Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm McLaren was the great ringmaster of British punk before he ever stepped up to a microphone. Born in London in 1946, the art-school agitator ran the Chelsea boutique Sex with Vivienne Westwood from 1974 to 1976, helping to dress the first wave of punk, and after a spell advising the New York Dolls in America he took charge of the Sex Pistols and recruited Johnny Rotten to front them. "God Save the Queen", aimed squarely at the Jubilee in 1977, was the McLaren method in miniature: outrage first, questions never. Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow also passed through his hands.

Then, in the '80s, the svengali made records of his own. Duck Rock, his first album, was a magpie's nest of hip-hop and world music, and it gave him two British top-ten singles in "Buffalo Gals", a scratchy, clattering collage, and the bouncing "Double Dutch". After that he flitted through funk, disco and electronic dance music, and "Madame Butterfly" is the one rock radio's listeners have held on to longest.

When critics charged him with reducing pop culture to a sales stunt, his answer was that he hoped they were right, which just about sums him up. He spent his last years between Paris and New York and died in 2010.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.