R.I.P. Mac
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainme ... story.html-Malcolm McLaren, who died Thursday aged 64, came to public attention in 1976 as the manager of the Sex Pistols, the punk band which he steered to fame and notoriety before their implosion barely two years later.
Presenting himself as Svengali and arch media manipulator, McLaren went on to create and promote other bands such as Bow Wow Wow, wrote an opera, appeared on television as a pundit on the phenomenon of punk, and considered running, in 2000, as a candidate for mayor of London.
He once said: "I am a product of the '60s. All I have ever felt is disruptive - I don't know any other way."
The son of a Scottish engineer, McLaren was born on Jan. 22, 1946 in Stoke Newington, London. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother, Rose, who encouraged in him a subversive spirit. At school, he developed a talent for manipulating his classmates, on one occasion luring them to garbage dump and making them get into a large cardboard box he had saved in order that they could be his "Box Gang."
At 18, he went to Harrow Art School, where he lost his virginity to a talented designer five years his senior called Vivienne Westwood. He also met Jamie Reid, who would later create the Sex Pistols's provocative and influential graphics.
In the late '60s, McLaren drifted through several art colleges, immersing himself in the writings of the Situationist International (SI), the French provocateurs whose new media practices included manifestos, broadsheets, pranks and disinformation; and he loitered on the fringes of King Mob, an SI splinter group.
For an unfinished film made while still at art college, he wrote a manifesto which would sum up the underpinnings of punk: "Be childish. Be irresponsible. Be disrespectful. Be everything this society hates."
In 1971, with Westwood (who by then had had a child by him), McLaren opened a boutique at 430 King's Road in Chelsea. At first called Let It Rock, and then Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, the shop sold then-unfashionable 1950s Teddy Boy drapes and crepe-soled shoes to a new generation.
By 1974, the shop, now renamed Sex, and later Seditionaries, was selling Westwood's proto-punk bondage gear and T-shirts printed with Lettristinspired slogans. Run with the help of Jordan, a girl from the suburbs who favoured S&M gear, the shop was a hangout for a cast of young, bored and frustrated misfits, among them Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock.
In 1975, McLaren went to New York, where he became obsessed with the New York Dolls, a glam-metal male band who performed in high heels, Lurex tights and makeup, though in an aggressive style which would make them influential to punks.
McLaren soon talked his way into becoming the band's manager. His first move, the better to shock bourgeois Americans, was to put the Dolls into Maoist Red Guard outfits and have them play in front of a hammer and sickle flag; but New York was unimpressed by the band's new image and, disillusioned by the sudden downturn in their fortunes, Thunders and the drummer, Jerry Nolan, quit soon afterwards.
Undeterred, McLaren returned to London, intent on creating a band in the way that the '50s manager Larry Parnes moulded such stars as Billy Fury and Marty Wilde. When Steve Jones pestered him to find a rehearsal room for his band, McLaren did so; and with the addition as lead singer of John Lydon, another denizen of Sex, rechristened Johnny Rotten for the state of his teeth, the Sex Pistols were born.
After the demise of the Sex Pistols, McLaren continued to put out unreleased material by the band, until the aptly-named Flogging A Dead Horse album of 1979.
The band sued McLaren in 1986 for royalties, eventually receiving £1 million in an out-of-court settlement. In 1979, McLaren was invited to provide a new image for the band Adam and the Ants.
For a consultancy fee of $1,500, he came up with a combination of American Indian and pirate garb, before suggesting to the band's guitarist and rhythm section that they abandon their singer, Adam Ant, and join a new group McLaren was forming called Bow Wow Wow.
With 14-year old Annabella Lwin on vocals, Bow Wow Wow released the single C30, C60, C90, Go (1980), a driving, Burundi-influenced paean to home taping composed by McLaren. This was followed by the cassette-only EP, Your Cassette Pet.
Bow Wow Wow's powerful and innovative sound was eventually rewarded by Top 10 hits with Go Wild in the Country and I Want Candy; but after a number of publicity stunts, including a photograph of Annabella Lwin semi-nude with the band in an album-sleeve pastiche of Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, the band folded in 1983.
In the '90s, McLaren moved into television, producing commercials and, in 1991, a poorly received Christmas show, The Ghosts of Oxford Street, which featured The Pogues, Tom Jones and the Happy Mondays.
He returned to recording in 1993, signing to the French label Vogue and releasing an album, Paris, which gained poor reviews.
In 1998, he attempted unsuccessfully to launch a group named Jungk, consisting of five beautiful Chinese girls.
McLaren co-produced for the film adaptation of Fast Food Nation, shown in 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival, and in the same year presented the documentary series Malcolm McLaren's Musical Map of London for BBC Radio 2.
This was followed in 2007 by Malcolm McLaren's Life and Times in L. A. McLaren's son by Westwood, Joe Corre, became proprietor of the successful lingerie shop Agent Provocateur.
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Posted: 08 Apr 2010 18:28
Whoa! Wow, and I am wearing black skinny leggings at work today, a look he and Vivienne introduced, back in my day.........
-are reuniting happily. And with a minimum of gobbing and slamming........