Written by Nick Leitzke

Malcolm McLaren died today at the age of 64. So far (as of 2:57pm on April 8, 2010) there are few details about his death, but initial reports say McLaren was diagnosed with cancer a while ago. While not a blow to the music world or something that will send shockwaves into the future of creativity, McLaren’s death is a tragic event that reminds us of our mortality. The man who arguably built the Sex Pistols from the ground up is dead. Whether or not you agree with his vision or believe that punk began in 1968 rather than in 1976, Malcolm McLaren was one of those musical geniuses who carves out an identifiable niche in an established field. Rock was not the same after Malcolm McLaren’s influence.

I have conflicted opinions about Malcolm McLaren. For the most part my opinions are negative, but as the previous paragraph hopefully indicates I admire the man and applaud his determination. The current model for making a band owes its longevity to McLaren’s touch. ‘Punk’ is a term that lost all meaning the moment someone applied it to a genre of music. Even labeling this music as a genre suffocated all credibility. Each subsequent endeavor in independent music has had to distance itself from the loosely defined boundaries of punk.

What is punk? Is punk slit jeans, a pierced lip, and a green mohawk towering two feet above your head? Or is punk just an idea, a collective source of inspiration that leads kids from all walks of life to write, play, and record the music they want to regardless of whether or not they’re ‘any good?’ I call punk the latter, but with Malcolm McLaren’s touch the public eye came to identify punk as the former. My idea of punk is a simple determined spirit making its way regardless of financial success or popularity. While McLaren’s determination exploded a certain style of music into overnight celebrity, it had very little to do with honesty. Quality suffered, and in the end the act that led the way walked off the stage in mid-show, rebelling against the very thing they hated, abandoning a successful future under the name Sex Pistols. That was a punk thing to do. Or maybe it was just the right thing to do.

Music history is littered with examples of overblown success imploding to a black hole. In the 1980’s the Seattle scene was completely unheard of, less a scene than a way to spend a Saturday night with your friends who are all in ten different bands. Fast forward to 1994 and Kurt Cobain blows his head off because he never wanted to become a celebrity. There is a drive in the music world to identify creative hotspots. Many times this creativity is misinterpreted. At ground level – at the only level that matters – creativity is just that. Creativity is one person, two people, a dozen people who just want to have fun. There is no unifying style that defines a hotspot.

When people outside of the creative circle begin to take notice, however, word spreads. Soon people across the nation and across the world want to find the one voice that speaks for a hotspot. This is exactly what happened in the 1970’s with British punk. Lower class kids began playing music. Some of them wore ratty clothes because they didn’t have much else. Their music sold, so their look became the dress code for anyone who wanted to play anything remotely similar.

Outside of this but paying close attention was Malcolm McLaren, seeing an opportunity and taking advantage of it. Voila the Sex Pistols who come to define everything punk rock from 1976 to the present. An entire genre of music erupts from the mentality that I can do whatever I want to with my body. I can dye my hair green. I can wear clothes that have seen multiple donations to Goodwill. I can pierce my flesh and cover my body in tattoos because really my body is the only thing I have. Modern life has taken away everything else.

What begins as an act of rebellion, though, quickly turns into a fad. Rebellion is a moneymaker. In no time everyone is doing it, decades later Hot Topic is selling it, and then what’s the point if everyone is doing it? Why rebel if rebellion is the way of life? Malcolm McLaren was the visionary who saw profitability in social rebellion. The music world may have benefited from his determination to succeed, but for the most part I can only see him focused on his bank account. The best thing for anyone to have done in the Sex Pistols’ position was walk off the stage. It didn’t prevent the inevitable casualties, but it was the right thing to do.

This eulogy is turning more into an indictment, but someone like Malcolm McLaren deserves a conflicted obituary. All the great things the man accomplished are not overshadowed by the negatives that came with them, but the negatives must be discussed. We can’t talk about Malcolm McLaren without acknowledging that he was a businessman. Nor can I talk about Malcolm McLaren without acknowledging his success. Whatever the case, the man is dead. However we view the man, Malcolm McLaren was one of the truly great influences on music in the Twentieth century. God rest his soul.

January 22, 1946 – April 8, 2010