MacLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood (now of haute couture Euro fashion fame) ran the Sex Shop on King's Road (later Seditionaries), whose jukebox and bizarre fetish apparel attracted many of the folks that would go on to become the first wave of Brit punk bands, and who practiced in the space above his shop as the nascent London '77 punk movement, incl. future Pretenders vocalist Chrissie Hynde, who was the orginal singer of The Damned before Dave Vanian (David Letts) came along.
MacLaren had a great team around him, for sure. Westwood, as mentioned, but also graphic artist Jamie Reid, and others, who pioneered much of what has come to be known as the punk graphic aesthetic, and which has now so infiltrated the mainstream that it's barely distinguishable as a "punk" aesthetic distinct from mainstream ad/art style. (Day-glo colors, psycho cut-and-paste lettering for album titles, sketchy DIY photocopied looking fonts, bizarre Situationist-inpired flyers, everything being "EXTREEEEME!!" nowadays ['Suuurge!"], brightly colored hair dyes, etc.)
Also, bands like The Clash and The Damned congregated around Sex (for whom Siouxsie Sioux was an employee, btw, among others, incl., IIRC Billy Idol) and MacLaren prompted & promoted this all eagerly, and invented rivalries, etc. In fact, MacLaren arranged the first Brit punk show not in London, but in Paris, as he anted the new movement to be called "New Wave," after his fave form of French cinema. "New wave" later went on to designate watered down, commercialized punk, but MacLaren was a major cultural driver, not just as the manager of one band, but as someone who provided aesthetic input in various' bands imagery. Ot was when John Lydon wrote the song "Religion," and Malcolm would not hear of it, that Lydon/Rotten left the Sex Pistols to form PiL. Everything the Pistols did had to be passed through MacLaren. If he didn't like it, it didn't get done. This is way diff. than Parker and his relation to Elvis. A better analogy might be Sam Philips of Sun
records, but even that is not a great analogy.
That and his wife's infusion of a heavy bondage (and even gay!) aesthetic was part of the sea change of 1977. He was indeed a savvy manager and businessman yet he was also a savvy artist and was a prime mover in the major cultural shift that occured int he late 1970s and which has since gone on to infiltrate, virally, all aspects of our media experience these days, often hard to overestimate. He wasn't justs ome manager of a band. He really did have a lot of input into the imagery, aesthetics, tone, motifs, fashion, etc., etc. of what punk became synonymous with.
-B.
Dennis Claxton wrote:
"I said things were most definitely new and different in '77. I absolutely agree with that. I only compare McClaren with Colonel Parker because I see that as his role. He was a savvy manager and businessman."