Pop legend Malcolm McLaren died on Thursday from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos fibres. To date noone has released any information indicating how McLaren may have been exposed (update 11/4: one theory is that he may have been exposed whilst refitting his King's Road shop SEX in the early '70s). But you have to wonder what, if any, role asbestos soundproofing in older recording studios might have played. One asbestos-specialist legal firm suggests it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Interestingly, McLaren is the second British music producer, and in fact the fourth recording industry professional, to have succumbed to mesothelioma in seven years. In 2003 another British producer, Mickie Most (The Animals/Herman’s Hermits/Donovan/Susie Quatro) and American singer songwriter Warren Zevon were felled by mesothelioma, with Irish singer songwriter Christie Hennessy dying from same in 2007.
Sad news about the death, at age 64, of Malcolm McLaren, following a secret battle with cancer. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write a full obit, but suffice it to say he was one of the most influential cultural figures of the second half of the 20th century. To be sure, his sphere of influence was pop culture. But the Punk revolution of the mid-late 1970s, in the commercialisation of which McLaren played an intrinsic role, rattled the foundations of music, fashion, graphic design and publishing.
A former manager of The New York Dolls, McLaren's early 1970s efforts to relocate New York poet/musician Richard Hell to London proved unsuccessful. McLaren engineered Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious instead, with Hell's spiked hair and ripped T-shirts providing what many believe was the inspiration for The Sex Pistols styling.
McLaren's (many) other music ventures included Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants. And of course, he collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, his erstwhile business and life partner, with whom he also had a son, Joe Corre (co-founder of Agent Provocateur).
In this journalist's opinion, Westwood's collections were at their most subversive during the Westwood-McLaren collaboration years. Together they rocked London's Kings Road with their controversial boutiques, whose names changed from Let It Rock to Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex, Seditionaries and World's End. People were arrested for wearing Seditionaries T-shirts. It's hard to imagine today.
But the seeds for McLaren's brand of subversion had been sewn over a decade earlier, while he was an art student in London, against the backdrop of the May 1968 student riots in France. The riots themselves were rooted in the 1950s political/art movement Situationist International, of which McLaren became a disciple.
Four months before that, I spoke to him backstage at Paris Fashion Week. We chatted about a number of things and I will endeavor to track down the original interview. One grab from it appeared at the end of this news story.
On the subject of artists, he told me:
"Artists have to always, always stand up and say, 'I'm not for sale' - meaning that your heart, your mindset, your artistic vision is not for sale. If that's for sale, then you're just a goddam wristwatch."
