Malcolm McLaren
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Malcolm McLaren | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Malcolm Robert Andrew Edwards |
| Born | January 22, 1946 |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genre(s) | Punk rock New Wave Hip Hop |
| Occupation(s) | Band manager |
| Associated acts | New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow |
Malcolm McLaren (born Malcolm Robert Andrew Edwards, 22 January 1946, in London) is an English impresario and musician who is best known as being the manager of the punk rock band Sex Pistols.
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[edit] Early years
McLaren was born to Pete McLaren and Emmy Isaacs in the suburbs of postwar London.
His father left when he was two, so he was raised by his grandmother, Rose Corre Isaacs, in Stoke Newington, London. She was a charismatic, formerly wealthy daughter of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who were former diamond dealers. Malcolm told Andrew Denton on Enough Rope, that his grandmother always said to him, "It's good to be bad and it's bad to be good". When Malcolm was six, Emmy Isaac married Martin Levi, a man working in London's rag trade. McLaren’s stepfather and his mother owned a shmatte factory in London’s East End, 'Eve Edwards London Limited', and Malcolm lived in a fine suburban house. Unfortunately, Malcolm and his stepfather never got along, and by the time he hit his teens, Malcolm couldn’t wait to leave home. After a series of jobs (including one as a wine taster), he went on to attend several Art Colleges through the 1960s, being expelled from several before leaving school entirely in 1971. It was during this time that he began to design clothing, a talent he would later utilise when he became a boutique owner.
He had been attracted to the flaming fruit cake movement, which promoted absurdist and provocative actions as a way of enacting social change. In 1968 McLaren had tried unsuccessfully to travel to Paris to take part in the demonstrations there. McLaren would later adopt Situationist ideas into his promotion for the various pop and rock groups he was soon to become involved with.
[edit] The New York Dolls and SEX
In 1971 McLaren and his partner, the designer Vivienne Westwood, opened a London clothing shop called Let It Rock on the Kings Road. The shop sold Teddy Boy clothes and McLaren and Westwood also designed clothing for theatrical and cinematic productions such as That'll Be The Day and Mahler. Let It Rock proved a success but McLaren grew to become disillusioned with the style of shop due to problems with the Teddy Boys who were the shop's main customers.
McLaren travelled to New York City for a boutique fair in 1974 and it was there that he first saw the New York Dolls. He convinced the band that he could do a better job of managing and promoting them. Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders has publicly stated that McLaren only 'hung around' for the last couple of weeks of their existence; while singer David Johansen has similarly dismissed McLaren saying that the Dolls "were briefly under the management of an English haberdasher." McLaren designed red leather costumes for the group and used a Soviet style hammer and sickle motif for their stage show as a provocative feature in promoting them. This ploy was not successful and the Dolls soon broke up. However, it was while he was managing the Dolls that he first saw the Neon Boys perform. The Neon Boys included Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, who were later to form Television. In May 1975 McLaren returned to Britain after the Dolls' breakup and took what he had seen and experienced in New York with him.
McLaren had been greatly impressed with Hell's torn clothing, studded dog collars and leather jackets, and with Hell's dissolute attitude. According to Hell, McLaren approached him and Verlaine about being their manager, but they were not interested.
McLaren decided to change Let It Rock from a shop which sold Rockabilly/Teddy Boy style clothes to one which sold bondage and fetish clothing, including clothing designed by Westwood using the new 'punk' look McLaren had seen in New York. Let It Rock was renamed SEX and began to attract many of London's disenfranchised youths who were attracted by the rebellious nature of the shop.
[edit] The Sex Pistols
By 1975 McLaren had started to manage The Strand, the band who would later become the Sex Pistols. His assistant, Bernie Rhodes (soon to be manager of The Clash), spotted Johnny Rotten who was then sporting green hair, and torn clothes with the words "I hate" scribbled on his Pink Floyd shirt. His appearance and attitude impressed McLaren and Rotten was brought in to audition as a new frontman. Rotten joined, and the band was renamed The Sex Pistols (McLaren stating he wanted them to sound like "sexy young assassins").
In May 1977 the band released God Save the Queen during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. McLaren organised a boat trip down the Thames where the Sex Pistols would perform their music outside Houses of Parliament. The boat was raided by the police and McLaren was arrested, thus achieving his goal to attain publicity.
The band released their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols in October 1977 and played their last UK gig before embarking upon an American tour in January 1978. This tour saw the band split up after a series of arguments. During his time managing the band McLaren was accused by band members (most notably by John Lydon) of mismanaging them and refusing to pay them when asked for money. However McLaren has stated that he had planned out the entire path of the Sex Pistols and in the film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle he set this plan out. The film was criticised for being too skewed towards McLaren and for being a launchpad for McLaren's future career in music as a performer (he performs the Max Bygraves song You Need Hands in the film) as well as a manager.
McLaren kept the rights for the Sex Pistols until Lydon took him to court in the 1980s to win the rights from McLaren. Lydon won and gained complete control from McLaren in 1987. McLaren and Lydon have refused to speak to each other since the band split and in the 2000 film, The Filth and the Fury, the surviving members of the Sex Pistols put their version of events on film.
[edit] Post Pistols management
After the Pistols breakup McLaren managed Adam & the Ants, sacking Adam after a few weeks, recruiting a new singer and turning them from bleak post-punk into the colourful and percussive Bow Wow Wow. Bow Wow Wow owed much of their unique sound to their use of Burundi style drumming. This use of African rhythms prefigured the world music boom by some years. Ironically, Adam Ant, after being sacked from his own band, recruited new musicians and followed much the same development, but with markedly more commercial success. Bow Wow Wow were fronted by the 14 year old Annabella Lwin who was controversially pictured nude on the cover of the band's See Jungle!... album.
[edit] Solo musical career
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In 1983 McLaren released Duck Rock, an album which mixed up influences from Africa and the Americas, including hip-hop. The album proved to be highly influential in bringing hip-hop to a wider audience in the UK. Two of the singles from the album ("Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch") became major chart hits on both sides of the Atlantic.
He then turned his eyes to electronic music and opera in the 1984 single, Madame Butterfly, based on the opera. The track is arranged with drum machines, atmospheric synthesizers and spoken verses. It was an unlikely hit, reaching #13 in the UK and #16 in Australia. The producer of the single, Stephen Hague, became a much sought after producer in the techno pop genre following his work with McLaren on the following full length LP Fans.
In 1989, he returned with the album Waltz Darling, a funk/disco/vogueing inspired album. Waltz Darling incorporated elements of his former albums, ie spoken verses, string arrangements and eclectic mix of genres but featured such prominent musicians like Bootsy Collins or Jeff Beck with a glitzy, LA-style production aimed at the US market. The singles, "Waltz Darling" and "Something's Jumpin' in Your Shirt" became top-20 radio hits in Europe. While for once McLaren's instincts failed him (there was no sudden interest in waltz music) it still helped to spread the news about the previously underground practice of vogueing.
In 1992, McLaren co-wrote the song "Carry On Columbus" for the feature film of the same name. The song plays over the end credits of the film.
In 1994 McLaren recorded the concept album Paris, with French artists such as Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Hardy.
In 1998 he created a band called Jungk. This project was not a commercial success.
Also in 1997/1998, he released a track called "The Bell Song". Various remixes were released on 12" single.
His song "About Her", based on "She's Not There" by The Zombies, rose to prominence when used by director Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol. 2. He was accused of plagiarism for this song in 2005 for allegedly copying the work of a French musician, but was cleared of the charges in November 2005 when the court in Angers, France threw out the case[1]. The song uses Bessie Smith's "St. Louis Blues" by repeatedly playing the verse, "My man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea."
McLaren's solo work, particularly from the Duck Rock period, has also been sampled by other artists. In 1999, a group called Dope Smugglaz had a UK top twenty hit with the track "Double Double Dutch" which made extensive use of samples from McLaren's original "Double Dutch".
In 2002, Eminem released a track called "Without Me", which sampled McLaren's song, 'Buffalo Gals'.
In 2007 McLaren's song "World's Famous" was sampled by R&B singer Amerie on the song titled "Some Like It" from her album Because I Love It.
[edit] British Airways adverts
In 1989 McLaren and composer Yanni arranged The Flower Duet into a work called Aria. The 'Flower Duet' theme, taken from the French opera Lakme by Léo Delibes, had already been used by composer Howard Blake[2] to accompany British Airways commercials since 1984. However, from 1989 McLaren and Yanni further arranged the 'Flower Duet' and it featured in BA's 'World's favourite Airline' global campaign of the 1980s and 1990s.
[edit] Other projects
McLaren attempted to make a film called Fashion Beast which was scripted by comic book writer Alan Moore during the 1980s. The film was never made, but McLaren has been involved with other film and television projects. One such project was The Ghosts of Oxford Street, made for Channel 4 in 1991. This musical history of London's Oxford Street was directed and narrated by McLaren and included musical numbers by The Happy Mondays, Tom Jones, Rebel MC, Kirsty MacColl, John Altman, and Sinéad O'Connor.[3]
During 2000, there was speculation that he might stand to be elected as Mayor of London [4], although ultimately he did not run. He had an exhibition of some autobiographical work at the German Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie [5] called "Casino of Authenticity and Karaoke" about which he gave an interview [6][7].
In 2003 he wrote the article "8-Bit Punk" championing 8-bit music.[8] He also appeared on "This Spartan Life", a popular machinima which frequently uses 8-bit music, and he also discussed the topic. [9].
McLaren is one of the producers for the film adaptation of Fast Food Nation, which premiered on 19 May 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival. It was released in late 2006.
In 2006, McLaren presented the documentary series Malcolm McLaren's Musical Map of London for BBC Radio 2. This was followed in 2007 by Malcolm McLaren's Life and Times in LA.
Also in 2007, McLaren competed in a reality TV show for ITV titled The Baron. The series was due to be shown in August 2007, but was postponed owing to the death of fellow contestant Mike Reid shortly after filming was completed. It is being broadcast starting on 24 April 2008.
It was announced on 7 November 2007 that McLaren would be one of the contestants in the seventh series of the ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, set in the outback of Australia and premiering on British television on Monday 12 November 2007, but he pulled out the day he had flown to Australia. He told press 'it is fake', that he didn't know any of the other celebrities and quite frankly, 'he didn't have the time'. He was replaced by Katie Hopkins.
In January 2008 McLaren featured as one of the "celebrity hijackers" in the UK TV series Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, which was broadcast on E4. In his hijack, he encouraged the housemates to remove their clothes, daub themselves in paint and produce an artwork using only their bodies and a bicycle.
[edit] Discography
- Duck Rock (1982)
- D'ya Like Scratchin' (EP) (1984)
- Madam Butterfly (1984)
- Fans (1984)
- Swamp Thing (1985)
- Waltz Darling (1989)
- Round the Outside, Round the Outside (with the World Famous Supreme Team Show) (1990)
- Paris (1994)
- Buffalo Gals Back to Skool (1998)
- Tranquilize (2005) (only available from Habitat stores)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.adetocqueville.com/cgi-binloc/searchTTC.cgi?displayZop+27486/
- ^ http://www.howardblake.com/music/Commercials/567/British-Airways-Theme-Tune-Lakme.htm British Airways Theme Tune
- ^ [http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsit/-/es/G/greatest/christmas_moments/26-50.htmlC annel 4 - 100 Greatest Christmas Moments], accessed 9 July, 2007
- ^ Malcolm McLaren To Run For Mayor Of London | Music Insight - News, CD and Concert Reviews
- ^ ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
- ^ ArtCast Basel: ArtCast featuring Malcolm McLaren
- ^ http://www.archive.org/download/Interview_with_Malcolm_McLaren/ac2005718.mp3
- ^ Wired 11.11: 8-Bit Punk
- ^ Wired 11.11: 8-Bit Punk
[edit] External links
- [1] McLaren's homepage
- [2] McLaren Vh1 Biography
- [3] SEX & SEDITIONARIES, website showcasing the work of Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood circa 1975 to 1979
- [4] a WORLDS END website dedicated to the collaboration between Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood on their PIRATE collection launched in 1981
- [5] Malcolm McLaren interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2006)
- [6] Malcolm McLaren interviewed in the design magazine ROGER (2007)
- [7] Malcolm McLaren interviewed in SWINDLE magazine (2006)
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