Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010) was an English impresario, rock-artist, clothes designer and boutique owner, notable for combining these activities in a creative way.
Born into a dysfunctional family, he became an art-college dropout and social rebel in the style of the Paris revolutionaries (Situationists) of 1968. With his keen eye for trends, however, he realized that a new style was needed for the young rebels of the 1970s, and largely initiated the punk movement, to which he supplied fashions from the Chelsea boutique 'SEX' that he ran with his girlfriend Vivienne Westwood. He also managed a new band, the Sex Pistols, to which he recruited the nihilistic Johnny Rotten with his torn clothes and tattooed motto 'I Hate'. The issue of a controversial record 'God Save the Queen' satirising the Queen's Jubilee was typical of McLaren's shock-tactics, and he gained valuable publicity by getting himself arrested on a boat outside the Houses of Parliament.
McLaren also performed as a solo artist, helping to introduce Hip-Hop to the UK, and diversifying further into funk/disco/vogueing and electronic opera.
In his last years, he lived in Paris and New York, eventually dying of peritoneal mesothelioma in a Swiss hospital. When accused of turning popular culture into a cheap marketing gimmick, he joked that he hoped it was true.
Read more about Malcolm McLaren: Early Years, New York Dolls, Vivienne Westwood and SEX, Sex Pistols, Other Artists, Solo Musical Career, British Airways Advertisements, Other Projects, Later Life and Death
Famous quotes containing the words malcolm and/or mclaren:
“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)
“Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.”
—Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946)