Impresario, visionary, charlatan, anarchist, a master manipulator and the pirate king of pop.
These are just some of the words used to describe Malcolm McLaren, today’s person of interest on British Invasion! This week’s column will be an exploration of the man, the myth and the legend of McLaren.
Born in January 1946, McLaren was entrusted in the care of his grandmother Rose Corré Isaacs, after his mother seemingly wanted nothing to do with him. Even if his mother didn’t like him, his grandmother was the opposite and very protective of Malcolm. It was Isaacs who told him the words “to be bad is good… to be good is simply boring,” A mantra he would live by until the end of his days.
His first foray into music management, the industry that would make him infamous, came on the other side of the Atlantic, with the New York Dolls. The foray wasn’t successful — they began working together in 1973, and the band broke up in 1975 — but the red leather and Soviet Union imagery certainly left a mark on pop culture.
The New York Doll’s provocative stage wear was supplied by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s fashion store in London. McLaren first opened the shop in 1971, selling clothes designed by then-girlfriend Westwood. The shop went through many names, the most notable being SEX, and was at the forefront of the burgeoning punk movement in the UK with their radical designs and customers, who started one of Britain’s first punk bands: The Sex Pistols.
The band was started by two customers of the SEX boutique, Steve Jones and Paul Cook, on the advice of McLaren. Originally, it was going to be called QT Jones and the Sex Pistols, but McLaren stepped in and made a few major changes.
First, he fired bassist Glen Matlock and slid Sid Vicious into the role. Even though he had no musical skill, he was hired because he had stage presence. After spotting John Lydon mulling about the store with a shirt that said “I hate Pink Floyd,” he recruited him into the band as the frontman and gave him the stage name Johnny Rotten. As a final touch, McLaren shortened the name to just The Sex Pistols.
Throughout 1977 and 1978, The Sex Pistols were the bane of polite British society and a boon for the tabloids, as their outrageous publicity stunts and offensive music off their debut album got the people talking. But the Americans would be the undoing of the Sex Pistols’ budding career.
Their American tour of 1978 was a train wreck to say the least. Due to infighting and poor planning, the band travelled across the U.S. to fluctuating audiences in a bevy of different moods, as Jones and Cook were about done with Sid Vicious’ antics and Rotten started wanting more control over the band’s direction.
At their final show in San Francisco, Rotten told the crowd, “You ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” In this case, Rotten was talking about McLaren cheating him and his bandmates out of money when they asked for it and the increasing tensions between himself and McLaren. Rotten left the band soon after. The Sex Pistols soon broke up after the death of Sid Vicious in 1979 and Rotten’s lawsuit against McLaren and his management company over a number of improprieties, from missing royalties, improper use of his stage name and control over The Sex Pistols brand.
After his brief stint with The Sex Pistols, McLaren soon dealt with other figures in Britain’s alternative scene in the early 80s, such as Boy George, Adam and The Ants and Bow Wow Wow. On the bright side, none of them ended as acridly as McLaren’s relationship with the former Sex Pistols. On the other side, they’re nothing to write home about.
He also tried his hand at a solo career, releasing two albums of note. He worked with hip-hop radio show duo The World’s Famous Supreme Team and producer Trevor Horn to introduce hip-hop to the UK, along with other music influenced by Africa and the Americans, on 1983’s “Duck Rock.” His follow up the next year was the deeply bizarre “Fans,” characterized by the mashup of beautiful opera singers with electronic music.
Outside of his exploits in music, McLaren also tried his hand in another avenue filled with visionaries and liars: Politics! In 1999, McLaren campaigned to become the first Mayor of London. While he didn’t win, he certainly had the most unique platform of all his opposition.
Standout policies from the manifesto he published in The New Statesman include introducing bars in libraries, protecting the right to protest, decriminalizing (some) drugs and starting a lottery for the homeless so they could find housing.
McLaren died in 2010 after a battle with cancer. In an interview with Boston Globe writer Jim Sullivan in 1985, McLaren described his methods like this: “There’s a pattern that seems to be developing in the way I work, right from The Sex Pistols onward. And that pattern seems to me always dealing with something old, with a root, and then turning it upside down and making it new again.”