Born on January 22: Malcolm McLaren, England's flamboyant rock crook

With little regard for credibility, this buoyont personality born in 1945 has greedily eaten from all racks.

His tumultuous childhood, with a fickle mother and a rather lax grandmother, doesn't account for everything. A willing rogue, Malcolm had a bad temper. Subliminally, perhaps, this is what prompted him to study at the St Martins School Of Art (from which Alexander McQueen and John Galliano graduated) and various art schools. From the outset, he tried to marry his love of music with his interest in second-hand clothes. In his iconic King's Road boutique (which often changed name), he welcomed his then girlfriend Vivienne Westwood, who was to become the papess of iconoclastic English fashion until her death in 2022.

In the mid '70s, the couple, favoring a form of decadence, acted as groupies for the American group The New York Dolls, taking care of their provocative stage wardrobe. For good measure, their London boutique was named “Sex”, and featured fetishes of all kinds. The contours of their character were already well defined!

Relying on his carpetbagger's glibness, McLaren always finds a way to convince his interlocutors that his often obscene antics embody the unstoppable commercial coup of the future. It's impossible to know whether he's sincere or just trying to bamboozle you in exchange for a big check. He thus appears as the puppet master in the tumultuous advent of the Sex Pistols, who never practiced good taste and moderation either. After “Anarchie In The UK”, which earned them an outcry in 1976, the godfathers of English punk did it again a few months later, in 1977, belching out “God save the Queen/And her fascist regime”. They were banned from the BBC, but Malcolm McLaren was an angel. The cheques are safely tucked away in the evil manager's pocket. Provocation indeed, but it has to pay off! The Sex Pistols' stillborn adventure came to an end in '79, with the film “The Great Rock'n Roll Swindle”. A kind of confession on McLaren's part...

Always ready to divide and conquer, he went on to create the group Bow Wow Wow, offering the microphone to a young singer barely out of her teens, metamorphosed into a short-dressed tribal maiden. And sexy, of course. Bow Wow Wow even managed to produce some memorable tracks like “I Want Candy”. 

Although he was neither a singer nor a musician, McLaren embarked on a solo career in 1983. With little or no follow-through, riding the wave or, better still, sometimes preceding it, he enjoyed dabbling in every conceivable genre. Always with his unique talent for persuasion, he gathered around him some great names. Two random examples: Trevor Horn producing “Duck Rock” (1983) with the modest help of the World's Famous Suprême Team, or a duet with actress Catherine Deneuve on the jazz album “Paris” (1994). At the risk of forgetting one, it would be better not to list all the musical spices McLaren has ever cooked up, from opera to jazz. Suffice it to say that the punk of his early days is totally absent...

He left us on April 8, 2010 in Bellinzona (Switzerland), not without having tried a few years earlier to run for the mayor's office in London!

(Stéphane Soupart - Tr.: MH - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: Portrait of Malcolm McLaren at the Hotel Astoria in Brussels (Belgium) in 1989.