48 Facts About Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English fashion designer and music manager.

Malcolm McLaren attended several British art colleges in the 1960s, where he became involved in underground art and left-wing activism.

Malcolm McLaren was born on 22 January 1946 to Scottish-born engineer Peter Malcolm McLaren, an upper-middle-class Londoner who was at that time serving with the Royal Engineers, and Emily Isaacs, the daughter of tailor Mick Isaacs and independently wealthy Rose Corre Isaacs, whose father had been a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish diamond dealer.

Subsequently, Malcolm McLaren was raised by his grandmother Rose, alone, next door at No 49.

At age 16, Malcolm McLaren left Orange Hill with three O-levels and was briefly employed in a handful of jobs before attending classes at St Martin's School of Art and then undertaking a foundation course at Harrow School of Art.

In October 1971, Malcolm McLaren took over the back part of the retail premises at 430 King's Road in Chelsea, West London, and sold rock and roll records, refurbished 1950s radiograms and dead stock clothing as "In The Back Of Paradise Garage".

In May 1977, a few months after Malcolm McLaren replaced Matlock with Sid Vicious, the band released the anti-monarchy protest song "God Save the Queen" during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.

The boat was raided by the police and Malcolm McLaren was arrested, thus achieving his goal to obtain publicity.

Malcolm McLaren was accused by the band of mismanaging them and refusing to pay them when they asked him for money.

Lydon's feelings of being used by Malcolm McLaren formed the creative impetus for his subsequent band Public Image Ltd.

Malcolm McLaren was approached by Adam Ant to manage Adam and the Ants following their debut album release in late 1979.

Malcolm McLaren continued to manage Ant as he formed a new lineup of the Ants and advised the Slits and Jimmy the Hoover.

In 1983, Malcolm McLaren released Duck Rock, an album that, in collaboration with producer and co-writer Trevor Horn and the World's Famous Supreme Team, mixed up influences from Africa and the Americas, including hip hop.

In 1984 Malcolm McLaren turned to electronic music and opera on the single "Madame Butterfly", which reached No 13 in the UK and No 16 in Australia.

Malcolm McLaren's 1989 album Waltz Darling was a funk and disco album inspired by the voguing subculture.

Malcolm McLaren personally hired Creative Director John Carver to handle the design and art direction for "Waltz Darling".

Malcolm McLaren was introduced to John by mutual friend Tommy Roberts at The Titanic nightclub, near Berkeley Square.

Malcolm McLaren returned to New York and Carver was left to design and art direct the album and singles sleeves.

In 1992, Malcolm McLaren co-wrote the song "Carry On Columbus" for the feature film of the same name.

In 1998, Malcolm McLaren released Buffalo Gals Back 2 Skool, an album featuring hip hop artists Rakim, KRS-One, De La Soul and producer Henri Scars Struck revisiting tracks from the original Duck Rock album.

Malcolm McLaren contributed a track, "About Her", to the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's 2004 film Kill Bill: Volume 2.

Beduneau, who had worked for Malcolm McLaren and was paid by him through the studio, had taken Malcolm McLaren's unfinished demos and fraudulently registered them under his own name at the French Composer Society, Sacem.

Malcolm McLaren was later sued, with a UK judge freezing royalty payments to Malcolm McLaren.

In 1984, Malcolm McLaren turned away from record-making in favour of theatrical and film production, starting with a musical version of the Fans album to be staged off-Broadway with the impresario Joseph Papp.

Simultaneously, Malcolm McLaren worked with various collaborators on a film treatment which mixed the story of Beauty and the Beast with the life of the couturier Christian Dior.

Malcolm McLaren gained interest in the latter project and Fans: The Musical from Steven Spielberg, and when CBS Theatrical Films closed at the end of 1985, was employed as an ideas guru at Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment while continuing to pitch his projects to other studios on a freelance basis.

Malcolm McLaren succeeded in attracting development funding for Fashion Beast from Manhattan nightlife entrepreneur Robert Boykin and the film was optioned by the newly founded independent production house Avenue Pictures, but after several rewrites the project faltered not least when Boykin's health suffered.

Malcolm McLaren died from complications arising from Aids in 1988.

An article in the New Statesman, published on 20 December 1999, titled "My Vision for London", included the "Malcolm McLaren Manifesto", prompting speculation that Malcolm McLaren might stand to be elected as Mayor of London.

Also in 2007, Malcolm McLaren competed in a reality TV show for ITV titled The Baron, filmed in the small Scottish fishing village of Gardenstown.

Malcolm McLaren came last in the competition, which was won by Reid.

Malcolm McLaren told the press "it is fake", that he didn't know any of the other celebrities and quite frankly, "he didn't have the time".

In 1986, Malcolm McLaren participated in the 6th Sydney Biennale at the invitation of Australian curator Nick Waterlow.

Waterlow chose as the theme of the arts festival "Origins Originality + Beyond", and Malcolm McLaren's involvement was based around his appropriation of Edouard Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe for the cover of Bow Wow Wow's second album.

The 1996 London exhibition I Groaned With Pain presented the fashion designs Malcolm McLaren created with Vivienne Westwood.

At the time of his death, Malcolm McLaren had recently finished a new film work entitled Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century, which was first shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK.

In 2011, the US performance-art biennial festival Performa instituted The Malcolm, an award for the most thought-provoking entry named after McLaren and designed by Marc Newson.

Malcolm McLaren's background in the visual arts as a student and practitioner was a major focus of the exhibition Art in Pop held at the contemporary art gallery Le Magasin, the Centre National d'Art Contemporain in Grenoble, France, from October 2014 to February 2015.

The exhibition included a soundtrack of music made by Malcolm McLaren, prompting Marie France to describe it as "an invigorating exhibition not just to see but hear as well".

Subsequently, Malcolm McLaren was romantically involved with Andrea Linz, who was studying fashion at Saint Martin's School of Art.

Malcolm McLaren was then engaged to the fashion agent Eugena Melian, with whom he lived in Los Angeles and Paris.

Malcolm McLaren moved in with him in 2002, and they lived together in Paris and New York.

Malcolm McLaren is the sole executor and heir of his estate.

Malcolm McLaren was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma in October 2009, and died of the disease on 8 April 2010 in a hospital in Switzerland.

Malcolm McLaren was the Brian Epstein of punk - without him, it wouldn't have happened the way it did.

Malcolm McLaren's body was buried in Highgate Cemetery, North London, to the strains of the Sid Vicious version of "My Way".

The South Bank Show: Malcolm McLaren was first broadcast on British regional channel London Weekend Television on 8 December 1984.

Malcolm McLaren: Spectacular Failure was an hour-long examination of his life and legacy first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 25 April 2020 to mark the 10th anniversary of McLaren's death.