Malcolm McLaren, ex-Sex Pistols manager, dies

FORMER Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren died today.

• Picture: PA

The 64-year-old, who had been battling cancer, died at home in New York this morning after his condition suddenly worsened, spokesman Les Molloy said.

Family members were in "shock" and "devastated", he said.

Mr Molloy added: "He had been doing very well, it's a sad day. I have spoken to his partner."

• Music journalist Jon Savage, who wrote England's Dreaming, the award-winning history of the Sex Pistols and punk, said: "Without Malcolm McLaren there would not have been any British punk.

"He's one of the rare individuals who had a huge impact on the cultural and social life of this nation."

Mr Savage said McLaren had an enormous influence on British culture through the King's Road shop he opened with Vivienne Westwood and also through the Sex Pistols.

"I hope he'll be remembered with fondness," he said.

"He was a complex character, a contradictory character.

"He could be very charming, he could be very cruel, but he mattered and he put something together that was extraordinary.

"What he did with fashion and music was extraordinary. He was a revolutionary."

Mr Savage said McLaren was "extremely evasive" when he tried to get information for England's Dreaming.

"It was a bit like a game really but I was extremely persistent," he said.

Eventually McLaren did give what Savage described as an "extremely good interview" about his early life which, despite his tendency to mythologise, "told some kind of truth".

• Former Sex Pistols boss Malcolm McClaren was the most significant manager of the punk era who always set out to shock, his friend BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob said.

McClaren, who had also been manager of the New York Dolls, died of cancer in the States today (Thurs).

Yentob said: "He was one of the most important managers in the punk era, and without him the punk era would never have been the focus that it has since become.

"It was him. He loved the idea of it and wanted that idea to go public, and understood what it meant. He was a very significant figure in British music.

"Malcolm was a man of ideas. He was fascinated by ideas and was always ready to talk up the provocative. He said his grandmother told him it was good to be bad – he wanted to shock and surprise you.

"He was an art student, he was a clothes designer, and along with Vivienne Westwood he was always thinking up a provocative idea that attracted attention. He was a publicist."

He told BBC news: "Over the years he was always thinking about the next job.

"He never allowed anything to stand in his way."