlive a man who enjoyed nothing more than self-mythology. (source, MOJO magazine).
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