Malcolm McLaren
Today we pay tribute to that uproarious lord of mischief, Malcolm McLaren, who popped his clogs 8 years ago today. What more can be said of this tiresome entrepreneurial maverick haberdasher who practiced his trade in the dying embers of the New York Dolls’ own “experimental rocket” career, only to perfect his none-more twisted and skewed Lokian weltenshauung with Johnny Rotten’s Sex Pistols – fetishistically be-kilting hard case council bully boys and Krautrock lager louts in his bizarre dystopian hybrid of A Clockwork Orange and William Burroughs’ The Wild Boys. But what did he really do? What were his talents? His greatest talents were his ability to create something out of absolutely nothing; to create a youth movement simply because he saw twenty articles of clothing that he could dye black and con the teen dandy con men of Kings Road into wearing them. Malcolm McLaren was thee great Chancer: the Fagen, the Odin and the Guy Debord of his era. Viva la Revolution. Save Petrol, Burn Cars. Long Live Malcolm McLaren.
[Written by Julian Cope]
Punk left a permanent indelible mark on everything in our culture that came after.
And by extension Mr McLaren has influenced all of us one way or another.
How many of us can say that?
It would over state the case to say that punk was dependant on Malcolm McLaren but his antics with The Pistols certainly galvanised its’ impact. The world have been a duller place without him.
As you say ‘Viva la Revolution’ and long live all the forward thinking motherfuckers!
He was a FTMF without doubt. When you put the intelligence and imagination of both he and Lydon in the same room and think about the banter that must have occurred over the years… Well ! No wonder individualism became mainstream.
Thatcher too . . . I think Malcy would appreciate that . . .
“Fans”, especially “Madame Butterfly” was one of my highlights of the eighties. RIP MM, thanks for standing out.
without McLaren’s vision, PuNk would have been another Pub-Rock curio, as good as they were, who really remember’s Chili Willy & The Red Hot Peppers, or a thousand other dire, end of the pier bands..Malcolm McLaren make the mundane glorious, more power to the holy fool_