Malcolm McLaren, Seminal Punk Figure, Dies at 64
Malcolm McLaren, an impresario, recording artist and fashion designer who as manager of the Sex Pistols played a decisive role in creating the British punk movement, died on Thursday in Switzerland. He was 64.
The cause was mesothelioma, a cancer of the linings around organs, said Young Kim, his companion of many years. She said he had been under treatment at a Swiss hospital. He lived in Paris and New York.
Mr. McLaren, a former art student, found an outlet for his ideas about fashion, music and social provocation in the inchoate rock ’n’ roll scene of London in the early 1970s. Operating from the clothing boutique Sex, which he and the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood ran, he brought together four obscure musicians, called them the Sex Pistols and provided them with an attitude suited to Britain in decline: nihilistic rage, expressed at high volume in songs like “Anarchy in the U.K.” and the vitriolic anti-anthem “God Save the Queen.”
Mr. McLaren was a keen student of the French Situationists, who believed in staging absurdist or provocative incidents as a spur to social change. He arranged for the Sex Pistols to sign their contract with A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace and organized a performance of “God Save the Queen” on the Thames, outside the Houses of Parliament, on a boat named the Queen Elizabeth. The police quickly intervened, ratifying the group’s incendiary reputation.
Until their breakup in January 1978, the Sex Pistols epitomized the look, the sound and the attitude of British punk. All three came, in large measure, from Mr. McLaren’s restless brain....
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The cause was mesothelioma, a cancer of the linings around organs, said Young Kim, his companion of many years. She said he had been under treatment at a Swiss hospital. He lived in Paris and New York.
Mr. McLaren, a former art student, found an outlet for his ideas about fashion, music and social provocation in the inchoate rock ’n’ roll scene of London in the early 1970s. Operating from the clothing boutique Sex, which he and the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood ran, he brought together four obscure musicians, called them the Sex Pistols and provided them with an attitude suited to Britain in decline: nihilistic rage, expressed at high volume in songs like “Anarchy in the U.K.” and the vitriolic anti-anthem “God Save the Queen.”
Mr. McLaren was a keen student of the French Situationists, who believed in staging absurdist or provocative incidents as a spur to social change. He arranged for the Sex Pistols to sign their contract with A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace and organized a performance of “God Save the Queen” on the Thames, outside the Houses of Parliament, on a boat named the Queen Elizabeth. The police quickly intervened, ratifying the group’s incendiary reputation.
Until their breakup in January 1978, the Sex Pistols epitomized the look, the sound and the attitude of British punk. All three came, in large measure, from Mr. McLaren’s restless brain....