Malcolm McLaren (born January 22, 1946) is an impresario and self-publicist who was the manager of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols. He managed the SEX clothes shop with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in London's Kings Road. Prior to this, he managed the New York Dolls.
Early years
McLaren was raised by his grandmother, Rose Corre who home schooled him until 1955. He went on to attend several English Art Colleges through the 1960's, being expelled from several before leaving school in 1971. It was during this time he began to design clothing, a talent he would later utilize when he became boutique owner.
He had been attracted to the Situationist International movement, which promoted absurdist and provocative actions as a way of enacting social change. In 1968 McLaren had tried unsuccessfully to travel to Paris to take part in the demonstrations there. McLaren would later adopt Situationist ideas into his promotion for the various pop and rock groups he was soon to become involved with.
Seminal involvement in music promotion
McLaren and a business partner Vivienne Westwood opened a London clothing boutique in 1972, and the pair were also designing clothing for theatrical and cinematic productions, such as That'll Be The Day and Mahler (both 1974). McLaren travelled to New York City for a boutique fair in 1974 and it was there that he first saw the New York Dolls. He convinced the band that he could do a better job of managing and promoting them and soon designed red leather costumes for them and utilized a Soviet style hammer & sickle motif for there stage show as a provactive feature in promoting them. This ploy was not successful and the Doll's soon broke up. However, it was while he was managing the Dolls that he first saw the Neon Boys perform. The Neon Boys included Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, who were to later form Television. In may 1975 McLaren returned to England after the Doll's breakup and began managing his new London boutique SEX with his partner Westwood.
McLaren had been greatly impressed with Hell's torn clothing, studded dog collars and leather jackets, and with Hell's dissolute attitude. According to Hell, McLaren approached him and Verlaine about being their manager, but they were not interested. When McLaren returned to London he began looking for young musicians whom he could mold into this "punk" image and soon found a likely candidate in a SEX customer, John Lydon, who was to become Johnny Rotten. McLaren put Lydon together with Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock and named the group the Sex Pistols. McLaren had appropriated/borrowed much of Richard Hell's look to give to this new group.
McLaren utilized Situationist tactics in promoting the band and was able to keep them, more or less constantly in the medias eye for the better part of three years. In 1977 plans were made to make a cinematic record of the group and McLarens role in managing them, a film that was later released in 1979 as The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. The sountrack of this album was released and contains McLarens debut as a singer, on the track "You Need Hands".
The Sex Pistols were a notorious band in the U.K. but McLaren arranged for them to tour the U.S.. The final show of the tour was booked for San Francisco and right after this, the band broke up. McLaren proceeded to look for his "next big thing".
Later career
During the early 1980s he assembled and managed the Burundi influenced pop group Bow Wow Wow. He is also sometimes credited with developing the talents of Adam Ant and Boy George.
He later released some work under his own name, most notably an album Duck Rock (1983), which drew on musical styles from North America and South Africa, among others. The tracks "Buffalo Girls" and "Double Dutch" became chart hits in the UK.
In 1998, he created a band called Jungk, consisting of three Asian females intended to emulate appeal of the then popular Spice Girls. However, this project was not a commercial success.
During 2000, there was speculation that he might stand to be elected as Mayor of London, although ultimately he did not run. He had an exhibition of some autobiographical work at the German Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie called "Casino of Authenticity and Karaoke" about which he gave this interview (audio of it).
In 2003 he heard Bitpop and Chip music and wrote the article "8-Bit Punk" championing 8-bit music. It also notes a planned release in that style by McLaren.
His song "About Her", based on "She's Not There" by The Zombies rose to prominence when used by director Quentin Tarantino in Tarantino's movie Kill Bill Vol. 2, but he was accused of plagiarism for this song in 2005 for allegedly copying the work of a French musician.
See also
- List of number-one dance hits (United States)
- List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart
External citations
McLaren Vh1 Biography[1]