Even though MacLaren became an incredibly egomaniacal douchebag -- and all the more so as time went on -- it really is hard to overestimate his influence on not just punk but in other areas tangentially related, like culture, album design/lettering/imagery, etc. Hard to remember now that the Sex Pistols' album cover, lettered in the style of a serial killer sending cut out letters to a magazine or newspaper, was as threatening-looking as it was for its time -- and another odd thing: Its day-glo orange and green cover, which prompted a whole day-glo fashion thing for awhile there.
MacLaren also did have his hand in forming The Damned and Clash, too -- all originally created to be in-house bands for his Sex shop, to create a scene and rivalry. And he insisted on wearing drain pipe trousers, etc., when flairs and long hair and anoraks were the thing. A lot of the accouterments of punk can be traced to him in some way (not totally, but quite a bit). Bondage gear. Gay fetish stuff. It's hard to list it all.
His idea to sue John Lydon by claiming the character of "Johnny Rotten" was a creation of his, was a bit much. Still, it seems geniuses tend to come with massive egos (though thankfully not 100% of the time). And there's nothing more insufferable than someone who is visionary and knows it and gets an attitude about it. MacLaren's Glitterbest also brought us Adam and the Ants (for better or worse). (The Ants' early Peel Sessions from 197 are quite good, actually - guitar-driven post-punk that is not at all goody two-shoes, but pretty up-tempo and rocking; see, for ex. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZF89wJN8t8>
Infusing Situationism with sex and bondage culture and marrying that explicitly to provocative rock and roll - he didn't solely create this, but, again, it's hard to overestimate the impact he had on the culture at large. Not just music.
His art school background was a constant source of tension between him and the more working class members of bands he helped ignite, who resented his artsy fartsy ideas. Ultimately he seemed to want people to believe that he created punk wholesale as a kind of living, ongoing, Situationist style experiment to pull a fast one over on the public and to scam record companies. His story kept changing, and he probably stopped being relevant in any serious way past 1983 - but, still, damn. The man's legacy is hard to comprehend, and you see it everywhere in a lot of the way the culture turned, the fonts used in magazines, the sensibility of commercials, wacky hair colors, and stuff being loud and extreme and rebellious, the mainstreaming (somewhat) of bondage couture, etc etc.
-B.
On 4/8/10 2:29 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote: