Malcolm McLaren

Self-styled impresario and punk provocateur, Malcolm McLaren opened the boutique SEX with partner Vivienne Westwood before a brief stint managing the New York Dolls led to him helping to assemble punk icons the Sex Pistols. Constantly courting controversy and notoriety as the band's manager, McLaren chronicled the Pistols' demise in the mock-umentary film The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle before uniting Adam Ant's old band with 14-year-old Burmese singer Annabella Lwin to form Bow Wow Wow. He turned his attention to hip hop in 1983 after seeing Afrika Bambaataa at a block party, recruiting DJs from New York to help him with his debut solo album Duck Rock, a mix of rap, African musicians, dance and avant garde. The album helped bring the genre to a wider audience and produced the hit singles Buffalo Gals and Double Dutch before he attempted to fuse opera with R&B by sampling Madam Butterfly and Carmen on the album Fans (1984). Always a colourful character, McLaren worked with Bootsy Collins and Jeff Beck on the disco funk album Waltz Darling (1989), recorded the concept record Paris (1992) with Catherine Deneuve and had his track About Her used in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill Vol.2. He died in April, 2010 from a rare type of cancer with his last words "Free Leonard Peltier".