Malcolm McLaren, sometime manager of the Sex Pistols, who died yesterday, was a member of the awkward squad, that self-appointed but utterly vital part of a healthy society that’s prepared to challenge the established order of things.
Malcolm McLaren by Andy Rosen
In a career that encompassed being an artist, performer, manager and entrepreneur, as well as a fugitive in Paris from fraud allegations against him in London, he saw what he did as being as much about politics as about entertainment. A thorn in the side of the 1980s establishment, McLaren famously tried to sail a boat with the Pistols aboard and playing their version of God Save The Queen past the Houses of Parliament during the 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations.
He will be missed – even Johnny Rotten, with whom McLaren fell out over the Sex Pistols’ contract rights, added his voice to the tributes describing him as “…an entertainer and I will miss him, and so should you.”
