Malcolm McLaren Passes

MALCOLM MCLAREN, 64, the punk impresario, self-promoter and manager/provocateur for the Sex Pistols, died today in Switzerland of complications from cancer, according to his longtime companion, Young Kim. McLaren got the idea for the Pistols after briefly managing the New York Dolls, memorably outfitting them in red leather and festooning them with Commie hammer and sickle signs. With his business partner and girlfriend at the time, Vivienne Westwood, they renamed their Kings Road clothing shop Sex (from Let It Rock), and McLaren went on to hand-pick the members for what he saw as the world’s first agitprop punk band, fronted by a snot-nosed Irish kid, John Lydon, who changed his name to Johnny Rotten. McLaren went on to his own unique recording career, mashing genres like hip-hop, square-dance music and opera on groundbreaking albums like 1983’s Duck Rock and 1989’s Waltz Darling. In recent years, he appeared on a British reality TV show, Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, where he convinced his fellow contestants to remove their clothes, cover themselves in paint and produce an artwork using only their bodies and a bicycle. (4/8p)