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The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography
'Excellent . . . With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock'n'roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas. Tiresome, unpleasant, even cruel - he was, this book underlines, never boring' Sunday Times
'Exhaustive . . . compelling' Observer
'This masterful and painstaking biography opens its doorway to an era of fluorescent disenchantment and outlandish possibility' Alan Moore Malcolm McLaren was one of the most culturally significant but misunderstood figures of the modern era. Ten years after his life was cruelly cut short by cancer, The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren sheds fascinating new light on the public achievements and private life of this cultural iconoclast and architect of punk, whose championing of street culture movements including hip-hop and Voguing reverberates to this day. With exclusive contributions from friends and intimates and access to private papers and family documents, this biography uncovers the true story behind this complicated figure. McLaren first achieved public prominence as a rebellious art student by making the news in 1966 after being arrested for burning the US flag in front of the American Embassy in London. He maintained this incendiary reputation by fast-tracking vanguard and left-field ideas to the centre of the media glare, via his creation and stewardship of the Sex Pistols and work with Adam Ant, Boy George and Bow Wow Wow. Meanwhile McLaren's ground-breaking design partnership with Vivienne Westwood and his creation of their visionary series of boutiques in the 1970s and early '80s sent shockwaves through the fashion industry. The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren also essays McLaren's exasperating Hollywood years when he broke bread with the likes of Steven Spielberg though his slate of projects, which included the controversial Heavy Metal Surf Nazis and Wilde West, in which Oscar Wilde introduced rock'n'roll to the American mid-west in the 1880s, proved too rich for the play-it-safe film business. With a preface by Alan Moore, who collaborated with McLaren on the unrealised film project Fashion Beast , and an essay by Lou Stoppard casting a twenty-first-century perspective over his achievements, The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren is the explosive and definitive account of the man dubbed by Melvyn Bragg 'the Diaghilev of punk'.
'Exhaustive . . . compelling' Observer
'This masterful and painstaking biography opens its doorway to an era of fluorescent disenchantment and outlandish possibility' Alan Moore Malcolm McLaren was one of the most culturally significant but misunderstood figures of the modern era. Ten years after his life was cruelly cut short by cancer, The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren sheds fascinating new light on the public achievements and private life of this cultural iconoclast and architect of punk, whose championing of street culture movements including hip-hop and Voguing reverberates to this day. With exclusive contributions from friends and intimates and access to private papers and family documents, this biography uncovers the true story behind this complicated figure. McLaren first achieved public prominence as a rebellious art student by making the news in 1966 after being arrested for burning the US flag in front of the American Embassy in London. He maintained this incendiary reputation by fast-tracking vanguard and left-field ideas to the centre of the media glare, via his creation and stewardship of the Sex Pistols and work with Adam Ant, Boy George and Bow Wow Wow. Meanwhile McLaren's ground-breaking design partnership with Vivienne Westwood and his creation of their visionary series of boutiques in the 1970s and early '80s sent shockwaves through the fashion industry. The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren also essays McLaren's exasperating Hollywood years when he broke bread with the likes of Steven Spielberg though his slate of projects, which included the controversial Heavy Metal Surf Nazis and Wilde West, in which Oscar Wilde introduced rock'n'roll to the American mid-west in the 1880s, proved too rich for the play-it-safe film business. With a preface by Alan Moore, who collaborated with McLaren on the unrealised film project Fashion Beast , and an essay by Lou Stoppard casting a twenty-first-century perspective over his achievements, The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren is the explosive and definitive account of the man dubbed by Melvyn Bragg 'the Diaghilev of punk'.
- GenresMusicBiographyNonfiction
880 pages, Hardcover
Published September 22, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 27, 2022
I am squarely in the target market for The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography (2020). From the Pistols through to his later adventures I found McLaren a fascinating and stimulating artist. And, as Paul Gorman seems to conclude, of all the labels that could be attached to him, artist best embraces his life and career.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography is nearly 900 pages long so perhaps not for the casual fan. This wonderful detailed biography reinforced many of my preconceptions, both positive and negative.
His dysfunctional childhood explains much of what followed. Malcolm McLaren was a mass of contradictions but to my mind he was integral to punk, hip hop, and a stream of other bizarre wonderful opportunistic cultural mash ups.
Many readers will know the oft told story of punk but what makes this account especially compelling is the detail about what preceded it and what followed. Indeed, despite my love of punk, I was most interested in Malcolm McLaren’s childhood, art student years, and his extraordinary post-punk work. It’s such a shame he died relatively young as he was starting to gain the credibility and recognition that his work so richly deserves. This book does a great job of establishing him as one of the essential artists of the last 50 years.
If (massive caveat) you have the time and the interest then this book is really something special.
5/5
More about The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography (2020)…
'Excellent . . . With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock'n'roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas. Tiresome, unpleasant, even cruel - he was, this book underlines, never boring' Sunday Times
'Exhaustive . . . compelling' Observer
'This masterful and painstaking biography opens its doorway to an era of fluorescent disenchantment and outlandish possibility' Alan Moore
Malcolm McLaren was one of the most culturally significant but misunderstood figures of the modern era. Ten years after his life was cruelly cut short by cancer, The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren sheds fascinating new light on the public achievements and private life of this cultural iconoclast and architect of punk, whose championing of street culture movements including hip-hop and Voguing reverberates to this day. With exclusive contributions from friends and intimates and access to private papers and family documents, this biography uncovers the true story behind this complicated figure.
McLaren first achieved public prominence as a rebellious art student by making the news in 1966 after being arrested for burning the US flag in front of the American Embassy in London. He maintained this incendiary reputation by fast-tracking vanguard and left-field ideas to the centre of the media glare, via his creation and stewardship of the Sex Pistols and work with Adam Ant, Boy George and Bow Wow Wow. Meanwhile McLaren's ground-breaking design partnership with Vivienne Westwood and his creation of their visionary series of boutiques in the 1970s and early '80s sent shockwaves through the fashion industry.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren also essays McLaren's exasperating Hollywood years when he broke bread with the likes of Steven Spielberg though his slate of projects, which included the controversial Heavy Metal Surf Nazis and Wilde West, in which Oscar Wilde introduced rock'n'roll to the American mid-west in the 1880s, proved too rich for the play-it-safe film business.
With a preface by Alan Moore, who collaborated with McLaren on the unrealised film project Fashion Beast, and an essay by Lou Stoppard casting a twenty-first-century perspective over his achievements, The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren is the explosive and definitive account of the man dubbed by Melvyn Bragg 'the Diaghilev of punk'.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography is nearly 900 pages long so perhaps not for the casual fan. This wonderful detailed biography reinforced many of my preconceptions, both positive and negative.
His dysfunctional childhood explains much of what followed. Malcolm McLaren was a mass of contradictions but to my mind he was integral to punk, hip hop, and a stream of other bizarre wonderful opportunistic cultural mash ups.
Many readers will know the oft told story of punk but what makes this account especially compelling is the detail about what preceded it and what followed. Indeed, despite my love of punk, I was most interested in Malcolm McLaren’s childhood, art student years, and his extraordinary post-punk work. It’s such a shame he died relatively young as he was starting to gain the credibility and recognition that his work so richly deserves. This book does a great job of establishing him as one of the essential artists of the last 50 years.
If (massive caveat) you have the time and the interest then this book is really something special.
5/5
More about The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren: The Biography (2020)…
'Excellent . . . With this book, Gorman convincingly moves away from the ossified image of McLaren as a great rock'n'roll swindler, a morally bankrupt punk Mephistopheles, and closer towards his art-school roots, his love of ideas. Tiresome, unpleasant, even cruel - he was, this book underlines, never boring' Sunday Times
'Exhaustive . . . compelling' Observer
'This masterful and painstaking biography opens its doorway to an era of fluorescent disenchantment and outlandish possibility' Alan Moore
Malcolm McLaren was one of the most culturally significant but misunderstood figures of the modern era. Ten years after his life was cruelly cut short by cancer, The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren sheds fascinating new light on the public achievements and private life of this cultural iconoclast and architect of punk, whose championing of street culture movements including hip-hop and Voguing reverberates to this day. With exclusive contributions from friends and intimates and access to private papers and family documents, this biography uncovers the true story behind this complicated figure.
McLaren first achieved public prominence as a rebellious art student by making the news in 1966 after being arrested for burning the US flag in front of the American Embassy in London. He maintained this incendiary reputation by fast-tracking vanguard and left-field ideas to the centre of the media glare, via his creation and stewardship of the Sex Pistols and work with Adam Ant, Boy George and Bow Wow Wow. Meanwhile McLaren's ground-breaking design partnership with Vivienne Westwood and his creation of their visionary series of boutiques in the 1970s and early '80s sent shockwaves through the fashion industry.
The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren also essays McLaren's exasperating Hollywood years when he broke bread with the likes of Steven Spielberg though his slate of projects, which included the controversial Heavy Metal Surf Nazis and Wilde West, in which Oscar Wilde introduced rock'n'roll to the American mid-west in the 1880s, proved too rich for the play-it-safe film business.
With a preface by Alan Moore, who collaborated with McLaren on the unrealised film project Fashion Beast, and an essay by Lou Stoppard casting a twenty-first-century perspective over his achievements, The Life & Times Of Malcolm McLaren is the explosive and definitive account of the man dubbed by Melvyn Bragg 'the Diaghilev of punk'.
July 3, 2020
The level of research in this book is amazing however there were times when it became too mired in detail. It’s a huge book and became somewhat exhausting to get through. By the time we got to Bow Wow Wow I was done.
September 9, 2020
This is an interesting and well written book but it is far too long - in particular the last couple of hundred pages read almost like a list of activities. It would have been much better and more powerful if it had been shorter. Still enjoyable though.
July 4, 2022
Straight off, I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. I had been waiting to read it for some time as I had seen that it was about to be published. The publication date seemed to have gotten a little bit delayed so I checked regularly to see if it was available. The audiobook wasn't out when In started so I read it over several months. I did read a lot of the book earlier in the year but I dropped off and took a break until I made a final push this week to finish it.
I think everyone knows a little about Malcolm McLaren and as his biographer notes he is always described initially as the manager of the Sex Pistols but in terms of his career, and life, that period was only a short amount of time and he did many things after that.
Of course the section on the rise of the Sex Pistols was very interesting and gave a good ground to what went on but what people who were outside of his network probably didn't know or realise was how much his shop and clothing business was related to the Sex Pistols and to the punk movement in general. His relationship with Vivian Westwood, they're parting and their parallel careers was new to me. It almost seems that once he had gotten out of at college his whole life and ambition were a series of art projects. Maybe that is what it is to be an artist. He also seem to have a great talent for persuading people to give him money to do something that he wanted to do.
There are so many episodes in this book that I will have to come back to later and I made extensive notes highlighting many paragraphs, names and most of all words used in this book. It's extremely eruditely written. I learned many new words from reading it which, I think, is a rarity for me.
I feel that I know Malcolm McLaren a little better from reading the book and as a result of all the new information I would quite often stop reading and watch YouTube to catch up with his interviews, appearances and the music that he had made and then go back to reading.
I would say that at the moment this rates as one of my favourite books. Especially as it covers the punk era and what's it led up to it that was such a whirlwind of filth and fury during my formative years. I may even listen to the audiobook when it is available.
I think everyone knows a little about Malcolm McLaren and as his biographer notes he is always described initially as the manager of the Sex Pistols but in terms of his career, and life, that period was only a short amount of time and he did many things after that.
Of course the section on the rise of the Sex Pistols was very interesting and gave a good ground to what went on but what people who were outside of his network probably didn't know or realise was how much his shop and clothing business was related to the Sex Pistols and to the punk movement in general. His relationship with Vivian Westwood, they're parting and their parallel careers was new to me. It almost seems that once he had gotten out of at college his whole life and ambition were a series of art projects. Maybe that is what it is to be an artist. He also seem to have a great talent for persuading people to give him money to do something that he wanted to do.
There are so many episodes in this book that I will have to come back to later and I made extensive notes highlighting many paragraphs, names and most of all words used in this book. It's extremely eruditely written. I learned many new words from reading it which, I think, is a rarity for me.
I feel that I know Malcolm McLaren a little better from reading the book and as a result of all the new information I would quite often stop reading and watch YouTube to catch up with his interviews, appearances and the music that he had made and then go back to reading.
I would say that at the moment this rates as one of my favourite books. Especially as it covers the punk era and what's it led up to it that was such a whirlwind of filth and fury during my formative years. I may even listen to the audiobook when it is available.
January 10, 2024
The first few hundred pages of this book are incredible, the most in depth account of specifically the fashion history of UK punk I've seen. It discusses in great detail McLaren's childhood then how he and Westwood opened 430 King's Road, and its evolution from selling Teddy Boy clothes, to embracing biker styles, then kink-influenced styles then embracing the influence of the early New York punk scene, and how many prominent players in the early London punk scene began shopping there and building relationships with McLaren. The same is true with his managing of the Dolls, Pistols, Ants and Bow Wow Wow, and his introduction of each of those band's distinctive styles.
However, by the time I reached the end of Bow Wow Wow, my ereader said I'd only read 43% of the book. The prose of this book is over 700 pages, and the main points of interest end at some point in the 400s-500s. The remaining pages read like a list of minor events with little throughline. It's jarring because there's such a distinct buildup to McLaren as a manager, then once he stops managing Bow Wow Wow, it seems like he was wandering aimlessly through life not sure what to do, and so does this book. I just wish it either maintained some kind of interest in this era or it sped through them in an epilogue.
My other complaint is that the chronology gets disjointed in places. In particular, I remember that the book introduces Chrissie Hynde and discusses how she started working at 430 King's Road before McLaren goes to New York to manage the New York Dolls in 1975, which reads as if she got the job at that point. But, once it discusses him coming back to London, it describes how Hynde first got the job then.
However, by the time I reached the end of Bow Wow Wow, my ereader said I'd only read 43% of the book. The prose of this book is over 700 pages, and the main points of interest end at some point in the 400s-500s. The remaining pages read like a list of minor events with little throughline. It's jarring because there's such a distinct buildup to McLaren as a manager, then once he stops managing Bow Wow Wow, it seems like he was wandering aimlessly through life not sure what to do, and so does this book. I just wish it either maintained some kind of interest in this era or it sped through them in an epilogue.
My other complaint is that the chronology gets disjointed in places. In particular, I remember that the book introduces Chrissie Hynde and discusses how she started working at 430 King's Road before McLaren goes to New York to manage the New York Dolls in 1975, which reads as if she got the job at that point. But, once it discusses him coming back to London, it describes how Hynde first got the job then.
October 15, 2022
A biography of someone with a claim to having been one of the most influential British music producers of the 20th century. I say "claim", because it's not always clear how much is reputation is deserved beyond his pivotal role with the Sex Pistols – whose own influence on punk can be disputed.
McLaren seems to have seen himself more as a fashion entrepreneur than as a musician, and indeed seemed to regard everything he did as an outgrowth of fashion in a wider sense. He emerges as a troubled individual who inflicted similar troubles on those close to him: he didn't seem to have taken his own background as a warning or as a negative example. And it's hard to decide whether some of his antics derived from a vision of how society could be different, or simply from truculence and a desire for the limelight. Gorman doesn't dig deeply into these issues, but does a balanced job of showing McLaren's strengths and weaknesses.
McLaren seems to have seen himself more as a fashion entrepreneur than as a musician, and indeed seemed to regard everything he did as an outgrowth of fashion in a wider sense. He emerges as a troubled individual who inflicted similar troubles on those close to him: he didn't seem to have taken his own background as a warning or as a negative example. And it's hard to decide whether some of his antics derived from a vision of how society could be different, or simply from truculence and a desire for the limelight. Gorman doesn't dig deeply into these issues, but does a balanced job of showing McLaren's strengths and weaknesses.
April 23, 2024
I had no intention of getting to know more about Malcolm McLaren when I came into contact with this mammoth tome but once I started reading about his totally dysfunctional upbringing I was drawn in. I think it was this that informed most of his work. Once thing that becomes apparent is that ideas do not spring up out of nowhere. McLaren had a portfolio of concepts and ideas he had collected from the mid sixties onwards which he mixed and matched to fit whatever he was working on at the time. It’s obvious an enormous amount of research went into this book however sometimes it’s a little too much. The last third of the book is a highly detailed account of lots of projects that never materialised. I think I know him a lot better after reading this but did I like him anymore… not really.
June 12, 2022
Very long read but well worth it. Although I’ve always been aware of McLaren’s involvement in the creation of the Sex Pistols and punk as a fashion statement I wasn’t aware of the extent. I’m thoroughly impressed with his ability to be at the forefront of so many trends and his association with numerous big names (now) in music, fashion, art, and film. As problematic as he was he definitely deserves the credit he is due especially where Vivienne Westwood is concerned.
August 2, 2021
A superb book about a fascinating man who lived an amazing life.
McLaren was a visionary who foresaw the coming of many musical trends, hip-hop, world music, vogueing to name but a few.
There was more to him than the Sex Pistols, and this through, deep dive into his life, tells them all. Highly recommended.
McLaren was a visionary who foresaw the coming of many musical trends, hip-hop, world music, vogueing to name but a few.
There was more to him than the Sex Pistols, and this through, deep dive into his life, tells them all. Highly recommended.
February 25, 2023
Although its an epic tome, this book never ceases to stimulate and it provides many references to culturally significant people linked to Mclaren throughout his life (and there are many! He may (still) divide opinion, but there is no doubt that he had an eye for new ideas and was far ahead of his time in many ways. I really enjoyed this book.
March 9, 2021
Malcolm has never not intrigued me
What a life lived!
What a life lived!
October 8, 2023
Intensive
October 5, 2025
A big biography.
July 12, 2022
What an interesting and creative life! If you have any interest in fashion, anarchy, or punk rock, this is the biography for you. Malcolm McLaren became infamous for his management of the New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols, as well as his fashion and design partnership with Vivienne Westwood. It's unlikely that anyone fully understood Malcom McLaren, but this biography is strong on the facts and impressions of his friends, partners, and enemies.
January 6, 2024
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Kind of a genius
Jealous of Vivienne westwoods success? by saying she craved establishment approval as if he didn’t
Didn’t know he was responsible for the fess of New Romantic . Pirate costumes and concept
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews