40 Facts About Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English impresario, visual artist, singer, songwriter, musician, clothes designer and boutique owner, who combined these activities in an inventive and provocative way.

Malcolm McLaren performed with acclaim as a solo artist, initially focusing on hip hop and world music and later diversifying into funk and disco, the dance fashion for "voguing" and merging opera with contemporary electronic musical forms.

Malcolm McLaren was born on 22 January 1946 in a flat at 47 Carysfort Road, Stoke Newington, north-east London, to Peter Malcolm McLaren, a Londoner of Scottish extraction 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, who lived in the house next door at 49 Carysfort Road with her husband and instructed the child early in life that, "To be bad is good because to be good is simply boring".

In September 1951, when Malcolm McLaren was 5 years old, his mother married Martin Edwards, a rag trade entrepreneur; together they operated the women's-wear wholesale business Eve Edwards with a factory at 117 Whitechapel High Street in London's East End.

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.

Malcolm McLaren was attracted to the European radical art movement the Situationists, and associated with members of the UK wing King Mob.

Malcolm McLaren later grafted some of the movement's ideas into promotion of pop and rock groups.

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.

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

Malcolm McLaren is portrayed by David Hayman in Sid and Nancy and by Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the 2022 Craig Pearce - Danny Boyle FX biographical drama miniseries Pistol.

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 found new band members for Adam and the Ants and worked on a new sound 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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: City 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 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 a dragon's egg, a rare bird, and one of the great unsung heroes of England.

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

Malcolm McLaren met Young Kim at a party in Paris; she was his girlfriend for the last 12 years of his life.

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

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