Malcolm McLaren

Today we pay tribute to that uproarious lord of mischief, Malcolm McLaren, who popped his clogs 8 years ago today. What more can be said of this tiresome entrepreneurial maverick haberdasher who practiced his trade in the dying embers of the New York Dolls’ own “experimental rocket” career, only to perfect his none-more twisted and skewed Lokian weltenshauung with Johnny Rotten’s Sex Pistols – fetishistically be-kilting hard case council bully boys and Krautrock lager louts in his bizarre dystopian hybrid of A Clockwork Orange and William Burroughs’ The Wild Boys. But what did he really do? What were his talents? His greatest talents were his ability to create something out of absolutely nothing; to create a youth movement simply because he saw twenty articles of clothing that he could dye black and con the teen dandy con men of Kings Road into wearing them. Malcolm McLaren was thee great Chancer: the Fagen, the Odin and the Guy Debord of his era. Viva la Revolution. Save Petrol, Burn Cars. Long Live Malcolm McLaren.

[Written by Julian Cope]