Cancer. He was 64 years old.
LINK

To me, he'll always be the guy who found a way to get an EXTREMELY scantily clad Annabella Lwin writhing around on a beach for my own personal MTV viewing...um, "pleasure."

I could never tell if I liked this guy...sorry that yr dead though, that sucks.

It's quite possible that without Malcolm McLaren this board wouldn't exist.

So along with The Rock N' Roll Swindle that's something else to hate him for.

i don't think there's much validity to this. the ramones predate mclaren's most famous marketing ploy anyway.

someone hook me up with a Double Dutch mp3, you know like, in his honor.

Ramones predated and were generally ignored. They had to come to the UK to get any national exposure and actually sell records and concert tickets.

Without McLaren there would have been no punk movement, he gave it all its momentum and focus and the whole importance of punk was that it wasn't a little cosy underground scene, like New York was at the time. It's importance lay in that the message of punk was disseminated out and actually changed society to such an extent it's very difficult to find anything in modern youth culture that wasn't influenced by punk.

Bands like the Ramones or the New York Dolls would just have been little atolls of oddity with lots of ocean all around, in fact they might have been more or less forgotten about if the thing they most influenced had never happened.

I remember being slightly obsessed with the song "Double Dutch" as a kid (5 years old). Never realized who did it but would always put the record on at my friends house and play it over and over.

Nice...glad i know now...haven't heard it in 20+ years.

I like Malcolm and have enjoyed quite a few of his projects beyond the Sex Pistols . And I hate to talk shit about a dead guy but fuck it.

The idea he was somehow responsible for the whole English punk explosion is preposterous. He managed a very successful band that would have got attention no matter who managed them in my opinion. He did not write the songs, he did not create that great angry din they created, he did not form them like the Monkeys. He was in the right place at the right time and recognized an opportunity to be a part of it, even a big aprt of it. But they were far from his creation by all accounts but his own.

Even if you wanna say the Sex Pistols would not have made a splash without him, you had the Clash, the Damned, X-Ray Spex...a whole slew of really good bands that could have carried that mantle even if it would have been somewhat differently situated. Add in that it was more refining than innovating as far as following the US punk impetus in both music and style and I think giving him a mountain of credit here takes it a bit far.

I do agree that the popularity of punk in England made it possible for the whole thing to reach a much larger global audience and specifically a bigger US audience. Hell, like many typical mid westerners who had little knowledge of the New York scene, I heard the English punk bands first and then caught up on the US scene beyond a bit of Ramones after. But, I think putting all the credit for English punk achieving popularity at the feet of a single band manager just because he's always been more than happy to jump up and grab all the credit is a bit much.

That said...it was good fun taking off work an hour early yesterday to go to a BarBQ in the outdoors and play Duck Rock and drink some beers. And Annabelle from Bow Wow Wow was probably the most masturbated to female for an entire generation of music fans. So you know...the guy did some good stuff and was a really interesting character and I was a fan.

You know...a really fantastic compilation could probably be culled from a listing of all the bands he played a role in as a manager or in some other way combined with the records he put out himself.

I agree with you to a point, dw, but I do think punk gained a certain exposure it never would have without McLaren. Also, my understanding was that it was his idea to put Johnny Rotten in, and to lead, the band (then The Strand, I believe) and to rename them, basically becoming the band he wanted. Not QUITE like the Monkees, but close, if you ask me.

Well, I thought it wasn't even actually Malcolm but a friend of his who suggested Johnny. And changing the band name was a good move and all...but I mean really? He changed the band name = he invented punk rock?

Wasn't he just using the Sex Pistols to sell clothes in his shoppe? He was a good promoter, for sure.

McLaren first offered the front man role of the Sex Pistols to Sylvain Sylvain. His publishing company for the Pistols was called Glitterbest. Even that first band name (the Strand) was nicked from song by Roxy Music. McLaren was still stuck in the glam era and didn't have much of a clue over what he was about to help spearhead as soon as Rotten joined the band. There's no doubt he played a large role in the ensuing punk movement, but you just can't claim he did much of it with intent.

The Pistols were more like the Frankenstein monster than the Monkees.

And Loog Oldham and Brian Epstein had NOTHING to do with The Beatles's and Stones' successes. Except, like Ass Wad said creating it.

Marketing, whether well informed or executed, matters.

The thing about punk is that it exploded simultaneously everywhere, not just in the U.K. like some would have you believe. I mean the Saints predated most of it and they came from fucking Brisbane.

Without the Sex Pistols, the world, and punk music itself, probably wouldn't be thaaaaat different.

Still, Mclaren perhaps legitimised the whole movement more than anyone.