MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Malcolm McLaren was known as the British Andy Warhol, the P.T. Barnum of punk, a Dick Clark from hell. The music producer and provocateur died today of cancer in Switzerland. He was 64.
NPR's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
(Soundbite of song, "God Save the Queen")
NEDA ULABY: It's not easy to be the most hated man in punk rock, but for years, Malcolm McLaren somehow managed. In 1977, McLaren was running a shop that sold fetish gear with his then-girlfriend Vivienne Westwood, who'd go on to become a famous designer. Two young toughs, the story goes, used their shop to fence stolen music equipment. McLaren thought they'd be perfect for a band: The Sex Pistols.
(Soundbite of song, "God Save the Queen")
THE SEX PISTOLS (Band): (Singing) God save the queen, the fascist regime...
ULABY: Malcolm McLaren was less a student of rock and roll than of the twin mechanics of promotion and provocation. Here's what he told WHYY's FRESH AIR in 1988.
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Mr. MALCOLM MCLAREN (Producer): It really was about swingling your way to the top of the record industry, which is really founded on a great deal of hype. It was swingling by really deciding not to play, really deciding sometimes not to even be played on the radio. It didn't matter that you couldn't hear it, it was the attitude.
(Soundbite of song, "God Save the Queen")
THE SEX PISTOLS: (Singing) There's no future, no future, no future for you...
ULABY: While The Sex Pistols actually became an influential group, that attitude - the look, the pose - seemed most important to McLaren. His first stab at rock management came with the band the New York Dolls who he loved for their trashy transvestite image.
(Soundbite of song, "Trash")
NEW YORK DOLLS (Music Group): (Singing) Trash, won't pick it up. Take them lights away. Trash, won't pick it up. Don't take your life away...
ULABY: Like so many other British music conceptualists, McLaren sprang from art school with a finely honed sense of subversion. He loved the French Situationists and their slogans like: What are the politics of boredom? And for him, pushing buttons and manipulating the media was an art form.
Mr. MCLAREN: The idea of painting in an attic, as I was taught to do for eight years in art school, seemed the wrong process. And I decided to use people like sculptors use clay.
Mr. CHRIS SALEWICZ (Music Writer): There was something always oddly cold about Malcolm, frankly. His view of life as art didn't seem to have too much heart in it, one always felt.
ULABY: Chris Salewicz is a music writer who's covered the punk scene from the very beginning. I reached him at an opening in London filled with former punk artists and musicians.
Mr. SALEWICZ: We're all a bit shocked, seriously. We've just been talking here about this. He was a kind of difficult kettle of fish, but all of us have just said that we wouldn't be here without him.
ULABY: Nonetheless, Salewicz says Malcolm McLaren deserved his reputation as an exploitative Svengali. Take Sid Vicious, the embodiment of the punk scene's excesses. The Sex Pistols' bassist overdosed after he allegedly murdered his girlfriend.
Mr. SALEWICZ: Sid Vicious need not have declined in the way that he did. One always felt that Malcolm almost encouraged this as part of the whole scam of The Sex Pistols.
ULABY: Still, somehow, McLaren seemed to anticipate trends: world music, hip-hop, mash-ups, even something like opera.
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Unidentified Man: Take it away, Sissel(ph).
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ULABY: Malcolm McLaren left a big messy tag that runs through the last quarter century of popular culture. His greatest legacy was a do-it-yourself ethos, a perverse determination for people to commercialize their most unconventional impulses.
Mr. MCLAREN: Being good is not the idea; being bad is what's more exciting, you see?
ULABY: Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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