Malcolm McLaren RIP

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/malcolm-mclaren-dies-aged-64-1939621.html

I was just thinking it was time for a revival of his work as a recording artist

:/

RIP

rip

I was listening to Duck Rock just yesterday. :(

I had no idea he was ill.

Oh no! ;_;

RIP

do the double dutch in heaven, malcolm

Heh ebo
ebo ebo ebonettes

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZLNqAa6roOs/SkspM2bmzKI/AAAAAAAABs8/KwcruZ1J_vg/s400/scratchin%27.jpg

wow, bummer. one of the great rock'n'roll hype men. and "buffalo gals" is total A+ godhead classic.

i've listening to a a bunch of the work he did with World's Famous Supreme Team over the last few months. His Waltz Darling album too. both had moments of sheer beauty and genius.

but that Algebra song is bollocks

Love the 12" mix of Madame Butterfly and Double Dutch.

his website currently reads: "Malcolm will return shortly..."

nu-Easter

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZLNqAa6roOs/SkspM2bmzKI/AAAAAAAABs8/KwcruZ1J_vg/s400/scratchin%27.jpg

radiant baby = instant cred

rip

RIP

@jesshopp I never regarded Malcolm McLaren as anything other than the creepy svengali coaxing 14yo Annabella Lwin's nudity on BowWowWow covers. Sors.

I'd like to find one thing that doesn't offend Jessica Hopper's delicate sensibilities, plz.

Duck Rock is grade A classic. this is sad.

^^
Absolutely, justifiably Metal Box/NMTB gets all the kudos, but I go back to Duck Rock a lot more than those pair. Love, love, love some of the Waltz Darling material too, especially this which manages to be both sensual, funny and a whole lotta strange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcc3mgXnUzY

RIP

you were really something else

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLQRIXZdLhM

Aw, this sucks. Underrated for his musical output in my opinion - he had a great run for a few years - Duck Rock, Swamp Think, Fans, Round The Outside are all great idiocyncratic albums. Perhaps over-rated as a mover and shaker but I have always been impressed by his attitude and creativity. His general process seems to be "let's throw a bunch of disparate things together and if it works, we'll glorify our vision later" - a technique that a lot of people copied.

Just thinking about him pontificating from the bath in the Great Rock'N'Roll Swindle brings a smile to my face.

His last interview about the whole pistols/punk thing must surely then be the one in Jon Savage's 'Englands's Dreaming Tapes' from last year. It's a brilliant interview and like nothing i'd ever read him do before, very honest about the whole era with none of the usual attendant hype.

RIP

RIP

I'm a bit shocked but wasn't he kind of a colossal jerk? Just thinking back to the later Pistols years, the whole Adam & The Ants/Bow Wow Wow thing...

never thought kim fowley would outlive malcom.

r.i.p. malcom! thanx for the great music. thanx for getting bow wow wow together! (a band more near and dear to me than the sex pistols)

i think the whole adam/bow wow wow thing ended up working well for everyone. in retrospect.

Agreed.

um except Adam?

The whole um.. 'Chicken' magazine episode is the real clincher for anyone looking for reasons to diss him but i mean.. let's not go into THAT.

Blackpoolhoaxer This was filmed in The Bronx in June 1983. I was there!! It was not made in S. Africa. The music comes from there and may have been recorded there but this vid was shot in a youth club in Bronx. I was 17 and was there while this was being filmed. It took about 3 hours all up. My brother was going out with a girl who worked at Arista records and she arranged it. Had to pay our own air fare though!!

RIP.

What is the deal with this line from the NY Times:

"Fronted by John Lydon — whose repugnant appearance and Irish background earned him the stage name Johnny Rotten"

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/malcolm-mclaren-impresario-and-rock-music-manager-is-dead/

?!

ny times gettin' back into its circa 1893 anti-Irish thang

anyway, RIP -- dude was a character!

Nice obit and Top 5 and an old interview, from Popjustice: http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4628&Itemid=206

Love the 12" mix of Madame Butterfly...

Thought I was the only one on the planet who was a fan of "Fans!"

RIP Malcolm, you provacateur you.

No way, "Fans" is total classic. That "Madame Butterfly" interpretation was mind-blowing when I first heard it and seems no less now.

RIP Malcolm.

Was hoping this was a put-on. RIP

Last time I was up in Manchester I was singing Fans' praises with PiscesX after a chance encounter in the Cornerhouse as it goes...

This is why I love ILX. No one in my real life likes (or has even heard) "Fans."

i like it too! let's form a fan club.

@jesshopp I never regarded Malcolm McLaren as anything other than the creepy svengali coaxing 14yo Annabella Lwin's nudity on BowWowWow covers. Sors.

14yo me supported him on this issue tbqh

well, i liked it when it came out a bunch. can't say i've heard it much since.

"14yo me supported him on this issue tbqh"

OTM! same here. i was totally in love.

Can't stop LOLing at 'repugnant appearance + Irish background'

I saw Bow Wow Wow in a club in the early 80s, and Annabella actually came out of the dressing room after the gig and played pinball! She really was remarkably beautiful.

She was stunning. Even now, she's still quite attractive.

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/143/l_68546595c135440fb513e5077c6a863d.jpg

This is why I love ILX. No one in my real life likes (or has even heard) "Fans."

Doubt anyone anyone knows him in my real life. Let alone knows Fans.

This sucks royally. Yes, he was a jerk, but one talented motherfucking jerk. RIP, dude.

I testified in court against him a few years ago. He was one big visionnary asshole.

You shouldn't laugh but that is a pretty funny post.

The NY Times clarified their statement somewhat. It now reads:

"The band was fronted by John Lydon, whose repugnant appearance and Irish background inclined Mr. McLaren (as he stated in the documentary “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle”) to saddle him with the pejorative stage name Johnny Rotten."

RIP

jessica hopper is a prude. she seems to derive a considerable portion of her identity from being offended by things that are, in the scheme of things, very innocuous.

so, she's sort of the anti-malcolm mclaren i suppose.

not to say this guy wasn't kind of a dubious psued. but he was a dubious psued that made some surprisingly good music.

thanks for weighing in amateurist.

lol for sum reason i got jess hopper and jessica harvell confused for a sec there

Jessica Harvell!

Way hotter than Jessica Hopper IMO.

It's kind of pretentious to be offended on behalf of someone who's no longer offended about how a dead person treated them.

As it says:

Statement from Johnny Rotten about Malcolm Mclaren "For me Malc was always entertaining, and I hope you (cont) http://tl.gd/ppp3e

Misread "cont" as something else there for a second...

stupid cont

In the summer of 1983, as a 12YO, I found the lack of pop music on Norwegian radio frustrating, and ended up listening to Radio Lux on a bad radio. Surely, this was 20 years after Lux's golden age, but for me, 1983 is the golden year of Lux, and also one golden year of British hitlist pop. I ended up listening to it a lot that summer and autumn.

What does this have to do with Malcom McLaren? Well, "Double Dutch" was being played on constant rotation on Lux that summer, and this strange song is largely what I connect with McLaren. Surely, I know his part in Sex Pistols, but never liked them, so for me it's more about his own work. Which was interesting in its own way with its combination of modern beats and electronics together with American square dance.

r u confusing "Double Dutch" with "Buffalo Gals"?

RIP. I will stan for "Madame Butterfly" any day of the week.

all the "he was an asshole, you know" commentary seems sort of point-missing to me. of course he way. who would think otherwise?

of course he WAS, i mean.

RIP

Also there's a time and place thing going on here. He may well have been a bit of a dick on occasion but, y'know, get a grip. No man's an island etc.

McLaren is classic for Duck Rock and Buffalo Gals and dud for the way he mismanaged the Pistols finances.

Tom Ewing, hero:

RIP Malcolm McLaren. Best troll ever.

"of course he WAS, i mean."
From what little I know about the guy, he reveled in being a scoundrel, so it seems weirdly appropriate to point out his greatest hits of scoundrelry as tribute, if nothing else. To this day I have no idea what his angle was with chiptunes. Truly a master player.

RIP Talcy Malcy. Playing Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants just cos.

Tributes coming in from
Vivienne Westwood: http://www.nme.com/news/malcolm-mclaren/50581
Wobble: http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/04/09/sex-pistols-manager-malcolm-mclaren-dies-115875-22172162/

This is getting really sad now actually. I mean in the old fashioned sense :(

This is amazing, although I am biased: http://imomus.com/mclarencomplete.html

Rip and...

"Fronted by John Lydon — whose repugnant appearance and Irish background earned him the stage name Johnny Rotten"

...wooooah!

Fucking hell.

Obviously this is sad for all the reasons mentioned above, but whenever someone like Malc or Tony Wilson dies it does sort of highlight how people like that ("mavericks," for want of a better word) seem to give the music industry an extremely wide berth at the present time. Perhaps it's because there barely is any industry to speak of anymore. Unless I'm missing something/someone?

Gotta say that was a pretty classy quote from Mr. Lydon considering the battles he had with Malcolm.

Wasn't he to blame for the Pistols breaking up?

Pistols broke themselves up, but McLaren took all the money (through publishing rights, etc).

And the New York Dolls as well?

His wiki entry is pretty thorough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_mclaren

The whole um.. 'Chicken' magazine episode is the real clincher for anyone looking for reasons to diss him but i mean.. let's not go into THAT.
― piscesx, Thursday, April 8, 2010 7:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

link?

farewell, you culturally significant piece of shit.

At about midnight last night I was skimming the obits and news online and thought 'That's really nice that they've got a Tim Westwood tribute on DiS. Good on them for thinking of the McLaren/hip hop connection.'

It was literally two hours before I realised that the quote was from Vivienne Westwood not Tim.

"Dis is well dark news innit bruv? Brah Malcy will be well missed, brap brap."

Evidence of the 'Chicken' episode seems to be thin on the ground because it never actually existed. But I seem to remember reading about the proposal in Smash Hits at the time. It was going to be a p0rn mag for kids basically.

RIP

RIP Malc :(

Good riddance and fuck off. </punk spirit>

At his funeral, I reckon the pallbearers should be dressed in bondage trousers

the guardian's piece didn't go much beyond 'sex pistols manager'. bigger obit to follow, no doubt.

looking at youtube i'd forgotten the forays into world music and square dancing. his championing of chip tunes didn't come to much.

full obit now up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/09/malcolm-mclaren-obituary

who cares if he was a dick. did way more good than harm. totally interesting dude rip.

From Rip It Up and Start Again:

Vermorel believes McLaren's master scheme was "to create a child porn scandal implicating as many people as he could." Not just EMI, who was financing Chicken, but the BBC, too.A documentary crew headed by Alan Yentob had been following McLaren around for a program on the marketing of Bow Wow Wow. Partly impelled by his usual lust for maximum media mayhem, McLaren also wanted to make a serious polemical point, exposing pop music as porn for children...and pop as porn using children to titillate adults.

With typical ruthlessness, McLaren, in his eagerness to embarrass the music and media establishment, showed no concern whatsoever about the youngsters (Annabella and the other teenage models) or old friends (Vermorel) who would have been embroiled in the scandal. When he went to remonstrate with McLaren, says Vermorel, "alcolm just laughed and said, 'You should be telling all this to the judge! When the shit hits the fan, I'll be in South America.' So I told EMI what was going on. And they tld Yentob, and he freaked out, and those tapes have been in the BBC vault ever since."

...Chickennever hatched. According to Vermorel, the only physical evidence of Chicken's existence was the rate card for advertising in the magazine." But Bow Wow Wow's second release, Your Cassette Pet, continued to expolit the underage-sex angle.

honestly that passage is incredibly vague. lots of lacunae. weird.

the double dutch song seems like an obvious mbaqanga (sp?) rip/homage, no? probably some easy ideological objections could be made to mclaren using _that_ particular source for a song about afro-american folkways, but whatever.

r u confusing "Double Dutch" with "Buffalo Gals"?

Nope. "Double Dutch" was the UK hitlist hit from the "Duck Rock" album.

the biggest UK hitlist hit, I mean.

are there good books about/by mclaren? the 2002 momus interview linked above mentions malcolm writing a book, was this an autobiography and did it ever come out?

http://www.malcolmmclaren.com/

Lol.

The Word have done a tribute playlist on Spotify: http://bacn.me/1a6s

xxxpost I think Momus was alluding to the potential autobiography Malcolm might write.

The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren was an authorized biography, rather than an autobiography but it certainly tells his side of the story. It's a good read. I can't see that a subsequent autobiography would have been worthwhile, although there are a couple of things that are skimmed over like the post-Duck Rock recording of the Swamp Thing tracks. I'd like to know more about that.

It's been a long time since I read Wicked Ways, I don't have a copy, and I've read more Pistols books than is healthy, but I think the account of the whole ugly Chicken episode from Rip It Up and Start Again is lifted pretty much directly from there. If I'm right, he authorised it, warts and all.

It's been a few years since I read it too - I got it from the library. I do remember that Chicken thing but the impression I got that it was a wind-up that never went anywhere. At no point was it suggested that he thought a p0rn mag for kids was a good idea.

It's a good idea for comedy prank! c.f. Brass Eye

geir "double dutch" is not a square dance song, it's borrowing quite obviously from african music, esp. mbaqanga, no?

actually what i am doing, geir doesn't know the difference between those things. and he'll probably assert that there is no difference. i might as well be trying to get my alarm clock to distinguish between brahms and bruckner.

Double Dutch is based on a Boyoyo Boys song:

This group would perhaps be unknown outside of South Africa had they not come to the attention of the great rock & roll swindler, Malcolm McLaren, who took their hit single "Puleng" and adapted it for his own production, "Double Dutch." McLaren came to blows with the Boys after refusing to share the royalities from his single. Only after a lengthy legal struggle did the group receive their due. Out of court and on stage, the Boyoyo Boys offer an ebullient music, consisting of chanted, bouncing rhythms. The group suffered a tragic blow in 1984 with the slaying of their drummer, but with their next album, proved to the world that they were Back in Town.

to be fair to geir, he's not necessarily talking about DD when he mentions square dancing:

"Well, "Double Dutch" was being played on constant rotation"
...
"so for me it's more about his own work. Which was interesting in its own way with its combination of modern beats and electronics together with American square dance."

the subject has widened by the end there.

watched buffalo gals video again this morning. it's an odd mix of seven brides for seven brothers and breakdance 2 (electric boogaloo). the next one was weirder, squaredancing done be people wearing american sportswear chic (pre-dating tank girl by some years). i'd completely forgotten Soweto and the Zulu thing (which were great, but relatively untouched by him)

but later in the thread he says, no, i wasn't talking about buffalo gals, but double dutch.

possible "xpost", but this needs to be shared:

Anarchy in Gardenstown - how Sex Pistols guru was thrown out of a Highland village - The Scotsman
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Anarchy-in-Gardenstown--how.3283235.jp

lol

McLaren forced his way back and declared: "Jesus is a sausage," before being bundled from the podium.

My mate at Southern Records says that all film sequels should have the same upgrade as Breakdance. And when you consider Schindler's List 2 (Electric Boogaloo) or The Unbearable Lightness Of Being 2 (Electric Boogaloo) or Threads 2 (Electric Boogaloo), I can only make him right.

Ebert remembers Who Killed Bambi?

WFMU just ran Irwin Chusid's 1983 interview with MMcL...really interesting, worth listening to the archived show when it's updated later this evening.

I found that Ebert piece to be really interesting. The idea of Meyer, Ebert, McLaren and Rotten all working together is quite a thing to contemplate. Not really surprising it didn't work out but it has to be one of the great "what ifs" of 20th century popular culture. Thanks for linking. It's weird how there's a couple of bits that almost foreshadow what would happen in real life, like the final line of the movie would have been Rotten saying "Did yer ever had the feeling yer being watched" and Sid's quote after reading the script "I don't think my mum will like the bit about the heroin".

my bit...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JySddEdGkVY/S8ZMZPlvydI/AAAAAAAAAcA/TXY2i252Qco/s1600/God-Save-Malcolm--WHT-T.jpg

http://pollywannacracka.blogspot.com/2010/04/duck-rock-4-life.html

that momus/mclaren interview linked above makes both of them seem like pretentious nitwits. which sounds about right.

i thought it was a great interview. 8yrs on it makes me wonder where and in who the spirit of punk is hiding now ?

The spirit of punk was reincarnated in a baby girl born in Asia born on 1/1/2000. She will restore punk to world dominance in 2018.

Aja?

i thought it was a great interview. 8yrs on it makes me wonder where and in who the spirit of punk is hiding now ?

― beat boy damager, power 2 the people (Its all about face), Thursday, April 15, 2010 4:54 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

like for serious? they just come off as pompous wankers to me. especially all the "people nowadays, they've lost touch with (x)" speculation which in my mind = total blowhard. through, i dunno, baudrillard into the mix and there'd be stratospheric levels of self-satisfied hyperbole about the "zeitgeist."

also "spirit of punk" whatevs

isn't momus like philosophically opposed to punk, too? he's mentioned this numerous times.

two 'pompous wankers' talking smack is what makes it great. and yeah 'spirit of punk', oi oi and the whole subversive fuck the world thing, i know it's cliche but whos doing that these days ?

'isn't momus like philosophically opposed to punk, too? he's mentioned this numerous times."

haha...and who sounds like pretentious twat now then

"whole subversive fuck the world thing, i know it's cliche but whos doing that these days"

I feel the magnet-denials/fuck-the-worldism of ICP are subversive but in the wrong direction.

haha...and who sounds like pretentious twat now then

er what? momus has written that about punk numerous times here and on his various web sites. just strikes me as odd that he would reject the sex pistols and then look to mclaren as some kind of guru.

i saw a couple wearing matching ICP t-shirts in the health-food co-op today.

punk music was bollocks if you ask me but the DIY ethics and aesthetics were choice. McLaren was always more than the one dimension the sex pistols portrayed.

so yeah, dunno about guru but as a role model on how to make grand artistic statements irrespective of success, failure or morality, he was quite inspirational.

everyone seems to have behaved brilliantly over this, it seems to have brought out the best in all his ex friends ex enemies ex wives and whoever else. no one's had a bad word to say.

even NME has got it right, their best cover in *years*

http://www.nme.com/layout/magImage.php

time heals i wounds, i guess. or maybe he made up with people late in life. certainly he fucked enough people over once upon a time.

"time heals i wounds" is of course the bad brains version of "time heals all wounds"

"Momus says nowt but his prayers, y'knaa"

Funeral was today.

Guess who: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47694000/jpg/_47694434_adamant_getty226282.jpg

Adam Ant - look'n like a hobo

...as if he needed the pic on his hat

I've must have seen a dozen WDYLL threads, and I'll be damned if there's a man or woman amongst us who can call Adam fucking Ant out for looking like a hobo.

If only i knew what a WDYLL thread was ?

Just sayin prince charming seems a lifetime ago. Anyone got a full frontal of the pic to see how the head matches the rest of the ensemble ?

or a photostream of the funeral/procession. It sounded fittingly grand and irreverently spectacular.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/4/22/1271945221542/Malcolm-McLaren-Funeral-006.jpg

hobo chic ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2010/apr/22/malcolm-mclaren-funeral?lightbox=1

he looks good for his age, tho.

regarding mclaren being some sort of shady, untrustworthy character in business deals...

what did he actually do that was so bad? aside from kicking adam ant out of his own band. or is this just a rep he played up himself?

everyone seems to have behaved brilliantly over this, it seems to have brought out the best in all his ex friends ex enemies ex wives and whoever else. no one's had a bad word to say.

even NME has got it right, their best cover in *years*

― piscesx, Friday, 16 April 2010 06:01 (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha. will this image change every week now?

ah brilliant! i hope so. wonder why it does/ did that? how very 21st century.

Funeral sounds a laugh anyway
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/25/malcolm-mclaren-funeral-sean-ohagan

Ebert publishes Who Killed Bambi? to the web

hmmm.....

RIP

anyone else at this point in malcolm mclaren and the bootzilla orchestra's "call a wave" hear "women of ireland", e.g. this kind of bit?