Malcolm McLaren, dead at 64: His greatest hits (and misses)
Malcolm McLaren, who died Thursday at 64, was best known as the manager of the magnificent failure that was the Sex Pistols, a band that made only one album in its brief lifetime that happened to change the world, and then disintegrated.
But he was much more than that. He was a provocateur posing as a svengali, a high-concept artist with virtually no musical talent whatsoever, a marketing genius who understood the power of “branding” long before it became a 21st Century buzz word. He influenced and exploited the worldwide expansion of two inner-city explosions of creativity: punk rock and hip-hop. He also was a brilliant if unconventional fashion designer, a rabble-rousing visual artist, and a vastly entertaining, vastly full-of-himself raconteur. No one who encountered McLaren ever forgot him, for better and often for worse. His greatest “creation,” the London street urchin Johnny Rotten (a k a John Lydon), came to loathe the Sex Pistols manager.
But he was much more than that. He was a provocateur posing as a svengali, a high-concept artist with virtually no musical talent whatsoever, a marketing genius who understood the power of “branding” long before it became a 21st Century buzz word. He influenced and exploited the worldwide expansion of two inner-city explosions of creativity: punk rock and hip-hop. He also was a brilliant if unconventional fashion designer, a rabble-rousing visual artist, and a vastly entertaining, vastly full-of-himself raconteur. No one who encountered McLaren ever forgot him, for better and often for worse. His greatest “creation,” the London street urchin Johnny Rotten (a k a John Lydon), came to loathe the Sex Pistols manager.
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