Malcolm McLaren was called many things in his lifetime: a charlatan, Svengali, genius or just the man who made punk possible, to list only a few. But the facts stand for themselves: he opened a clothing shop with partner Vivienne Westwood in London’s King’s Road called Let It Rock in 1971, they renamed it to Sex in 1974 and gathered some of the regulars — including a green-haired spiky haired teenager named John, who also happened to wear a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words, “I hate” above the band’s name — and encouraged them to become a band (which he also subsequently managed) called the Sex Pistols. For these achievements alone, his place in pop culture history would be assured.
But the man just wouldn’t shut up. And, for that, he shall always remain an example of a true iconoclast, a real rebel but with a cause (no matter if it was just to cause trouble). A real contradictory figure, he was never ashamed to promote himself and his ideas (even if they were somebody else’s, as many of his former cohorts might say) and remained apart from a culture that he helped create. Even John Lydon, frontman for the Pistols, a man who battled with McLaren for decades over the legacy of punk (including the use of his stage name), issued a statement on the day of his death last week that acknowledged the loss. He wrote: “For me Malc was always entertaining, and I hope you remember that. Above all else he was an entertainer and I will miss him, and so should you.” He signed it as “Johnny Rotten,” the name he used when both of them first made headlines and changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll forever.
To celebrate McLaren’s life and contributions, we’ve listed down three essential volumes that chronicled the history and importance of punk, all of which might’ve never happened without him.
England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock And Beyond
By Jon Savage
As far as rock histories go, this is definitive in that it is the most extensively researched and vividly written about the whole phenomenon. Author Jon Savage presents the story of all the main players on the London scene and neatly weaves it together to set the scene and describe the tumultuous era that followed its inception. The opening chapter begins with the location and the first major character in punk to be introduced was none other than McLaren. An art school dropout, he was planning to make a “psychogeographical about Oxford Street” which led him to stumble upon a shop a 430 King’s Road and begin to remodel it. Savage combines urgent reportage, literary biography and cultural insight in his telling of the punk story. If anything, this is as complete an overview of it all as you will get, but with the intimacy that makes it far richer than just a narrating of events.
Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
By John Lydon with Keith and Kent Zimmerman
The devil is in the details and, as Johnny Rotten once declared himself the “Anti-Christ,” it is exactly those qualities that make this autobiography essential reading. Released in 1994, it is more of a compilation of the many different voices that screamed into existence as punk rock broke in the late ‘70s. As Lydon writes at the beginning of the book: “This book is as close to the truth as one can get… All the people in this book were actually there, and this book is as much their point of view as it is mine. This means contradictions and insults have not been edited… I have no time for lies or fantasy, and neither should you.” Of course the one person missing is McLaren who Lydon fought with bitterly since the demise of the band during their infamous American tour. The book was his rebuke to his former manager but ends with their last meeting at a New York nightspot in 1985. They still found they couldn’t get along. Lydon writes: “I leaned over to Malcolm and said, ‘Look, Malcolm… You know you’re going to talk rubbish all night, and you know I ain’t listening. Why don’t we just go home?’” With that, they shook hands and parted ways, leaving their erstwhile host with the bill.
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History Of The Twentieth Century
By Greil Marcus
One of rock ‘n’ roll’s most celebrated journalists, Greil Marcus weighed in with his considerable knowledge of the genre and of the art movements in the last century to give punk a lineage that was as interesting as it was spurious. It seemed to validate all of McLaren’s claims. But he makes a good case for it, between medieval heretics, Dada, Guy Debord and the Situationist International, Herman Melville, bluesman Robert Johnson and the writings of absolutist German critic Walter Benjamin to the Pistols’ first single that Marcus describes as “just a pop song, a would-be, has-been hit record, a cheap commodity” as well as declaring it, “Nothing like it had been heard in rock ‘n’ roll before, and nothing like it has been heard since…” No small claim since Marcus also wrote the best book about Elvis Presley, Mystery Train. His considerable talents as a writer hold this book together and it is magnificent achievement. Even if you don’t believe a word of it.