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Malcolm McLaren
April 2010ZANI – Alan McGee Recalls
News certainly travels fast. Last night I was having dinner with a friend in a nice cosy pub and I received an email from Alan McGee, which was forwarded from Andrew Loog Oldham, it simply read: Malcolm McLaren is dead. In a sombre mood, I looked at my friend and said “Malcolm McLaren is dead.” We ate the rest of our dinner in silence as one of Rock and Rolls mavericks had gone. Knowing Alan McGee was a close friend of Malcolm I called Alan this afternoon and he spoke with fondness about the one and only Malcolm McLaren.ZANI - How are you feeling today?
Alan McGee – I am only getting over the hangover from yesterday now. Ended up doing The Sun obituary, it’s a brilliant piece, done the Guardian, The BBC World Service, The Independent, NME.Com in fact I have been talking, writing and thinking about Malcolm McLaren all day.
ZANI – He certainly was a character
Alan McGee – What he did, with managing The New York Dolls, working with Richard Hell and understanding Punk Rock is he bought the whole Punk rock philosophy to the UK. He put The Sex Pistols together; Bernie Rhodes put The Clash together. And really what he did, he let ZANI exist, he let Creation exist, let Primal Scream exist, let Oasis exist, and Glasvegas. Because none of these things could have happened without Punk Rock, and that’s how iconic and powerful Punk was-and how important and influential Malcolm was.
Basically what a legacy, managing The New York Dolls, The Pistols, Bow Wow Wow and being a Pop Star in his own right. Turning Hollywood upside down, which I know he did, when I was out there. Going up for The Mayor of London, Malcolm telling me that MP3’s are going to kill the music and film business; How China was economically and culturally going to change the West. He called it, time and time again.
I used to go out for dinner with Malcolm once a month, around 96 and 97. He became really close around then, and for four hours Malcolm would literally speak to me, and I would speak to him for about twenty minutes when he wanted to eat his food, and I would tell him what I was doing with Oasis whilst he ate. Then he would go of, talk about politics and the PC society. Totalitarian control of the world, Malcolm had it all done in 1996, he was calling it.
ZANI – He was certainly a visionary man.
Alan McGee – Andrew Loog Oldham was the don, Tony Wilson was moral and elegant, and then Malcolm was the brightest and probably the most visionary. These people were my inspiration to do Creation, and maybe as I said once before, maybe I will be somebody’s inspiration some day. These guys were rock and roll to me.
ZANI – Everyone will remember Malcolm for The Pistols, and The New York Dolls. What do you think was his greatest legacy?
Alan McGee – It was Punk. In our lifetimes, there has been Punk rock, which was monumental, there was Acid House, monumental and I have got to say it, Brit Pop, but I didn’t come to terms with it until last year-but Brit Pop was pretty monumental. It wasn’t until last year, that I started DJ-ing, that I realised how monumental it is.
ZANI – In the film Sid and Nancy (the biography of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen) they made out that Malcolm McLaren-played by David Hayman-was manipulative and a chancer, was he really like that ?
Alan McGee – I have never seen the film, but he was a multilayer kind of guy. He was manipulative, he was a chancer. But he was a visionary and he was a genius, and he was a risk taker. For better or worse-the idea was bigger then the person.
ZANI – In the film, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, the swindle itself was the film. Because McLaren said he wanted to form a band that couldn’t play, and make money out of it, and we all know that The Pistols really could play. So that was the irony, the media believed this hype.
Alan McGee- Glen Matlock wrote most of the songs, and Steve Jones is an incredible musician. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle is a great film, it’s genius in hindsight and the film is all about hindsight. That film inspired a generation, it inspired me, managing the Mary Chain. I managed to sell The Mary Chain to Warner Brothers publishing without hearing them for 40 grand. They signed them on the press I had generated, and I learnt that from Malcolm.
ZANI – I see.
Alan McGee – Peter Reichard from Warners phoned me up, said he will give me twenty, I asked for sixty grand and we agreed forty. He had never heard or met the band but he paid me forty grand, now was my Great Rock and Roll Swindle.
ZANI – A genius at PR and Marketing, do you think any of the bands and artists he worked with will pay a tribute gig in memory of him.
Alan McGee – I don’t think he would like that, if there is one person in the World that is more un-nostalgic then me that was Malcolm. Malcolm never looked back.
ZANI – Apart from your meals with Malcolm, what was your best memory of him?
Alan McGee - There are millions, walking around the BBC car park when he was about to do Newsnight about running for the Mayor of London , and me saying to him: “These are the questions, you are going to get asked” and us working out the answers. Then him going into Newsnight, and doing it spot on. In fact it put me on the front page of The Sun, three days in a row. That freaked me out.
But rock and roll is a beautiful thing, Malcolm may have died, so the individual who created the idea is no longer with us. But the idea is bigger than the individual.
ZANI – What record should we be play tonight in memory of him?
Alan McGee – You bastard, another good question. His Hip Hop record, Buffalo Gals, and that the point we realised he was mental.
ZANI – And ingenious
Alan McGee – They go hand in hand.
True, like many I learned a lot from Malcolm McLaren and his philosophy of life. The main point being ‘Never miss an opportunity’ Last year back Alan recommended to me that ZANI should interview Malcolm. However, due to either arrogance or procrastination, while I added his name to the list, sadly I never made the call and never got the chance to meet the Godfather of Punk. Ironically his death had driven me to be more ambitious and resolute and in Alan’s own words Maclaren’s legacy will continue to live on for years to come.
© Words – Matteo Sedazzari / ZANI
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