Great bands with bad management

elvis comes to mind, though the colonel arguably kept him afloat as much as he ruined him.

I bought myself a liarbird
He came with free drinks just to blur
The lies falling out like rain
On an average English summer's afternoon

I bought myself a new notebook
Sharpened my guitar and went to look
If this biz was just as bongo as the liarbird made out

All he would say
Is ``I can make you famous''
All he would say
All he would say
``Just like a household name'' is
All he would say

Methinks world is for you
Made of what you believe
If it's false or if it's true
You can read it in your bible
Or on the back of this record sleeve

I bought myself a liarbird
Things got more and more absurd
It changed to a cuckoo
And expanded filling up with all I gave

I bought myself a big mistake
He grew too greedy, bough will break
And then we will find that liarbirds
Are really flightless on their own

All he would say
Is ``I can make you famous''
All he would say
All he would say
``Just like a household name'' is
All he would say

Methinks world is for you
There's no handing it back
If it's false or it's true
You can read it in your prayer book
Or on the side of a cornflake pack

I gave away a liarbird
A couple less drinks and now I've heard
The truth shining out like sun
On an average English winter's afternoon

I think I'd be at least equally inclined to say no Vivienne Westwood => no Sex Pistols.

Be that as it may however, having been responsible for managing the shop where Steve and Paul met Glen and later John (and incidentally, don't let's forget that he didn't actually want John to start with - he wanted Midge fuckin' Ure to front the 'Pistols!) doesn't actually make Malcolm a good manager.

On the other hand, his total mis-management of The NY Dolls (leading to their demise and his subsequent attempt to recreate them in the UK); his abysmal mis-handling of every tour the 'Pistols ever embarked on; his misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds of their money which he then wasted on what was little more than his own vanity project (a Sex Pistols movie); the fact that his first act as manager of Adam & The Ants was to sack Adam from his own band and that his second was to reject Boy George as a potential replacement (there really can't be that many managers who've managed to bin two of the most significant singers of the following decade within the course of a couple of weeks!); and his repeated re-writing of history to make every happy coincidence look like part of some fabulous master-scheme, every failure a cunningly-disguided success and every huge cock-up someone's else's fault entirely; all indicate to me that he was in fact a CRAP manager!

Malcolm's other management fails: She Sherrif. The girlie band that was on Poptones, the name escapes me suddenly and I had it 2 mins ago.

Malcolm McLaren has totally been a successful manager for one act.
Rolf: "Can you guess who it is?"

It was the other way 'round if anything.

George was apparently desperate to front Bow Wow Wow.

Malcolm didn't want him to but I can only assume that he must have seen see some potential there and wanted to keep George on side.

I somehow managed to get invited to Bow Wow Wow's first gig (press only) when they took over a theatre (the old Apollo IIRC) and set it all up like a funfair with a great big slide in the middle. At the start of the first song, Annabelle appeared at the top and sang the first verse as she slid down it, before joining the rest of the band on stage.

Halfway through the gig, Anabella was replaced by George. Believe it or not he was actually introduced to the audience as a special suprise guest vocalist "Lieutenant Lush" (I couldn't make pearls like that up even if I wanted to!).

After 1 or maybe 2 songs 'though, Anabella took over again and finished the set.

Boy George - Take It Like A Man - 1995

OK, they mmay not be thought a great band except by a few. Bad management destroyed them.

my answer to the thread: the records. and it's a good thing because "starry eyes" would not otherwise exist!

I believe it's true that he became their manager almost by default when the existing management bailed out because the band were so completely unmanageable, yes.

The only specific ideas that I've repeatedly seen him both claim and been given the credit for 'though are getting the Dolls to all dress in red leather, claim in interviews to be communists, and appear in front of a huge hammer and sickle backdrop.

Of course the word "communist" was never going to create the sort of wild reactionary knee-jerking reaction in the UK that Malcolm was obviously hoping it would in the US; so when he tried to repeat the stunt over here, he substituted the word "anarchist" and encouraged the band to express anti-royalist views rather than anti-democratic ones.

There's no doubt that Malcolm had eye an extraordinary flair for product differentiation and attracting publicity.

Unfortunately he also seems to have had far too little patience and far too much of an ego to ever manage anything properly except possibly (as Mark suggests above) himself.