Malcolm McLaren (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010)

Malcolm McLaren proved to be a visionary of pop culture and a pop cultural icon for over thirty years. An artist in the most post-modern sense of the word, time and time again, he positioned himself at the forefront of cultural movements and twists and turns in generational fashion.

He is probably best recognized for his work in melding fashion with music: “the look of music and the sound of fashion”. In the early 1970s he opened his legendary shop on the King’s Road in London with his then partner, Vivienne Westwood, creating new original and subversive clothing ranges that would dress the Punk Generation and inspire legions of fashion designers.

Alongside fashion, McLaren founded, managed and art directed the iconic band, the Sex Pistols and went on to work with such artists as Boy George, Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow, before becoming a recording artist in his own right. His film of the Sex Pistols, THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE is a Punk classic today. McLaren’s solo albums DUCK ROCK (1981), FANS (1984), WALTZ DARLING (1989) and PARIS (1993) were major breakthroughs of musical genres: Hip Hop, Opera, R&B and lounge music. In 2004, Quentin Tarantino chose McLaren’s track, “About Her” for his film, KILL BILL2. In 1985 McLaren went to Hollywood where he worked as a development executive for Columbia Pictures and Steven Spielberg. In 2006, FAST FOOD NATION, a film which McLaren conceived and co-produced débuted at the Cannes Film festival main competition. Based on the best-selling book by Eric Schlosser, and directed by Richard Linklater it was released in fall 2006. McLaren’s “radio films” which he scripted and presented for the BBC garnered critical acclaim and 2 Sony Gold (“Radio Oscars”) awards: “Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of London” (Best Music Special) in 2007 and “Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of Los Angeles” (Best Feature) in 2008.

Meanwhile, for the first time in his life, he began giving live performances: a unique mixture of autobiographical storytelling, music and video projections in clubs all over Europe. He featured in a 3-hour reality-documentary program called The Baron on ITV-1 to much acclaim and also played Big Brother in the revamped version of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK: Celebrity Hijack. McLaren repackaged his solo albums, to be re-issued in a new DVD/CD format. Unfortunately this project was stunted at various turns by intricate paper trails within the industry, and he never managed to clear his way through.

Finally, returning to his roots as an artist, McLaren premiered SHALLOW 1-21, a series of twenty-one “Musical Paintings”—short films set around music that he composed. SHALLOW 1-21 was unveiled on 2 June 2008 in a special exhibition as part of Art Basel Projects, a new section curated by the Art Basel committee at the Art Basel 39 fair in Basel, Switzerland. Thereafter, SHALLOW had its North American premiere the last week of June 2008 in Times Square, New York City on the MTV 44 ½ screen. The works were on display for the entire summer as part of Creative Time’s (New York’s leading public arts organization) re-launch of their artist video program formerly called “The 59th Minute”. Winter 2008, SHALLOW was exhibited at the Royal Academy of London as part of a show on William Burroughs. McLaren was known throughout the fashion and music industries as a provocateur, a destructionist, anarchist, and remarkable visionary. As he himself said in a piece for British Broadsheet the Observer, in 2008: “I always said punk was an attitude. It was never about having a Mohican haircut or wearing a ripped t-shirt. It was all about destruction, and the creative potential within that.” (McLaren, November 16, 2008).

The news of Malcolm McLaren’s death on Thursday, April 8th was a great shock that reverberated across the globe. He had been battling with cancer since October 2009 and was receiving treatment in a clinic in Switzerland, where he died. He had kept his illness private from many associates and friends. We have been both proud and privileged to administrate the vast majority of Malcolm’s catalogue and he will be greatly missed by all the team at peermusic UK, our colleagues in international offices and by his many generations of fans across the world.