Malcolm McLaren (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010) was a British musician, impresario, visual artist, performer, clothes designer, and boutique owner, notable for combining these activities in an inventive and provocative way. After a spell advising the New York Dolls in the US, McLaren managed the Sex Pistols, to whom he recruited the nihilistic frontman Johnny Rotten. The issue of a controversial record, “God Save the Queen”, satirising the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977 was typical of McLaren’s shock tactics; and he gained publicity by being arrested after a promotional boat trip outside the Houses of Parliament. McLaren also performed as a solo artist, initially popularising hip hop and world music and later diversifying into funk and disco, the dance fashion for “vogueing”, and merging opera with contemporary electronic musical forms. (More from Wikipedia)
It is not unprecedented for the front man of a rock band to adopt that name as his new surname. When the British new wave band Adam and the Ants was formed in 1977 (originally called simply the Ants), the chief songwriter and lead singer was known to the world as “Adam” – he was born Stuart Leslie Goddard. Although Goddard had apparently taken the name Adam Ant before forming the band, I don’t remember anyone calling him that until he started his solo career. Of course that left Adam Ant’s former bandmates in the Ants in the lurch; however, Malcolm McLaren – best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols – recruited them to back a barely pubescent Anglo-Burmese singer that he later discovered named Annabella Lwin (that’s not her real name either as I recall, though I can’t seem to find the info online anymore). The resulting band Bow Wow Wow is one of my favorites from the early 1980’s.
(August 2013)
